The Soloist

Nathaniel Ayers is a classically trained musician. He's also schizophrenic and was living on the street, playing a two-string violin, when LA Times columnist Steve Lopez met and began writing about him three years ago. The resulting friendship changed both Ayers' and Lopez' lives.

Lopez' book about Ayers, "The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music," was released this month, and is being made into a movie staring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx. Lopez recently spoke about Nathaniel on NPR's Fresh Air, and the podcast is, to put it mildly, devastating.

Our culture treats the mentally ill as though they were a lower caste, invisible and unimportant. As Lopez asks, would we treat someone with cancer the same way? The answer, of course, is no - and Ayers' story, his illness and his music, his passion and his ability to inspire others, is heartbreaking evidence that American society's overall relationship to the mentally ill is sick and wrong, and discriminating, hurtful and limiting in so many ways. Not just for the ill, who suffer greatly, but for the more fortunate of us who not only have the choice of paying attention, helping, and learning from the mentally ill, but also the choice to not pay attention at all, and suffer and wither and let beautiful people pass away into ignorance, pain, and finally, death. We must, as a culture, do better. We must, as individuals, follow our passions. Nathaniel Ayers follows his every day through the fog and fear of schizophrenia, and by doing so enriches himself and others around him. That's what we expect from "normal" people in our society. Ayers and others like him deserve better. We all deserve better.

Bedouin Architecture and Victorian Squabbles

Several years ago I was in the library at Portland State University and found a copy of a strange little book lying on a table. The book was about a hundred years old. The pages were yellowed and the binding was beginning to come apart, but the subject matter was unique and the author was someone I’d felt familiar with, as though I’d heard the name but couldn’t remember the context. I flipped through the book, figuring I’d never see it again, and forgot about it until the other day, when I found another copy at work: "Bedouin Architecture," by S.M. McCauley. I immediately bought it.

The used copy we had was in even rougher shape than the one at Portland State, with pages falling out and chipped boards. The illustrations – intaglio lithographs on heavier glossy paper – were almost all missing, and the remaining few were topical and non-specific. Nevertheless, I’ve been carefully reading it, and the style, while clearly Victorian, is quite readable and delights in anecdote and name-dropping: Egyptologist E.A. Wallis Budge, the historian Andrew Lang, anthropologist James Ellington Smythe, writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, architect Lancelot Pym – even the noted American parapsychologist Samuel Stanton – it seems everyone and anyone was consulted for this study, the only one of it’s kind I can locate. The wonders of the internet don’t provide much additional information, although a closer reading of the works of those mentioned above might.

Published in 1901 by Glasgow, Greene and Hamish, Ltd, Bedouin Architecture provides a brief but informative history of the subject followed by an analysis of forms and a critical assessment of present day techniques. Most impressive, however, is the contextual foundation laid down by McCauley that presages the development, and subsequent decline, of the field. All in all, this slim volume is required reading for historians and architects alike, and even casual connoisseurs of exotic tomes will find something to admire in the unique binding arrangement and the fine embossing on the boards.

"Bedouin Architecture" is quite a rare book, although it's listed on Amazon. Strangely, there were two customer comments on powells.com, which disappeared after I purchased the book and the site updated the listing to "Notify me." Luckily, I copied the comments, which shed some light on the book itself as well as provide a bit of humor and shed light on interdisciplinary Victorian-era squabbling:

"Ineffable twaddle. I have been among the Bedouin and I assure you their architecture - if you wish to call it that - is nothing like what McCauley describes. The author is a hack."
Thomas E. Lawrence

"I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. McCauley in Prague sometime around the beginning of the First World War. He was an old man then, while I was still young and impressionable enough to believe in him. His writing is superior to that of his contemporaries, however, and I shall never forget the intelligence that danced in his eyes. Some men need more than an obscure tome to mark their passage into history; it is a shame that the scholarly work of this giant among men has not been more widely recognized within the architectural and historical fields. I recommend this book, for the unique and acute perspective it offers, as well as for the pure clarity of vision and style that mark its meanderings through the desert lands."
Franklin St. Germain

Well said. I recommend you pick this up if you find it, no matter what the cost.

Karen Armstrong & Religious Tolerance

A few weeks ago, my bookstore hosted author and internationally renowned religious historian Karen Armstrong. I've meant to read her books for years, and now I have no excuse not to start reading immediately.

Her latest book is a biography of the Bible, written for the Books That Changed the World series. Armstrong's other books include investigations into fundamentalism, a history of the three major monotheistic religions, biographies of Muhammed and Buddha, and memoirs detailing her spiritual journey as a former nun.

Armstrong is a small woman with flashing, intelligent eyes, a melodic British accent, and hands that cracked when I shook them. Before the event began, I sat with her in our office while she signed stock. She was funny and open, and a conversation about author's signatures led her to start signing her own book as Barbara Taylor Bradford, a quite different author and person entirely. Because of the possibly contentious nature of her topics, I asked her if she wrote for an audience resembling herself or another ideal person. She replied that she writes for non-specialists, often imagining a conversation with friends. That same conversational quality came across during her brief lecture.

I walked her to the event space where 350 people were waiting. I was supposed to read a short introduction, but she literally leapt in front of me and stood at the microphone. I wisely cut the introduction short and let her proceed with an incredibly interesting - and seemingly off the cuff - speech about the history and interpretation of the Bible over the last two thousand years. I jotted down notes for half an hour.

Armstrong is a delightful public speaker. Her accent and earnest delivery remind me of the best University professors: possessed of a complete grasp of her topic, able to inform a general audience about a complex subject, and with the ability to engage her audience with intelligence and humor without condescending. Though I consider myself spiritual, I am not religious. Much of Ms. Armstrong's talk struck a chord in me; her approach to spirituality is more universal, liberal, tolerant, and healthy than fundamentalism, which she has no time for. It's in the spirit and history of open interpretation that she wrote this book.

Words are used in speech to express the personal interior that is ultimately unknowable and untranslatable to others. To say that Jesus is God is heresy (according to Armstrong), but the Bible does say that the word was made flesh; we create our own interior Gods and make them flesh through words. She spoke of words being combined and studied by ancient rabbis, and the words flashed, danced, sparkled and flamed in visionary rejoicing. Likewise, she discussed the development and codification of the Bible, and the history of fundamentalism. According to Armstrong, fundamentalism didn't become a force in Christianity until the 19th century, when literacy rates and scientific advances (including theories of evolution) seriously challenged the Church's position in western societies.

Later, an audience member asked her for a response to Pope Benedict XVI's recent book, which supposedly argues for a literal interpretation of scripture. Armstrong hadn't read the book, but argued that strict literal interpretation is contrary to the unity and the unifying properties of scripture. Scripture, she said, was for most of history wide open to interpretation, and legends describe how scripture and its interpretation were considered part of the earthly realm, rather than the heavenly. One legend recounts Moses coming down to earth to listen to a preacher; the sermon he hears is so much more complicated than the ten commandments that Moses exclaims, "My children have surpassed me!"

This tolerant view of spirituality is no doubt informed by Armstrong's research and investigations into other religions. Her capacity to critically accept and understand belief systems and open them to general readers has certainly granted her an important voice in religious studies. For example, she recently visited Pakistan ("What's an old wine-loving woman like me doing there?" she joked) where she spoke to assemblies of thousands and met with President Mushareff. The people who attended her lectures are "desperate for a friendly western voice; there's a real hunger in the Muslim world for a friendly western voice." What pains Muslims the most, she said, is the west's denigration of Islam. President Mushareff made this clear to her when he stressed above all else that the west must stop trampling on other people's traditions.

I'd like to share a few short quotes that deserve mention, and that embody some of the best aspects of Armstrong’s lecture:

"You'd better start somewhere on your journey to the divine."

"We can all converge on the mountain of God with our own unique Gods."

"Theology is poetry, an attempt to express the inexpressible."

"Each of us is an incarnation of one of God's hidden names." (Ibn Arabi, 12th century Sufi philosopher)

We should use our religious traditions to build community, said Armstrong, and I agree. Most of us do, I think. 350 people showed up to a suburban bookstore to hear someone talk about religious tolerance; clearly there is a need, in a time of declining faith, war, and election-year rhetoric, to find some common ground. When common ground is suffering, as it is in Iraq and Afghanistan, then fundamentalism can take root, and intolerance can follow. When a democracy fails itself and asserts the ancient code of “might makes right,” what follows is a divided and suspicious citizenry, an angry and oppressed population, a reversion to the principle of lex talionis, and the rising of religious and political voices calling for either-or choices framed in agitprop: “You’re with us or you’re against us;” the “Axis of Evil;” “God Bless Our Troops.” And that’s just in the aggressor country, not in those destroyed by bombs, or forced into poverty by propped-up governments, or bullied into submission by economic sanction and saber-rattling. Armstrong didn’t go so far as to say this, but she did offer hope – an ancient message, found at the heart of all the world’s religions, and the one thing we can all agree we need more than ever.

The Life and Times of Michael K. by J.M. Coetzee

Coetzee's beautiful tale of Michael K.'s search for meaning and dignity is inspiring and powerful - and unfortunately relevant. The war, racism, and human rights abuses framing "The Life and Times of Michael K." are as close as tomorrow's headlines. By focusing on one man's attempt to live a life of freedom, Coetzee universalizes our evils, and Michael K.'s heart-wrenching story becomes revealingly human. The savagery will haunt you, but Michael K.'s innocence and resolve will have you cheering. "The Life and Times of Michael K." changed for the better what I thought literature was capable of, and what it should aspire to: it cuts like barbed wire, but heals like a lover's touch. I owe my friend a lifetime of thanks for recommending this to me; it's simply a brilliant book.

Two Great Oregon Hiking Guides

One day I recommended Russ Schneider’s “Hiking the Columbia River Gorge” to a customer at the bookstore. I told her my own copy was dog-eared and worn, filled with post-it notes and day-passes used as bookmarks. She asked if she could buy my copy.

Any Portlander, or Oregonian, for that matter, owes it to themselves to hike the Columbia River Gorge, and this is one of the best guides I've seen. It's almost the only one I use, detailing 50 hikes on both sides of the river from the close-in (Latourell Falls) to the distant (Catherine Creek Natural Arch). The selection covers easy strolls to accessible waterfalls to strenuous overnight backpacking trips. Schneider includes a good amount of introductory information, but the hike descriptions are what make this book shine. Each hike includes information on difficulty, distance, trail conditions, trails users, best season, elevation gains, maps and fees, and contacts. Driving directions are clear, maps and elevation charts are provided for every hike, and a mile by mile summary is always included. Lengthy descriptions of the hike itself round out the wealth of information. Depending on the hike, you’ll learn about the forest and the views, water sources and stream crossings, lakes and fishing, geology and natural history, and helpful tips for making your adventure complete. The only downsides to this book are the lack of color pictures (so take your own!) and the lack of a comprehensive map that shows how so many of these trails intersect. After a while, you’ll have enough experience in the Gorge to start planning combination hikes that aren’t included in any book. I recommend a Green Trails map or two in conjunction with Schneider's book.

Another great guide is Doug Lorain’s "100 Classic Hikes in Oregon.” This absolutely gorgeous book won a National Outdoor Book Award, is a torture to read in the rainy season, and is almost indispensable in the summer. It is one of the few books with good information on hiking the Wallowas, and the hike selections are often innovative and unavailable in other guide books. Lavishly illustrated with beautiful color photographs and superb full-color topographic maps by Moore Creative Designs, this book will make your mouth water and your feet itch for the trail. If it doesn't, check your pulse. Most likely, you’re asleep or dead. Rare is the book that makes you want to ignore the “best season” advice and head out immediately. Lorain has helpfully divided the state into regions and provides information on each area before describing each hike down to the yard. The elevation/relief graphs help plot distance and time when choosing campsites, and the trail descriptions provide everything else you need, including side-trips and environmental concerns such as the best time to cross certain creeks, fire regulations, and peak seasons for flower and mosquito blooming. If only all hiking guides were this good...