Bonnie Raitt and Mavis Staples at the nTelos Wireless Pavilion, Charlottesville, Virginia

Bonnie Raitt and Mavis Staples

nTelos Wireless Pavilion

Charlottesville, Virginia

June 12, 2012

     It was with great anticipation that we drove an hour from our home to Charlottesville, Va. to see Bonnie Raitt.  I have been a Bonnie Raitt fan since the early 1970s.  She was very popular in the D.C. area while I was in college at Georgetown University.  It seems that I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time, or had the wrong exam schedule to ever see her in concert.  I was excited to see her career explode in the 80s and early 90s and was glad when she won all of those Grammy Awards.  Her live album 1996's "Road Tested" has been the soundtrack for many a road trip.

      The show opened with a short set from 72 year old Mavis Staples.  Although the set was short, Mavis had the crowd energized and ready for Bonnie Raitt.  Highlights included "Freedom Highway" after which Ms. Staples recounted her father's work with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., a funky version of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and The Band's "The Weight".  The finale was a rousing, stomping, crowd pleasing extended version of "I'll Take You There".  

     Bonnie Raitt hit the ground running with songs from her new CD "Slipstream".  She opened by growling into the first track from the album, "Used to Rule the World".  This was followed by the inspired reworking of the 1970s Gerry Rafferty tune "Right Down the Line".  Her slide playing, long a trademark, was on target from the very beginning.  She then played more familiar tunes including "Something to Talk About".  

     The highlights of the show were to come later, however.  She introduced a young singer/songwriter newly relocated to Virginia named Sarah Siskind.  This young lady has a fine voice and performed a stunning duet on John Prine's "Angel from Montgomery".  Ms. Siskind then played one of her own compositions which I think was entitled "One Day at a Time".  The other two show stoppers were John Hiatt's "Thing Called Love" and the finale: "I Feel so Damn Good (I'll Be Glad When I Get the Blues)".

     My only gripe was with the venue.  We were "greeted" by the concert Gestapo who refused to let us come in with a camera.  Let's make this clear: I'm a sixty-something and not one to cause trouble.  I'm a blogger and an amateur photographer and I take a camera everywhere.  I use a Canon SX20IS which is a glorified point and shoot.  It has a long zoom capability which makes it perfect for taking pictures at concerts (please see some of my other concert reviews).  I never use flash and no one has ever complained about the camera.    The people at the gate were rude and told me to go back to my car with the camera.  I contacted the venue the next day and they told me that the "no camera" policy was at the artist's discretion, so I guess this was Ms. Raitt's fault, but a simple explanation from the gatekeepers would have been nice.  Secondly, I re-learned a hard lesson from previous trips to this venue.  The 200 section seats suck.  There is a restaurant section which is flat and between the 100 level seats and the 200 level seats.  People stand in there and yack at their friends, some even with their back to the stage, making it impossible to see the artist perform.  This particular show was a benefit for the Charlottesville Free Clinic, so I guess the 100 seats were sold through the Clinic because none were available just minutes after the tickets went on sale.  My desire to see Bonnie Raitt over-road my apprehensions about the 200 level seats which were available.  Finally, at the risk of sounding like a total old crank, the people around us were intolerable.  The row in front of us talked loudly and laughed through the whole performance.  The only reprieve from their boorish behavior was during their frequent trips for beer and subsequent trips to the bathroom.  Moral of the story: If you want to enjoy the show, get 100 level seats for this venue or wait for the concert DVD.

    It was great to finally see Bonnie Raitt perform.  Her voice is still splendid, as is her guitar playing.  It should be mentioned also that her band, consisting of Mike Finnigan on keyboards, George Marinelli on guitars, bass player "Hutch" Hutchison and drummer Ricky Fataar, was worth the price of admission by themselves.  Finnigan was a wizard on the Hammond B-3 and electric piano, Fataar kept all of the syncopated and reggae type rhythms perfectly as well as added perfect brushes to the softer songs (not an easy task to switch gears so drastically), Hutchison played the electric bass as well as an upright and Marinelli was the perfect complement to Bonnie Raitt's slide playing.  I wished I could have had a better "concert experience" and I wish I had some photos to share with you, but, all things considered, I'm glad we went.  Next time we will be at this venue will be for Crosby, Stills and Nash and fortunately we have Level 100 seats.  I hope this band allows me to bring in my camera!

Books Into Movies: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games

By Suzanne Collins

Movie Directed by Gary Ross

(Also discussed in this review: What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes)

“I am by nature warlike.  To attack is among my instincts.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

     Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few months, you probably know the basic story line of The Hunger Games.  The book is the first of a young adult trilogy written by Suzanne Collins and set in a futuristic North America.  The country of Panem has a capital city in the Rockies.  The extravagant and self-indulgent citizens of The Capital City are supported by twelve districts which are held in captivity and forced to send the majority of their resources to The Capital.  The citizens of the districts live in abject poverty and the elderly often starve to death while younger adults and children do their best to survive.  This is the perfect recipe for revolution, which indeed occurred 75 years prior the time of this story.  The Capitol City prevailed, and as punishment and as a reminder to the Districts as to who is in charge, the tradition of the Hunger Games was proclaimed.  A male and female child (called “Tributes”) is chosen annually from each district to fight to the death in a contrived battle zone concocted and manipulated by the Game Masters in The Capital.  The one surviving Tribute brings great glory to his or her district as well as increased rations for the following twelve months. 

  

       The main character is Katniss Everdeen, an older teen who is fiercely independent and protective of her younger sister Prim.  Katniss has held her family together, hunting for food in the forbidden zones using her advanced archery skills and psychologically supporting her despondent mother.  Katniss lives in District 12 which was formerly Appalachia.  District 12 supplies coal and minerals to The Capital but still is one of the poorer Districts.  Katniss’ father was a coal miner and died in a mine accident.  When the time comes for the annual “Reaping” (selection of Tributes) Prim’s name is drawn but Katniss volunteers to take her place.  The male selected from District 12 is the son of the local baker and has a romantic interest in Katniss.

     

     The remainder of the story, told by Katniss, carries the reader through the preparation for and, finally, the Hunger Games themselves.  Katniss and the other Tributes are fed like royalty and put through vigorous training.  Katniss and Peeta Mellark (the male Tribute from District 12) are coached by the only previous District 12 Hunger Games winner, Haymitch Abernathy.  Haymitch is a bumbling alcoholic and is very pessimistic about the survival chances of the current two District 12 tributes.  He does convince Katniss and Peeta of the importance of providing good entertainment value for all of the citizenry who will be watching the games live.  They play up the romance angle and Peeta and Katniss become known as “The Star-crossed Lovers.”

   

     The Games are dominated by Tributes from the richer Districts, many of whom have been trained since birth to fight.  Katniss uses her unique cunning and archery skills to remain in competition.  Each time a Tribute dies a cannon sounds and at the end of the day pictures of the Tributes who perished that day are projected on a giant screen which takes the place of the sky.  The obstacles to Katniss’ survival go beyond the other Tributes and include forest fires orchestrated by the Game Masters, unpredictable weather, genetically altered killer bees called Tracer-Jackers and, finally, the dead Tributes themselves who are reincarnated as huge dog-like carnivorous beasts. 

     

     The movie is extremely well done and follows the book fairly closely.  Several minor characters and plot lines were not included, but they added a television commentator who narrates the events of the day to TV audience watching in The Capital City and in the Districts.  This character allows a lot of detail to be revealed at a fast pace, keeping the story in motion.  The characters of Katniss and Peeta are played very convincingly by Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson, and Woody Harrleson (yes, the same guy from “Cheers”) does a marvelous job as Haymitch.  The cinematography is wonderful and most of the outdoor scenes were shot around Asheville, North Carolina.  Charlotte was used for The Capital City, but I didn’t see a lot of resemblance.

  

     For a 200+ page Young Adult book, this story packs a huge punch and the areas for discussion here are almost limitless.  Much has already been written about the political and social issues brought forward by The Hunger Games.  What can be said for a society which lives of the back of its poorer citizens, each year increasing the gap between the wealthy and the less fortunate?  What can be said about a society which receives thrills from watching the “agony of defeat” on live television reality shows?  This story speaks volumes about the ability of a few to control the many by abusing their position of power by economic means.  Panem is an extreme, but is it really that different from our current culture of greed?

     

     There are also a plethora of religious symbols in The Hunger Games.  There are churches that have started Bible study groups based on a discussion of this story.  There is the self-sacrifice which Katniss exhibits early on, volunteering as Tribute to spare her younger more fragile sister Prim.  There is also the theme of placing the good of a group over individual goals.  The survivor endures a terrible ordeal, but at least for twelve months, the lives of citizens in his or her home district are much improved.  Katniss also makes many decisions based solely on what she thinks is the morally right thing to do rather than what she feels society or others expect of her.  As Krishna states in the Mahabharata, “It is not right to stand by and watch an injustice being done.  There are times when active interference is necessary.”

    

       It is purely by coincidence that I was reading Karl Marlantes’ new book What It is Like to Go to War at the same time as I was reading The Hunger Games.   Marlantes, you may recall, is the author of Matterhorn,   the monumental novel of the Viet Nam War reviewed in these pages a few years ago.  This author is an Ivy League graduate, served as a Marine Lieutenant in the Viet Nam war and has struggled to understand his war experiences ever since.  He notes how societies send their young men (and now women) into combat very poorly prepared psychologically and spiritually for this experience.  Soldiers are trained in the efficient use of more and more lethal weapons, but are never counseled in how to deal with the anguish of violence and killing.    In this new non-fiction work Marlantes calls on Jungian psychology to state that we all have an evil inside of us (a “shadow” person) which under normal circumstances we are able to suppress.  In the extremes of stress, such as in combat, the evil side can surface and enable a human to kill another.  This “shadow” can also explain atrocities such as My Lai during Viet Nam or, more recently, the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib .  No soldier really “gets over” the experience of combat and killing and Marlantes feels this is the main cause of the high rates of suicide and incidence of alcoholism and drug abuse among veterans.  As Marlantes says:  “Warriors will always have to deal with guilt and mourning.  If we perform with a noble heart and dedicate our efforts to some higher good we minimize the suffering of guilt afterward.  This unfortunately will not eliminate the suffering of mourning.   Guilt is different from mourning.”  Even more telling, Marlantes says further:  “To survive psychically in the proximity of Mars, one has to come to terms with stepping outside conventional moral conduct.”

   

       It is enlightening to read The Hunger Games book and even more startling to watch the movie through the prism of Karl Marlantes’ important work.  I think that what Suzanne Collins has forged is an incredible anti-war statement.   Katniss Everdeen certainly is forced to step outside conventional moral conduct to survive.  The character of Haymitch (again so ably performed by Woody Harrelson) is really the symbol of the prototypical veteran consumed by survivor’s guilt and regret and drowning his later adult life with alcohol.  The evil side of human nature is Exhibit A in The Hunger Games.  There is even one time in the movie where Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch, referring to Rue, a younger Tribute who is following Katniss around The Capital City during training exercises, stares into Katniss’ eyes and says “You have a shadow!”  There is a long pause which seems to me to be a reference to the “self-preservation at all cost” nature hidden inside the outwardly humble and backward Katniss.   Marlantes describes night terrors where he sees North Vietnamese soldiers he killed years earlier.  The demons at the end of the story, the snarling, mad, flesh eating monsters created by The Game Masters from the killed Tributes have to represent the combat survivors’ nightmares. 

  

       Young Adult literature?  The Hunger Games has been pegged as such.  I think that this story deserves a much larger audience and greater discussion.  It succeeds on so many levels.  I recommend the book and the movie interpretation highly.

“Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.” – Carl Jung, from Psychology and Religion

Big & Rich at Nationals Park - June 2, 2012

   

Big and Rich

Nationals Park

June 2, 2012 

     The first in a series of post-game concerts at the Washington Nationals Park featured a high energy one hour set by country music's Big and Rich.  The duo has been around since 2004 but went their separate ways for a couple of years and have now re-grouped.   They are releasing their first new CD in 4 years in a couple of weeks.

     The show started quickly after the conclusion of a well-played baseball game, a 2-0 Nationals win over the Atlanta Braves.  The stage and sound system were rolled out behind second base and the infield grass was cordoned off to keep folks from trampling the sod.  There was a $20 fee to go out onto the field to see the band up close so there weren't many people at the stage.  The vantage from the upper deck was fine and plenty loud.

     The show consisted mainly of their previous hits, opening with "Coming to Your City" and concluding with a rousing rendition of "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy".  The latter segued through several other songs including, somehow, "Brick House".  The set was a very energetic and percussion driven review of previous hits and one curious inclusion: AC/DC's "You Shook Me", which had sort of a Bakersfield rolling rythm as opposed to the original hard-driving rock version.  The two highlights of the set included "Lost in the Moment" and "The Eight of November", both of which focused more on vocal harmonies than stage theatrics.

     The sound was a little lacking at first, but to the credit of whoever was running the sound board, it was corrected quickly and the vocals shone through.  It seemed that the energy from the band never really transferred to the audience, probably because of the peculiar venue: playing in front of a basically empty infield and a small-ish crowd dispersed throughout a third full stadium.  Most baseball fans, it would seem, were satisfied with the great game and headed to the Metro or to the traffic jam on I-395 after Tyler Clippard, the Nats closer, fanned the third of three Braves he faced in the ninth inning.

     John Rich had some very cool guitars: Custom Gibson Hummingbirds, Songwriters and even a Flying V, all emblazoned with the "Musik Mafia" logo on the fret boards.  The one sort of corny thing was that there were messages on the back of the guitars (like "SCREAM") which would appear when the artist flipped over their guitar.  If the crowd's not that into it, a gimmick like that is probably not the best idea.

     All in all, it was a very enjoyable set by a very talented band and two hyper-kinetic front men.  I'm glad we were there to see it.  I would love to see Big and Rich again in a better venue where their energy would be more contagious.

Book Review: Flyboys by James Bradley

Flyboys

By James Bradley

(Blogger Note: This review was originally published in The LAMLight, the physician newsletter of the Lynchburg Academy of Medicine, Lynchburg, Virginia.)

     Flyboys is the true story of nine World War II dive-bomber pilots and the attacks on the island of Chichi Jima.  This island is north of Iwo Jima and was strategically critical because of two communications towers there which the Japanese used to deliver orders to the Imperial Navy in the Pacific.  Coincidental with the ground attack on Iwo Jima, the Navy attacked Chichi Jima with dive bombers.  Nine flyers were shot down during the attacks.  Eight were captured and executed and the ninth, George H. W. Bush was rescued by an American submarine and survived to become President.  The author uses recently declassified documents as well as interviews with many surviving family members and fellow combatants, including Japanese, to tell the story of these flyers.

     This book is a cold reminder that wars are fought by the best, bravest and brightest of our youngest citizens.  The portraits of these boys are poignant and the reader is left with a great sense of loss when each of these brave pilots is killed.  The concept of “what could have been” is underscored by the great contributions and successes of the elder George Bush.  One can’t help but wonder what heights the other eight could have achieved as well.

     The author also does an exceptional job of explaining the Japanese mindset leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.  He goes through the history of Japan following the visit to the previously self-contained island nation by Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853.  The Japanese quickly moved from an isolationist policy to an imperialist policy which culminated nearly a century later with the Pearl Harbor attack.

     Mr. Bradley spends several chapters explaining the then radical new theory of war espoused by army colonel Billy Mitchell.  Colonel Mitchell had been in charge of America’s air support in France in WWI and witnessed the horror of trench warfare.  He had the vision to understand what he called the “Third Dimension” of warfare: air power.   In the years leading up to World War II he called for more aircraft and new strategies to utilize them.  He was loudly denounced by traditional militarists but found one believer in Franklin Roosevelt.  This set the stage for the bombing raids over Europe and eventually on the Japanese homeland during World War II.

     Mr. Bradley concludes the book with an account of the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities at the conclusion of the war.  This strategy was ordered by General Curtis LeMay and accounted for more civilian casualties than the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The author uses first hand accounts from Japanese survivors to tell the horrible story of the napalm bombings of these Japanese cities.  Looking back from an era of reporting from the front lines and media immersion with combat troops, it is hard to imagine that the ghastly results of this technique were kept from the American public.

      James Bradley is the son of one of the Marines who raised the flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, an event immortalized on film and with the statue in Arlington, Virginia.  He has written that story in Flags of Our Fathers.  Flyboys is a fascinating book from both a historical and human perspective.  Mr. Bradley captures the wholly tragic individual stories of combatants from both sides within the broader historical perspective of world politics.  This book is not just for military history buffs.  This book makes the point over and over again what a horrible waste of life and potential war is.  In this era of terrorist violence this is a lesson that we obviously have not learned and need to be reminded of.

Book Review: The Creation by E.O. Wilson

The Creation

E.O. Wilson

            “More than 2 million tons of expired electronics are discarded in land fills each year, making ewaste the fastest growing fraction of the municipal garbage system.  These castoffs account for nearly 40 percent of the toxic heavy metals – like lead, cadmium, and mercury – found in dumps.”  Wired Magazine, Fall 2006.

            E.O. Wilson is an interesting contradiction.  He was brought up in a Southern Baptist household in rural Alabama and is now a Darwinian student of evolutionary biology.  He is a world renowned entomologist whose area of specialization is ants and has been a Harvard University Biology professor for 25 years.  Two previous books have won this author the Pulitzer Prize, “On Human Nature” in 1978 and “The Ants”, co-authored by Bert Holldobler in 1990. “The Creation” is a letter to an unnamed pastor (representing the religious or anti-evolutionist point of view) which lays out a very scientific, dispassionate argument for preserving all of nature’s species.  He documents the dramatic peril that living organisms currently face through citing current research.  He emphatically states: “According to estimates by a team of experts in 2004, climate changes alone, if left unabated, could be the primary cause of extinction of a quarter of the species of plants and animals on the land by mid-century.”  He calls our times an “ecological Dark Age.”  The author then laments the decline of the Earth’s biodiversity from a purely scientific standpoint and points his finger directly at one species responsible for this debacle: Homo Sapiens.  “We are the giant meteorite of our time, having begun the sixth mass extinction of Phanerozoic history.  We are creating a less stable and interesting place for our descendants to inherit.”  He then presents cogent arguments for reversing this trend citing, among other items, medical and health reasons to preserve the Creation rather than systematically destroy it.

            Throughout this fascinating and yet frightening book the author appeals to “the Pastor” in religious terms.  He discusses the quote from Genesis in which God gives humans dominion over all of Earth’s other species and expounds on how that caveat has been abused over time to allow us to plunder our natural resources.  The concept that humans are a higher order of being on theological grounds has sanctioned the exploitation of our co-inhabitors of the planet.  The author considers this flawed rationalization and blames it for what he describes as the “homogenization of the Earth’s ecosystem”, or declining biodiversity.  He appeals to the Pastor using his own religious vocabulary.  He calls on all humans to be stewards of this great gift, the Creation.  “The Creation is the greatest heritage other than the reasoning mind itself ever provided to humanity”.  On these grounds alone, the author reasons, the Creation should be celebrated and preserved.

            The last section of the book discusses the differences between secular and religious humanism.  There is an interesting harpooning of the concept of “Intelligent Design” as a default argument between the religious and scientific communities.  The real value of “The Creation” though is in these last few important pages of the book.  In these E. O. Wilson implores scientists and theologians to basically put aside their differences and celebrate their similarities.  Both camps have solid reasons to preserve the environment and Earth’s biodiversity despite differing bases for the same conclusions.  He calls for a better educated populace in the area of biology.  He calls for “all species inventories” to be undertaken so that we can more fully understand our world.  These inventories have already been started in areas such as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park using “citizen naturalists” to discover and catalog the living creatures in that area.  What a refreshing attitude!  The author is basically stating: “Let’s quit arguing over our philosophical differences which we will never resolve and move on to our common goal: preserving the environment!”  If this attitude would catch on in the political arena as well, can you imagine what a better “Creation” we would live in?

Book Review: Defending Jacob by William Landay

Defending Jacob

By William Landay

     William Landay is a former Assistant District Attorney and Defending Jacob is his third novel.  The main character and narrator of the story is Andy Barber, a Senior Assistant District Attorney living and working in a small town near Boston.  He is happily married to a school teacher named Laurie, the girl of his dreams who he met in college.  Andy considers himself lucky to have swept Laurie off of her feet and that she agreed to marry him.  (He married “up.”)  The family is completed by Jacob, a typically non-communicative eighth grader who is somewhat of a polar opposite from his gregarious, overachieving father.  Jacob is very average – average grades, few close friends and fascinated with technology and the internet. 

     

      Murder happens infrequently in the small town of Newton, Massachusetts and so Andy is called when the body of a young man is found one morning in the wooded area of a park near the middle school.    Andy is involved in the investigation from the very beginning, working closely with his long-time friend (and Jacob’s godfather) Detective Paul Duffy.  The victim’s name is Ben Rifkin and he is a popular classmate of Jacob’s. There are few clues as to the perpetrator and the investigation moves slowly.  The students are not immediately interviewed because of “political correctness” and there is little physical evidence.  Ben was killed by three stab wounds from a small serrated knife.  There were no signs of a struggle and there are no eyewitnesses. The murder weapon is never found.  A data search reveals that there is a registered pedophile living in the neighborhood and Paul and Andy focus the investigation on this man.  Several turn of events then occur which change the complexion of the case.  A Facebook friend of Jacob’s accuses him of the murder in a status update and reveals that Jacob owns a knife which he often carried to school.  Once the students are interviewed it becomes apparent that Ben had selected Jacob as an object of verbal abuse, bullying him and making fun of his eccentricities.  The students are also fingerprinted.

    

       Andy is abruptly called into the District Attorney’s office and told that a fingerprint found on the victim’s clothing matched his son and that Jacob is now the primary suspect.  Andy is placed on administrative leave, a search warrant is executed at his home and Jacob is arrested and formally charged with the murder of Ben Rifkin.

      

      Jacob pleads total innocence and his parents steadfastly believe him, even as more and more details emerge which cast doubt on this.    What follows are a complex family saga, an intense character study, a legal machination and dilemmas of monstrous proportions.  Andy Barber has a family history which he has kept hidden, even from his high society wife, for all of his life.  His father and grandfather were notoriously violent men.   His father, in fact, is in prison for life without parole following a conviction for murder.  One of the most heart rending scenes involves Andy finally revealing this to his distraught wife.  This breach of trust opens the door for further marital discord as the pressure of Jacob’s impending trial mounts.  A geneticist is consulted by Jacob’s defense attorney to investigate the possibility of a “murder gene” which may predispose its owners to violence.  While Andy never wavers in his belief in his son’s innocence, Laurie has genuine moments of doubt.  The reader is carried on waves of emotion through the trial as the prosecutor lays out the increasingly damning evidence against Jacob.  You find yourself compulsively turning to the next chapter, at one point feeling that Jacob is the victim of a witch hunt and a rush to judgement and then abruptly feeling that he is a cold-blooded killer.  The author does a masterful job of making the reader feel what Laurie feels as she hears Jacob’s best friend testify in court that her son has a terrible temper and that he frequently talked of making Ben Rifkin pay for his bullying.  You also desperately want to believe with Andy that this is a misunderstanding and that no jury in the world could find Jacob guilty of murder in the first degree.

    

      Towards the end of the trial, Andy describes his family’s condition:

    

        “We Barbers were left in complete isolation.  If we had been shot out into space, we could not have felt more alone.  We ordered Chinese food, as we had a thousand times the last few months, because China City delivers and the driver speaks so little English that we did not have to feel self-conscious opening the door for him.  We ate our boneless spare ribs and General Gao’s chicken in near silence, then slunk off to opposite corners of the house for the evening.  We were too sick of the case to talk about it anymore but too obsessed with it to talk about anything else.  We were too gloomy for the idiocies of TV – suddenly our lives seemed finite, and much too short to waste – and too distracted to read.”

     

     There will be no spoilers in this review.  I can’t in good conscience reveal the spectacular and totally unpredictable ending to this saga.  The reader is exhausted and emotionally drained at the conclusion, though, just as Andy and Laurie Barber are.  I have read a lot of novels in this genre, but never have I been as thoroughly fooled as I was by William Landay.

     

     This book succeeds on so many levels.  It is a character study of the first degree.  Andy, Laurie and Jacob feel like friends or neighbors by the time you finish this.  This novel also provides some interesting social commentary (much like the novels of Jodi Picoult) touching on such contemporary issues as bullying, media exploitation of high profile crimes and genetic influence on behavior.  The pace, although a bit slow occasionally (the legal shenanigans, although necessary, always seem a little over the top) is always driven forward by the tension created between the characters.  This tension shifts from chapter to chapter: between Andy and Laurie, between the Barbers and their neighbors, between Jacob and his friends, between Jacob and his parents.  The tension is always there, though, and it becomes almost unbearable at times. 

    

      Defending Jacob by William Landay is an excellent book and I recommend it highly.

Three 'Burgs

A Blog of Three ‘Burgs

Gettysburg, PA

     The past three weekends we have enjoyed time in three different but delightful towns: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Williamsburg and Lynchburg, Virginia.  I guess the last one shouldn’t really count since we live in Lynchburg, but we have spent such little time here lately that it seems like we are just visiting!

     We traveled to Gettysburg to attend a wedding.  The parents of the groom are great friends and the groom and our son have been best friends since second grade.  It had been a while since we last visited Gettysburg and it hasn’t changed much, which is a good thing.  This, of course, was the site of the pivotal battle in The American Civil War.  We arrived on Friday and checked into our hotel, tried to find a Starbuck’s (there aren’t any in Gettysburg) and had an absolutely awful latte served rudely by a disinterested barista at a coffee shop in the Outlet Mall.  We stayed at a Marriott Courtyard which was well kept and clean, had free wireless internet and was conveniently located.   We ate at the Appalachian Brewing Company which is located in a building which was used by General Lee as the Confederate headquarters during the battle.  We enjoyed some vegetarian Thai rolls and split a very good veggie pizza.  We also tried the local brew which was spectacular.  After dinner we drove over to the battlefield.  This particular battlefield is remarkably well preserved and seems like it hasn’t changed since the Civil War.  The view of the sunset from Little Round Top was beautiful.

   

Sunset from Little Round Top

                                                                                     

 Marker for Col. Patrick Henry "Paddy" O'Rourke, 

killed on Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg.  It is local

  folklore that if you rub his nose you

     will have good luck!

     The next morning we went to the new Visitor’s Center, watched the movie produced by the History Channel and narrated by Morgan Freeman and viewed the diorama, a 369 painting depicting the battle.  We then drove through the area occupied by the Confederates, found some re-enactors and viewed the infamous field where Pickett’s charge occurred.  There are monuments everywhere on the battlefield which were placed shortly after the war’s end.  The Pennsylvania Monument on the Union side and the Virginia Monument on the Confederate side are the most impressive.

A portion of the Diorama of
The Battle of Gettysburg

 

Virginia Monument

                                                               

Re-enactors

                                                                                                               
                                                                                                 








      We then attended the wedding at St. Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church.  This church was founded in the 1830s and served as a field hospital for both sides during and after the battle.  The Sisters of Mercy did their best to nurse the most severely injured soldiers which is memorialized by a striking stained glass window on the front right of the church.

Cupola of St. Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church
 Gettysburg, PA

     Gettysburg is a great place to visit, filled with history and respect for the fierce fighting which occurred there and the bravery displayed by both armies.  The community has done a superb job of preserving the battlefield.   Gettysburg has some of the usual tourist type attractions but lacks a lot of the more usual amenities (such as Starbuck’s).  You can still get a great breakfast at Perkin’s,  enjoy a meal at a historic restaurant and view a world famous battlefield which has not been polluted by urban sprawl. 

Williamsburg, VA

Governor's Palace from the Duke of Gloucester Street, Colonial Williamsburg, VA

       We never pass up an opportunity to visit Williamsburg.  We spent part of our honeymoon there almost 35 years ago and have returned often.  Our third son spent his four college years at The College of William and Mary and is now attending law school there as well.  He is very involved at Williamsburg Presbyterian Church and was ringing bells with the college bell choir on Sunday, April 29.  We were also celebrating two birthdays as well.  We made a quick trip on Saturday afternoon and stayed at a Quality Inn which is OK for the price.  The location is great, there is free wireless internet and a free breakfast in the morning.  Colonial Williamsburg is beautiful any time of the year, but particularly so in the Spring.  The gardens are meticulously maintained and, because of Williamsburg’s more coastal location, are ahead of Lynchburg in terms of what’s blooming.  We walked the length of the Duke of Gloucester street under an overcast sky because of the weather were able to wander the gardens which were basically empty.  We had a fantastic dinner at Christiana Campbell’s Tavern (seafood is their specialty and the flounder and scallops special did not disappoint) and then headed back to the hotel.  The next morning we attended the early service at Williamsburg Presbyterian and thoroughly enjoyed the performance of the bell choir.  We then drove on home to Lynchburg.

Artichokes!

Christiana Campbell's Tavern
Colonial Williamsburg, VA

Sanctuary, Williamsburg Presbyterian Church

Lynchburg

     This weekend we finally stayed home.  Lynchburg has been our home since 1992.  The town began as a convenient crossing point over the James River.  It has served as a transportation hub, both as part of the canal system to Richmond and later for the railroad.  Tobacco was stored and then sold and transported from here.  There was a significant hospital here during the Civil War and we are located only twenty or so miles from the surrender grounds at Appomattox.  Attractions nearby include Poplar Forest, the recently restored summer home designed and built by Thomas Jefferson and the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford.

   
     We started our weekend downtown at the First Fridays art exhibit.  There are several galleries downtown which have food and live music on the first Friday of each month year round.  There is a trolley which will take you free of charge on a circuit which includes the downtown galleries and the Lynchburg Art Club on Rivermont Avenue.  We first went to the Academy of Fine Arts where a one artist show was on display and then went to the Riverviews Artspace on the riverfront.  After viewing some interesting fabric art we ate dinner at one our favorite restaurants, The Bull Branch.  It is somewhat tucked away on a side street and has a funky non-Lynchburg type of feel to it.  The menu changes frequently and features locally grown organic vegetables.  The skies cleared and we were able to enjoy the “Super Moon” on full display!

     Saturday morning we got up and went to our Community Market.  There was a slight drizzle which kept the crowds down.  There was the usual great selection of fresh vegetables and plants.  Saturday night we saw “The Hunger Games” (book and movie review to follow soon) after $3 burritos at Moe’s “Cinco de Moe’s” celebration.  Sunday has been a day of catching up, blog writing and cooking (vegetable lasagna from Saturday’s haul at the Community Market). 

Three weekends: Three ‘Burgs.  Love it.

Riverviews Artspace
Lynchburg, Virginia

Gallery, Riverviews Artspace

Langley Fountain from inside Riverviews Artspace

Bull Branch Restaurant, Lynchburg, VA

Entrance to Bull Branch Restaurant

Interior, Bull Branch Restaurant

Lynchburg Community Market

Fresh produce!

... and plants!

"Super Moon" over Lynchburg, VA
May 5, 2012