"All you have to is show up. Everyone with balls makes the team, I don't mean the family jewels. I mean guts, I mean backbone, I mean heart."
excerpt from Blind Your Ponies written by Stanley Gordon West
*I wrote this up for the other blog and just pasted it here. After rereading it, it sounds like I am detailing one of those Matt Christopher books. Something like: The Catcher with No Legs. This book is nothing like that.*
Blind Your Ponies follows the Willow Creek Broncs; a basketball team with a reputation for failure. Willow Creek is a small town set underneath the shadows of the Tobacco Root Mountains in southwest Montana. Stanley Gordon West admits that this book is fiction, but has a lot of truth interspersed. The year is 1991 and the Broncs are facing another season with the memory of 5 win less seasons in the immediate past. But as much as this story is about a team, it is about a town- a town that seems to have the same reputation as the team. You see, the winters in this part of the U.S. are brutal. Cold, windy, snowy...constantly. The surrounding towns have very little to do or look forward to so they turn to their town's team. Nothing makes for a long winter like a losing team. And this team of 6 has little hope of an early spring.
The story wouldn't be all that interesting without the characters involved. West sucks you in from the start with tragedy that strikes the head coach years before Willow Creek is even a thought to him. Most of the characters involved have their own difficulties to deal with and use basketball as an escape. Its neat how the town itself is a character; fading away with its own losing.
Sam Pickett is the head coach and believes that is life is a record of how to become and stay a loser. It started in middle school when a port-a-potty was turned over while he was inside. These events have created a closed off soul unwilling to let himself love or believe.
Tom Stonebreak, 6'4", is a senior and has never won a game. He is a true cowboy. The kind of guy you may be afraid your wife would leave you for. He decides to forgo his senior season and prepare for the rodeos coming in the spring. His drive and toughness seem to be perpetuated by a longing to prove himself to his abusive, alcoholic father.
Peter Strong, 5'11", has just showed up to live with his grandmother; leaving Minneapolis following his parents divorce. Neither of his parents could keep the guy so they shipped him out; his girlfriend in turn found her another man. I like the way West puts it as his grandma describes his situation: facing "the howling void of eternity alone".
Olaf Gustafson, 6'11", flies in as an exchange student from Norway. The buzz around town is filled with hope when they hear of his size; but are sorely discouraged when they find out he has never played before. He has a Yoda-like grasp of the English language and has the basketball skills of a child learning to walk.
Grandma Chapman is the redemption in the story. Full of hope and optimism, she believes things are looking up. Alot like the town, she has seen some tough years. However, a certain event in her life has given her perspective. One line says it all: "She never again valued herself by the opinion of others, wishing she had been strong enough to live her whole life that way."
The book is full of ups and downs. It will give you hope one minute and leave you in a funk the next. I guess that is what I like about good books: they put you in a place, leaving you with the emotions felt in the story. This book takes you to Willow Creek. You'll feel the coldness of the winter and smell the mustiness of the old court and find yourself gripping the pages like a fan on the edge of your seat.
20 April 2011
17 April 2011
A New Vision
Greetings Friends,
Given that we are a year into this, I think it is an appropriate time to re-evaluate our efforts. We've tried one book together, which everyone seemed to enjoy, though certainly in their own time. Thus I suggest we convert the plan of a book club into a "What I've been reading lately" club. I'll continue to submit reviews on books I have finished, and I encourage you all to do the same. Perhaps we will eventually be able to give it another shot with the same book, but until that day, I would love to know what you are taking in. More importantly, I'd like to hear your thoughts. What say ye then, brothers?
Will
Given that we are a year into this, I think it is an appropriate time to re-evaluate our efforts. We've tried one book together, which everyone seemed to enjoy, though certainly in their own time. Thus I suggest we convert the plan of a book club into a "What I've been reading lately" club. I'll continue to submit reviews on books I have finished, and I encourage you all to do the same. Perhaps we will eventually be able to give it another shot with the same book, but until that day, I would love to know what you are taking in. More importantly, I'd like to hear your thoughts. What say ye then, brothers?
Will
13 April 2011
The Souls of Black Folk
"HEREIN lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." - W.E.B. Du Bois
A cornerstone of African-American studies, The Souls of Black Folk is a series of essays spanning from religion to economics, and from politics to music. W.E.B. Du Boishad a unique perspective of the meaning of being black in America at the turn of the century. Raised as the lone black child in a New England town, Du Bois claims he didn't realize the significance of his skin color until he was an elementary student barred from a playmate's home. His higher-education opportunities were limited by that same skin color, and thus he headed south to study at Fisk University in Nashville. He spent time teaching in rural schools for a time before moving back north to become the first African-American to graduate from Harvard. He studied at the University of Berlin and held teaching positions at Wilberforce and UPenn before returning to the South to teach at Atlanta University.
Du Bois writes in a style that will strike today's reader as remarkably humble regarding his race. His ideas at the time, however, were far from mild. Booker T. Washington was the leading black voice of his day, and he advocated social policies of "separate but equal" standing among the races, working to ensure blacks had access to trade schools and agricultural policies that would provide the race an opportunity to accrew financial and social standing before moving towards integration. Du Bois, however, was adamantly opposed to Jim Crow and segregation, challenging that equal rights are essential to the progression of African-American, and ultimately American, society. The Souls of Black Folk laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement that ensued a half-century later.
The book is well-written, and provides insight into the challenges afflicting African-Americans in the South over a century ago. Sadly, many of the same issues remain. While legislated racism fell during the civil rights movement (Though some are pointedly calling the wave of Arizona-style immigration legislation "Juan Crowe"), racism and disparities still remain a blight on our country. The overt, explicit racism of a generation ago is slowly dying away, but it is being replaced with a much more insidious implicit racism that is often imperceptible by its perpetrators. Implicit racism occurs in subconcious attitudes that we hold that affect the way we treat other races. For instance, while I would never use an ethnic slur (I am far too P.C. for that), I will (unconsciously) apply an unfair stereotype to an obese, slightly unkempt African-American patient with a chief complaint of "abdominal pain." While I may not perceive my racism, the patient suredly will.
Du Bois's topics range from reconstruction to education, and he does a masterful job of using story to convey injustice. The book also details some history I find interesting, none more than the last chapter which provides an anthropological history of the "Negro Spiritual." Another essay details the conflicted grief he suffers in the death of his child, whom was denied entry to an all-white hospital before succumbing to illness. Importantly, Du Bois introduces the concept of "the Veil" through which blacks separated from the general population and a common symbol employed in African-American discourse.
A cornerstone of African-American studies, The Souls of Black Folk is a series of essays spanning from religion to economics, and from politics to music. W.E.B. Du Boishad a unique perspective of the meaning of being black in America at the turn of the century. Raised as the lone black child in a New England town, Du Bois claims he didn't realize the significance of his skin color until he was an elementary student barred from a playmate's home. His higher-education opportunities were limited by that same skin color, and thus he headed south to study at Fisk University in Nashville. He spent time teaching in rural schools for a time before moving back north to become the first African-American to graduate from Harvard. He studied at the University of Berlin and held teaching positions at Wilberforce and UPenn before returning to the South to teach at Atlanta University.
Du Bois writes in a style that will strike today's reader as remarkably humble regarding his race. His ideas at the time, however, were far from mild. Booker T. Washington was the leading black voice of his day, and he advocated social policies of "separate but equal" standing among the races, working to ensure blacks had access to trade schools and agricultural policies that would provide the race an opportunity to accrew financial and social standing before moving towards integration. Du Bois, however, was adamantly opposed to Jim Crow and segregation, challenging that equal rights are essential to the progression of African-American, and ultimately American, society. The Souls of Black Folk laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement that ensued a half-century later.
The book is well-written, and provides insight into the challenges afflicting African-Americans in the South over a century ago. Sadly, many of the same issues remain. While legislated racism fell during the civil rights movement (Though some are pointedly calling the wave of Arizona-style immigration legislation "Juan Crowe"), racism and disparities still remain a blight on our country. The overt, explicit racism of a generation ago is slowly dying away, but it is being replaced with a much more insidious implicit racism that is often imperceptible by its perpetrators. Implicit racism occurs in subconcious attitudes that we hold that affect the way we treat other races. For instance, while I would never use an ethnic slur (I am far too P.C. for that), I will (unconsciously) apply an unfair stereotype to an obese, slightly unkempt African-American patient with a chief complaint of "abdominal pain." While I may not perceive my racism, the patient suredly will.
Du Bois's topics range from reconstruction to education, and he does a masterful job of using story to convey injustice. The book also details some history I find interesting, none more than the last chapter which provides an anthropological history of the "Negro Spiritual." Another essay details the conflicted grief he suffers in the death of his child, whom was denied entry to an all-white hospital before succumbing to illness. Importantly, Du Bois introduces the concept of "the Veil" through which blacks separated from the general population and a common symbol employed in African-American discourse.
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