Frank Romano | Author of Storm Over Morocco

March 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors!  It’s a beautiful day out here in New York, there’s still snow on the ground and I’ve got four guests on the show today, three authors and one musician.  At the end of the show it’s my honor to have musician Sara Lee Guthrie on the show with me, the daughter of Arlo Guthrie and the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie.  Before that, I’ve got three authors and my third author will be the author of The President’s Henchmen; Joseph Flynn.  I’ll be speaking to the author of No Urn for the Ashes – Alison Sawyer, a beautiful story and right now I’m speaking to my first guest, his name is Frank Romano, the author of Storm Over Morocco.  He’s written an incredible book that is placed in an area we’re thinking about all the time these days.  There’s been some serious unrest in the middle east and when hasn’t there been, honestly.  So welcome to the show Frank Romano.

Frank Romano:  Hi Dr. Kent, glad to be here.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me a little bit about Storm Over Morocco.

Frank Romano:  I was studying in 1977 at the Sorbonne in Paris trying to find myself and studying philosophy and had sort of a vision that if I traveled to the middle east maybe on the way I would find myself, find out what my spirituality was and maybe help in the peace process.  So I just took a train and went down to northern Africa.  Started out from morocco and was going to head out across Africa and then Dr. Kent, I decided that I would learn about Islam before I got there because that’s one of my goals.  So I was invited, I met this group that invited me to learn about Islam in their mosque and learn Arabic as well and after a week of doing that, I was no longer free to go.  They had me imprisoned and it turned out to be an extremist group there on the outskirts of Sri Lanka.

Dr. Kent:  I’ve always wanted to go to morocco.  I don’t know if you know but I’ve actually been in the Middle East for awhile, I lived in Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Frank Romano:  Oh really?  Great, so you know about the area, good.

Dr. Kent:  Oh yes and I try not to read the news about each day’s bloodshed and this and that.  But now talk about I wanted to go to morocco on vacation but now you ended up in I guess the cradle of the Middle East in the holy land.  Talk about the conflict there as well.

Frank Romano:  Yeah Dr. Kent I just got back as a matter of fact and my goal is to bring together different religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and other religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, but in particular the three main religions that believe in one God.  I organize interfaith teach marches and I just got back yesterday from a ten day visit to Bethlehem.  Of course I visited Jerusalem one day but I’m focusing on involving the Palestinians since it’s hard for them to get through the checkpoints and stuff in Jerusalem to participate in a myriad of groups that are doing things for peace, serious groups in Israel except they can’t get in there.  I go to Palestine and I’m trying to just contribute in my own little way to bring people together and start thinking about working together.

Dr. Kent:  What’s your take on the whole situation right now?

Frank Romano:  Well for one thing people have a tendency of putting Gaza in the same basket as the west bank and we’ve got two different places.  In other words we are organizing now to go into Gaza and do the same thing for sure.  Do the peace march and of course bring in medicine and so forth because it’s difficult right now.  My take is this, I really feel, as opposed to a lot of people, a lot of Palestinians, have no hope, they don’t think they’re ever going to settle the crisis, there’s always going to be conflict, and they’ll never have their auto determination with respect to a country having their own country.

So my take is this, there is a chance for peace and a lot of people are talking about ways of doing it and helping people financially but the bottom line is we got to get over there and start working with these people and I wrote Storm Over Morocco version and I added a last chapter of a meeting I had with extremist militant Muslims in the Jeanine Refugee Camp, which is suicide bombing derived and the suicide bombing that took place in Jerusalem came from there, and from Hebron to talk with extremists first and even those folks really want to work with Israel, I mean sincerely and if we can get beyond the hate and knee jerk stereotypes that one person of one religion has of other people.

For instance an extremist Muslim might think that a Jew because he’s a Jew is an agent of the devil because they don’t understand what Judaism is about.  So my goal Dr. Kent is not a political goal, bring people together to work together for peace but take religion out of the conflict.  That’s my take.

Dr. Kent:  Absolutely.  The work I did quite a while ago, I’ll tell you in a nutshell.  I work for an organization called Seeds of Peace for a few years.

Frank Romano:  I’ve heard of them, yes!

Dr. Kent:  Then I created a curriculum called Sound Peace and I actually was in a very similar way hoping to bring kids together in a musical way and talk about the conflict and then all of the fighting started.  It was a very hopeful time when I went over there, it was the year 2000.  I was there when all the fighting broke out again in the autumn of 2000.

Frank Romano:  That was the second [inaudible] that you were there?

Dr. Kent:  Since then it hasn’t stopped and now with this incursion into Gaza that was just breathtakingly awful in terms of the toll on human life.  Is there hope over there?

Frank Romano:  You know Dr. Kent there is hope and I spoke with a Shake in Jerusalem, a Sufi Shake whose daughter just got married five months before the conflict broke out and now she’s stuck in Gaza and can’t get out.  A lot of people are pointing the finger at Israel, others are pointing the finger at Hamas, I believe that when they can both sit down with the help of the US and realize mistakes because both sides have committed errors.  People are now pointing fingers in particular at Israel and yeah they had to react against the missiles being shot into their land.  But the Hamas I think on their end of it were provoking this attack as well.

So I do see there’s a lot of serious minded people, lots of effort to work with both sides, haven’t given up, even though yes it has intensified.  I think with the new administration it seems to be open on both sides of the fence through the delicate negotiations and bringing in these groups there’s a lot of angiose over there, which is the types of group you were.  Seeds of Peace work with people that are members of it and the music thing you did probably would include Jews and Palestinians together to play music.  These groups are starting to crop up again.

In spite of the conflict, the bottom line is the very difficult part is people will not go into the west bank and its difficult to get in and out of Gaza but that should evolve.  I think people should go into the west bank and see that the Palestinians are not just frothing at the mouth bloody terrorists.  Most Palestinians want peace and work with them as well as the Jews.  I’ll tell you I’ve met Jewish soldiers on the checkpoints and they’ve got a bad rap.  They’re always a minority that commits atrocities in every army and every altercation but those young Jewish soldiers want peace as much as anybody does and I spoke with them and they would rather not be at the checkpoints.  If somehow Israel can feel that their borders are secure.  Some people say it’s a two state solution; I’m not sure, but you know what?  There is a lot of positive vibe happening but I’m going over there three to four times a year trying to coordinate all these groups working on both sides of the fence.  I think peace can happen with just good old fashioned hard work and working with people.  I really believe that.

Dr. Kent:  It’s such a fascinating topic.  There’s so much depth to it and at the same time it’s been about nine years since I’ve been over there but not much changes at the same time.  It’s perpetually the same situations over and over.  The first thing that they say when you show up is what are you?  And you have to identify yourself; are you a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew and once you identify yourself the amazing thing about the Palestinians or the Israelis is I was able to identify and fit with both, like you say you do.  They’re great people.

Frank Romano:  I’m going to add another chapter to Storm Over Morocco 3 about just that.  Three days ago I met an angio in Bethlehem and there are many Jews working there.  they’ve been warned to not even go to the west bank but they’re not being held hostage or being held and they’re working not just blindly on the side of the Palestinians, they’re working for peace and I really feel hopeful but with concerted efforts and hopefully the news will come down.  Often the news is filtered from Israel and the US and they pull the fear string so that it will mobilize people to focus on the aggression coming from Palestine as opposed to the true problem.

The state of Israel is in danger here.  Why do I feel that?  Well first of all they had to fight.  The mandate in 48 wasn’t just giving a part of land to form a state of Israel, they had to fight for it but now as human beings, as Jews are, just like Palestinians, they’ve gone overboard in the settlements and religion is very much a part of it.  The settlements in the west bank are mainly inhabited by Jews who feel it’s their duty and obligation to be in the west bank.  But the religious interpretation of the Torah, which I think is a misinterpretation, so there’s all kinds of religious elements here that working with people, getting beyond whether you’re a Jew or Muslim you hit the nail right on the head; that’s the solution.

Now Jews have conflicted with each other as Agnostic Jews and Cathartic Jews and many Jews now have moved beyond that.  Why not now Jews and Palestinians?  The Jews just say I’m Jewish, not I’m a cathartic Jew, I’m not an agnostic Jew in Jerusalem and there was tension between the two types of Jews and they’ve gotten over that.  I think we can do the same thing with respect to Palestinians.  Instead of having a two state solution we could say we are human beings living in the holy land inst4ead of polarizing into different religious and political groups.  That’s what causes tension.

So my work is bringing people together to love each other but dig in there and bond together by doing stuff together.  Palestinians, Jews and Christians in that particular area, and its going to happen, we’re going to have peace.  It may not be in our lifetime, but we’re planting the seeds now and I feel positive it’s going to happen, I really do.

Dr. Kent:  It’s been a real honor chatting with you and I’d like to talk with you another time, we’ve run out of time today but we had such a nice chat we’ll have to hook up again down the road.

Frank Romano:  You bet!  Anytime Dr. Kent.

Dr. Kent:  Storm Over Morocco: Finding God in the Midst of Fanatics, by Frank Romano.  I can’t wait till the next time.

Frank Romano:  Thank you very much doctor.

Dr. Kent:  I’ll be back with our next guest on the show who is Alison sawyer who wrote a book called No Urn for the Ashes.  Come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, History, Travel, Spirituality, Religion, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Politics, PODCAST 

Joseph Flynn, Author of The President’s Henchmen, Digger & The Next President

March 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors!  My next guest on the show is the author of The Presidents Henchmen.  It’s a thriller; he’s written the books Digger and the Next President in the past.  Welcome to the show Joseph Flynn.

Joseph Flynn:  Hello.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me about this new book The Presidents Henchmen.

Joseph Flynn:  Well I was looking to write a detective story and I wanted to set it in the place that I thought would be unfamiliar for the genre.  I had earlier written a book as you mentioned The Next President and that book I imagined what it would be like for the first African American who was a nominee of a major party.  So I sort of covered that ground but thought maybe if I imagined a female president, the first female president and her husband was a private eye.  He would be the first private eye to live in the white house.

Dr. Kent:  Let’s go back for a second; you said your last novel dealt with an African American candidate for president.  So what do you think about your portentous prediction here?

Joseph Flynn:  I thought it was bound to happen.  I actually got the idea for the next president in 1988 when Jesse Jackson was a candidate for the democratic nomination and that year he won I think four or five primaries.  So I asked myself, what would happen when an African American wins a major party nomination and is even money to go on and win the president.  So I thought it was kind of interesting when Barack Obama had his election night speech in Grant Park in Chicago because the action of The Next President takes place at a labor day speech in Grant Park in Chicago with a huge crowd, so that was kind of interesting.

Dr. Kent:  Right, so tell us about now is this The Presidents Henchmen is a different story.

Joseph Flynn:  Yes, it’s a different story and what I hope will be the first of a series of eight books.  It features a character by the name of James J. Hill; he is the second husband of the first female president.  Her name is Patricia Darden Grant and the way he got to know his future wife was when he solved the murder of the president’s first husband at the time that the murder occurred she was a congresswoman representing a district on the north shore of Chicago.

Dr. Kent:  This book has done quite well so far.  Tell me about that adventure. What’s it like being in the industry and how has that sort of rocky road been down these last few books?

Joseph Flynn:  I’ve been very fortunate.  I started with a book that was published out of new York called The Concrete Inquisition and that book was just a paperback original, it was just tossed on the market and left to fend for itself and it sold about 20,000 copies but when my books get out there and get promotion, I find that there’s an audience for them.  I try to write what I call intelligent entertainment.  I like to do books with mystery and suspense but I also try to make sure that there’s a very strong streak of humor in everything I write.  So I think that there’s an audience that finds that combination appealing.

Dr. Kent:  Absolutely!  So talk about this Henchman.  It’s such a funny term, I can’t even remember where I heard it growing up but what did you mean by the presidents henchmen?

Joseph Flynn:  The book opens with the lead character, McGill, being formerly introduced to the white house press corps after the inauguration and Helen Thomas asks him how does it feel to be the nation’s first, first-gentleman and McGill responds, “I prefer to think of myself as the Presidents Henchman.”  Now henchman has come to acquire something of a sinister connotation but if you look in the dictionary, you’ll see the actual definition is loyal follower.  So it’s really a positive term that has grown to have sinister connotation so I like the irony of it.

Dr. Kent:  How was it writing about a female president?  We’re all curious what would have happened if Hillary Clinton had been elected.  What do you think would’ve happened?  What would Mr. Clinton’s role had been?

Joseph Flynn:  I think he probably would have offered all the advice she could use and more and at some point she probably would’ve told him to back off.  I think it would be great to have a really intelligent, involved female president.  I think that it’s probably overdue for us, and when the time comes assuming that the candidate is well qualified I think it will be a good thing.

Dr. Kent:  So let’s talk about this book again.  You said you’re thinking of a series of eight books.  Is that because your so in love with the characters?

Joseph Flynn:  I do really like the characters and I’ve been getting strong reactions from people who’ve read it.  They tend to really like the characters but my thinking is I’d like to do a book a year for the equivalent of a two term president, so that would come out to be eight books.

Dr. Kent:  Wonderful.  What’s the process you go through?  You know these characters, you sort of live with them, how do you put them to rest after eight books?  How do you keep them living for eight books?

Joseph Flynn:  What I do when I’m creating any characters, I’ll start with a bio and I’ll try to take their biographies back to say their grandparents.  Then I’ll work down to their parents and finally to them so I have a really clear idea who each of these characters is.  I’ll also try to do some kind of physical description so I have a clear picture in my mind.  In terms of McGill, there’s a running joke through the story that he thinks he resembles an old time actor, Rory Calhoun and complains that nobody remembers who Rory Calhoun is.

He was one of sort of a 50s kind of character with dark wavy hair and a big jaw and big smile and that kind of a guy.  For the president, her secret service code name is Holly G, for holly go lightly, a role that was played by Audrey Hepburn.  So that’s sort of the short hand way of describing her and in terms of keeping them alive and fresh for eight books, well they have to grow, they have to face different challenges, learn new things about themselves, how they express themselves can change, there are all sorts of things going on.  Over the arc of eight stories I hope to have the president’s character bring up important things to the country, important issues.  In The first book, one of the issues is pro-choice versus pro-life, which is a very big issue and in the second book it’s going to focus on foreign affairs.  The third book will be something else.

Dr. Kent:  As a writer of thrillers, there’s a lot of these books that we see all around.  The airport stores and this and that, people love to pick them up and zoom through them, what are the forms you are restricted to?  Do you have to write at a certain grade level?  Do you have to have a certain amount of thrill?  How do you go about fulfilling those requirements?

Joseph Flynn:  Certain publishers do ask for a certain amount of what you think of as action beats, where something big and bold and dramatic happens.  In The Next President, at Bantam Books when she read the first draft said we need to trim the story overall and make the action beats closer together.  I really didn’t care for that approach.  With The Presidents Henchman, I was given much more creative freedom so I got to explore the characters as much as I liked and felt much more comfortable with that editorial approach.  As to the level of the writing, I like to include as many references to both popular culture and to more esoteric things really and I figure that if people are hooked into the story, then if there’s something they don’t get the reference too it’ll make them want to go and look it up.

Dr. Kent:  Right, okay so here’s a fun question.  If I was going to write a book like this and knew I had an audience, do you write yourself in?  Do you do the Alfred Hitchcock walk through your own themes?

Joseph Flynn:  No I don’t do that for myself but one reviewer asked me because he’s familiar with my family if I had written my daughters name into it and I did.  McGill has three children, two daughters and a son.  His younger daughter I named after my daughter.  So somebody picked up on that but you’d have to know me to know that.  Other than that I just try to maintain a discreet distance from my characters.

Dr. Kent:  Do you have, I know that for example when I have a certain character that I’ve thought about a lot or I like a certain persons music a whole bunch I’ll often have a dream where I have a conversation with that character.  Do you ever dream about your characters?

Joseph Flynn:  It’s interesting that you would mention that, I do all my best work in the morning.  If I get up as I usually do at an earlier hour and go straight to work, then I have a very easy time getting into the story but the way I prepare for that is the preceding night I will go back and read what I had written that day and then I carry that with me into my sleep so its percolating at a subconscious level even if I’m not actively dreaming of it.

Dr. Kent:  How much do you write?

Joseph Flynn:  I try to write the equivalent of four to six double spaced pages a day and I try to do that.

Dr. Kent:  Do you write linearly or explosively?

Joseph Flynn:  When I first started I would do an outline of the story.  I think it’s very important to know how your story is going to finish, what your ending will be before you start writing.  So I evolved from working from an outline to doing what I now call a raw draft.  Scenes come to me pretty much of apiece so instead of writing just a five word outline description, I’ll sit down and write a whole scene.  For example, I’m doing what I call the raw draft of the sequel to The Presidents Henchman right now and I do that scene by scene and the scenes just sort of present themselves in what pretty much works out to be a logical order.

Dr. Kent:  Cool, give us a little nutshell of the next book?  You already told us a little about it, then the six after that; what do you know about them?

Joseph Flynn:  The next one has to do with foreign affairs so the president is going to a G8 meeting in London and at the same time, McGill has been asked by a former colleague of the Chicago police, a guy he knows but doesn’t really like to help him out of a fix he’s in in Paris, so McGill is working on a case in Paris at the same time his wife is having to deal with world leaders on a number of different issues.

Dr. Kent:  Its been an honor chatting with you and I think everybody’s going to have to pick up a copy of this book The Presidents Henchman, it sounds thrilling and we have a promise of comedy inside it, some real issues, and seven more to come that’s great.

Joseph Flynn:  I hope so; if anybody would like to they can read a free excerpt on my site josephflynn.com and if they like that then they can click right through to Amazon from there.

Dr. Kent:  All right, josephflynn.com.  Thank you so much for chatting with me, I can’t wait to chat with you about the next one.

Joseph Flynn:  Thanks very much!

Dr. Kent:  My next guest on the show is an incredible musician, Sara Lee Guthrie, she’s the daughter of Arlo Guthrie and the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie and her partner in music is Johnny Irion and they’ve put out some beautiful albums together.  I’m going to play a track from their first album called Exploration.  We’ll listen to that then we’ll talk to them about the album.

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, History, Politics, Fiction, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Garen Thomas | Live on Sound Authors

February 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors!  My next guest on the show is Garen Thomas.  She’s written a beautiful book called Yes We Can: A Biography of Barack Obama.  It’s full of pictures beautifully laid out and it’s done very well recently for obvious reasons.  We now have President Barack Obama and he’s been doing some incredible things over the past few weeks.  So welcome to the show Garen Thomas.

Garen Thomas:  Thank you, thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Kent:  So it must’ve been a great last few weeks, last couple of months for you talking about this book and having been part of this historical moment.

Garen Thomas:  Well I was really happy to have provided for kids a glimpse into the life of this candidate and now the president of the United States.  I thought that his story was really interesting.  It’s unique but it’s also one to which many children can relate so I was really proud that turned out to be the case.

Dr. Kent:  Of course all of us this is the kind of book that kids bring home and then their parents see laying on the table and say that book looks great and they pick it up and read it themselves.

Garen Thomas:  I’ve found that a lot of adults actually have read this book.  It turns out it can work at a primer for people who don’t know much about the president and many people, many adults have told me that they read the book and then passed it along to their kids or the kids read it and then they read it so its wonderful that it actually crossed over from the children’s market to the adult market.

Dr. Kent:  You’ve been in the New York Times book review and major newspapers everywhere.  How has that felt for you?

Garen Thomas:  That was actually really wonderful.  It was nice to be recognized that way, it was nice to have that attention; however, for me the most important thing was getting the book in the hands of children and to be on the bestseller list is a case that where kids were getting it and adults were getting it and that’s what it means to me.

Dr. Kent:  So where did this start for you?  When did you look at this guy?  I mean for me I didn’t know about him until 2004 and I watched that speech and said oh wow, who is this guy?  I wonder if we could have this guy for our president one day.  Then I thought no, that’ll never happen.  But when did it start for you?

Garen Thomas:  It started for me around the same time.  I was actually working as a children’s book editor and was looking for positive role models in the African American community and then this person who I had never heard of came out and made this passionate speech and I had my eye on him right at that time.  I wanted to have him actually write a children’s book for us and we approached him but it turned out he went with his adult book publisher to publish a children’s book.  I kept my eye on him and was very excited to see him enter the race.  Oh gosh, how many years ago has it been now and thrilled to have been able to write a part of this historical moment.

Dr. Kent:  And that’s so interesting.  We have for me as an artist, as someone who has devoted their life to the arts, its so wonderful I heard on the Grammy’s last night, sorry a few nights ago that this is a Grammy award wining president; how neat is that?

Garen Thomas:  Yeah, I believe he’s one who grabs you now!

Dr. Kent:  For his writing, how he read it of course, but.

Garen Thomas:  Absolutely; I think it speaks largely to his writing ability and the message he’s able to convey.  That it resonates with people; granted he did explore the spoken award that he won at the Grammy’s, but I don’t think you can win a Grammy without having the meat of material behind it.

Dr. Kent:  So tell me, there’s a lot of people out there that are collecting things; this is clearly the president of the last couple hundred years for people to look at and say wow, this is a unique character, in my opinion.  What’s your personal sort of relationship to the whole okay now he’s president, how do I look at this now?  Earlier you said this is a great primer about the president.  How did things change for you when he actually won?

Garen Thomas:  Wow; I think similar to you I actually couldn’t believe it.  For me it was like magic, it was like the world slightly changed a little bit, something shifted in American history and perhaps world history.  It definitely felt that way and I also was, I couldn’t enjoy the moment right at the time because I was writing the final chapters to the updated version of the book.

Dr. Kent:  The thing for me, we’re on internet radio so I can be pretty free with my opinions and I was very excited about the candidate Obama and when he gave the acceptance speech I was anticipating that I would be overjoyed and jumping around and excited and actually I sort of joined half of the legions of people across the country that were crying.  I was thinking and I don’t know why I was but it was like this is a moment that I was sort of waiting for, for a long time.

Garen Thomas:  At the time of the inauguration, it was you know I was still holding my breath after he won the election but for me I still was waiting for that inaugural date to come; anything could’ve happened between the election and the inauguration.  I don’t know if I would consider myself a pessimist or just extremely cautious but I definitely wanted to take it slow and make sure that everything went according to plan and during the inauguration at his inaugural speech I was definitely moved and wasn’t blogging it live but was writing down pieces of his speech that really moved me.

Dr. Kent:  I remember there was a moment where I was at home for the holidays with my parents and we were watching some speeches and I guess Obama gave his now famous speech in Iowa and I remember just sitting there actually giving responses and this will kind of bring up another question.  I didn’t grow up in a church or in a community that sort of responds freely to a speaker but I’ve heard a lot of it of course in both music and different speakers, but when Obama speaks, people evoke responses involuntarily.  When he gave that speech in Iowa I was talking to the television.  He would say things and I would go mmm, he’d say something else and I’d go yeah.  What does it mean to have an African American man in the white house who studied how to do that honestly?  He’s so well studied and developed that his style of connecting to people.

Garen Thomas:  I think what it means is that he’s connected with, he’s able to connect with our core emotions, he gets people from the core.  I think that sort of call on response is or when you feel compelled to talk back to the TV because somebody said something that really ignites a passion in you or a fire in you and you want to respond, you want to say yes or whatever.  I think it’s amazing that style that he’s got translates so well across all of America and it looks like globally.

Dr. Kent:  So let’s go back to the book itself.  Now he has such an interesting story and you know it’s not often that any character in public life had that deep of a story.  We’ve all been sort of in love with this fellow Sully who saved all these people in New York and he’s a wonderful story and we sort of cling to characters.  Barack Obama is an especially sticky character.  When we hear his story we’re drawn to it, even before he was president, he was selling millions of books.  Why is he so sticky and why is he so important to us?

Garen Thomas:  When he initially published his first book it did okay but it didn’t sort of take off until he became senator.  That was a momentous thing as well and people revisited his initial story and found a unique person behind it, somebody who was able to live in several worlds literally and figuratively and find a place for himself to fit.  I think it was amazing.

Dr. Kent:  In your book what I love about the book especially and what obviously all of the press loves about it is that it is for children but I find myself really drawn to it because of the pictures in it and it’s such a neat thing when you write books for younger people, you’re allowed to put pictures in.

Garen Thomas:  Yes it’s true.  I don’t know when we decide that we’re too adult to have images in our books but I feel like they help tell the story.  We’re still drawn to pictures and movies and I don’t know why we can’t still have something like that in our books for adults but the pictures help tell his story.  He’s got an amazing life story and there are bits and pieces of it that probably we wouldn’t have a full sense of unless we actually saw him, like in Hawaii with his grandparents or saw him graduating from Harvard or Columbia.  It has a real, you’re able to connect more I think with him as a human being when you have those pictures to hold onto.

Dr. Kent:  So, I have kind of two questions.  What surprised you about Barack Obama’s story and the second question is what has surprised you since you published this book since Obama has become president and you’re getting reactions from readers?  Has anything surprised you?

Garen Thomas:  I think I didn’t realize how close he was with his grandparents and his mother and how interesting and exceptional a woman his mother was.  She basically I think she gave him the tools to be president at a very young age.  She instilled in him a desire to learn and the necessity to learn and to not have excuses for things that you feel are unfair but to find a way to make changes happen.  as far as what surprises me since the book and the inauguration when he became president; I think I ran into an article online about a woman who read the book with her daughter and then went to her school and told the teacher there that she wanted the book as part of the curriculum and apparently its become a part of the curriculum and they got hundreds of copies and the kids are reading it.  That means so much to me, the fact that the mother saw that and saw the value in it and I think she actually said that she wanted the children to see if he could do it they could do.  That means more to me than any best seller list or anything like that.

Dr. Kent:  And that really has been surprising to me and many people is this shift that happened on January 20.  People said wow, I could really be somebody and that’s really wonderful.  Let me ask you this.  One of Obama’s biographers David Mendell who I chatted with just before Obama was elected actually.  The beginning to his book, the quote before the book begins was I’m Lebron’s baby.” And I was really amused by that because this was what Obama said as he went on stage in 2004.  He had this confidence and I wanted to ask you about that and then the beginning of your book, which you talk about the quote he said “In the end that is God’s greatest gift to us, a belief in things not seen.”  And then your first line of the introduction, “His father was a legend, like John Henry.”  There’s this real mystery and a sense of forward thinking, future thinking in Obama and he says these really wonderful lofty things.

Garen Thomas:  I also believe that comes across that he has that.  I guess people don’t expect it.  It’s a surprise to them that he can be conscious of that, that he can fill himself with enough knowledge to be confident and get out there and put form and to convey his message that’s going to connect with people.  It turns out that it relates to the Lebron James comment.  When I chose the quote about Gods greatest gift to us is the belief in things not seen, I was thinking about his father.  The fact that he grew up without his dad and that yet he had to somehow believe in his dad and believe in himself so that he could reach great heights.  That was what really I wanted to get at in the book was his relationships with his parents and his grandparents and the people in his life.  It really was important to me to spend a lot of time on his childhood in his formative years and find out what his relationship was like with individuals, the people who helped make him into the person that people are looking up to today.

Dr. Kent:  I guess my final and favorite question for you is what makes Barack Obama so cool in two ways?  The first way of course is I as well as many people were swept up in who is this guy around 2006.  I thought wow, how amazing would it be if he could get elected and I was amazed by the things he said; to me it felt cool.  He was this incredibly popular character.  In the other sense where everyone says how does he stay so calm?  And that’s part of what got him elected and what’s so reassuring now to see in this president is this coolness.  I think I lost Garen Thomas!  I will hang on the line for a minute and see if we can get her back.  The book is called Yes We Can: A biography of President Barack Obama and I’m going to put a commercial on for a minute while we get her back.  So we’re back on the line with Garen Thomas.  I think we dropped her call for a minute there but we’re talking about Yes We Can: A biography of President Barack Obama.  Welcome back to the show.

Garen Thomas:  Thank you.

Dr. Kent:  Sorry I lost you there but I was asking about our cool president and he’s both cool in a very popular sense and cool, calm, collected, reassuring – so talk about our president’s coolness.

Garen Thomas:  It’s funny that you should mention that.  I’m actually in business school now and one of the people in our admissions department talks about swag and how some people have just a little of a swagger about them and I think our current president has that.  I think he has an air about him; it’s not a conceited air but I think he gives a level of confidence and calm.  I don’t think I’ve seen him open to anger or lose his cool.  He just sort of has a measured approach to things and a reasoned approach.  I think it helps put people at ease and it’s really a fun thing to see.  Part of that might come from Michelle to because I think she’s got some of that as well.

Dr. Kent:  And at the same time he’s cool for kids, for young people, for Gen-Xers and he’s also cool for boomers.  Why is this character politically so cool?

Garen Thomas:  I think because people have grown tired of the same type of politician and he brings a new style to politics.  I think he’s actually made people more engaged and more excited about policy and about what can be done.  There is a lot going on in the United States and across the globe that really needs fixed and this is somebody who’s standing up for principals and working to fix it.  In terms of what makes him cool to younger kids, I know one of my close friends has a three year old and helped sway his dad to vote for Obama because that’s the candidate who’s name he could say.  And I think he has a fun name as well; Obama is a fun name for kids to say.

Dr. Kent:  Right and its true and I recall before he was elected about a week before I was on a walk with my dog and we passed a younger woman with her child and we introduced my dog to the child first and then I remember her saying tell him what you think?  I think I must’ve been wearing some kind of Barack Obama shirt and the kid said bawack Obama and I won’t forget; it’s the funniest thing but the kid just loved saying his name.

Garen Thomas:  It has a nice little ring to it.  I definitely think kids like that plus I think he just it’s a generational thing.  He’s a new kind of politician and Colin Powell talks about a need for generational change in the white house and I think we see this person as that shift in policy and just a new face that’s something that’s bringing America into the 21st century.

Dr. Kent:  It’s been such a pleasure chatting with Garen Thomas, she’s the author of Yes We Can.  It’s a new York Times best seller and it’s a biography of our new president Barack Obama and it goes from his kindergarten essay “I Want to become President” all the way back to his childhood and to the present day in the new edition so thank you so much for chatting with me.

Garen Thomas:  Thanks very much it was fun.

Dr. Kent:  My next guest on the show is Nina Burleigh and she’s the author of Unholy Business: A true tale of faith, greed and forgery in the holy land.  Come on back for that one.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Childrens, History, TRANSCRIPTS, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST 

Jocelyn Crowley | Live on Sound Authors

February 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors!  My next guest on the show is Jocelyn Crowley, PhD.  She’s a professor of public policy and she’s the author of the book called Defiant Dads:  Fathers’ rights activists in America.  It’s a gorgeous front cover and pops right off the shelf and it’s an honor to speak to her today.  Welcome to the show.

Jocelyn Crowley:  Thank you so much for having me, I’m glad that you like the cover!

Dr. Kent:  Oh I love it; it’s that nice blue shirt that dads love to wear.

Jocelyn Crowley:  That’s right, they’re trained to wear I guess.

Dr. Kent:  So tell me about this book and how you decided to write this one.

Jocelyn Crowley:  Sure, well I think there were a couple of reasons that I got interested in the topic.  First of all I would say it is my primary area of interest academically so when I finished up my first book which was about the politics of child support policy in the untied states I found out that there were these organizations that were sprouting up all over the country dedicated to pursuing fathers rights and as I concluded that book I started to think to myself, wow, what are these groups about?  What do they want?  And do these claims have any merit?  So I think academically I was just very drawn to what they were doing at the time.  I think secondly I was interested in researching these groups because of my own family circumstances.  Growing up in a single parent family during the 1970s and 1980s, there wasn’t a lot of interest or research about fathers at that time and the role they play in families.  What their absence might in fact do to children, so personally I became interested in the topic as well.

Dr. Kent:  It’s been fascinating, since Barack Obama has been elected president there’s a lot of talk especially in the African American community, this role model of a man who loves his kids and is there for his kids, it’s a two parent household in a cultural group that doesn’t necessarily value that as much.

Jocelyn Crowley:  Well I think that the president can do a lot in terms of modeling good parental behavior and having two young children in the Whitehouse at this moment in time is definitely good for the nation.  It’s a great symbol for what we can aspire to be because there is a general consensus in the research community that two parent families do provide one of the best environments for children.  Now of course not every two parent family is perfect, but we do know they buffer children against a whole host of negative outcomes like poor school performance, teenage pregnancy, involvement with drugs and alcohol, so I think what researchers have noted is that increased supervision that these parents supply for their children really help prevent these outcomes.  The question my book also tried to look at though was what happens when families fall apart?  How do fathers try to stay in their lives and what kinds of barriers do they confront in trying to stay in their children’s lives?

Dr. Kent:  Huh.  Lets talk for a second about you’ve published many articles that are lets say academic.  As someone who came out of academia as well, I know definitely that those aren’t necessarily accessible to everyone.  What for you and your career, do you feel that there’s a different message coming out of your articles that are academic and books that are more for the trade audience?

Jocelyn Crowley:  That’s a really interesting question.  Definitely I would say that there are pushes and pulls in both areas.  When you’re in academics you do have to publish more scholarly articles in order to move ahead professionally so it’s something I’ve always struggled with but my aim in publishing this book is to write it so that it meets the needs of both audiences.  In the sense that I do believe that it covers some of the more scholarly and academics related to child support and custody issues.  However at the same time I tried to weave in and out all of these fathers voices with whom I spoke over the course of a couple of years; 158 fathers rights activists and try to weave their personal stories in the book in order to make the book more accessible to people across the spectrum and hopefully make it interesting to them as well.

Dr. Kent:  I think often, I watch a few movies on the Lifetime Networks and I have three powerful feminists, a mother a sister and a fiancé.

Jocelyn Crowley:  Oh congratulations on the fiancé part!

Dr. Kent:  Thank you but there’s a very strong presence I guess in the world of women that says if there’s someone that deserts the family it’s the father and if someone needs to have more rights it’s the woman.  So what does it mean to have father’s rights?  I was just writing a comment on twitter about the interview we’re having right now and I got a response that was sort of responded immediately to that term fathers rights and it’s so loaded.

Jocelyn Crowley:  It is so loaded.  What I found interesting in talking to these guys is that I was really interested in delving into this question of what does it mean by rights and what these activists really want to do is they want to modify child support law and child custody law in ways that definitely will be more favorable to them than they currently are.  Basically I argued that’s not necessarily the best thing for women and children.  So that’s what I’m concerned about there.  in the area of child support, when a family falls apart we know quite consistently that research has shown time and time again women suffer economically, much more than men do.  Why is that the case?

Oftentimes they drop out of the paid labor force when they have children or they work part time or from home and their skill set can definitely suffer over time so when the family dissolves they’re not in the same place that their former husbands might be economically.  So I find that calls to modify child support awards to reduce them in most cases are not necessarily good for women and children.  On the other side of the coin, father’s rights activists talk a lot about child custody and wanting to reform child custody.  Right now we know in the majority of cases when families do fall apart, women get the majority of time with their children, they tend to get primary physical custody and fathers have visitation or parenting time.

So they really want a 50-50 split of time when the family falls apart.  I think this is a noble goal and something I would support.  I think its always in the best interest of a child to have continuing positive contact with both parents in the case where a family falls apart; however, I do think women studies show that they do almost double the childcare work as fathers do so that when the family falls apart that child might have a stronger attachment to the mother figure in the child’s life.  So what I would encourage fathers to do is definitely get more involved with their children while the families are together.  If that means scaling back on work hours and making some professional sacrifices, I think that is ultimately worth it if heaven forbid they have to divorce their partner down the road, they will have put in that time and be able to show the judge they were in fact an equal parent to that child while the marriage was still together.

Dr. Kent:  I guess this whole issue is really tied up with lawyers and judges and depositions and all of that and that takes a huge emotional toll on all parties.

Jocelyn Crowley:  Oh absolutely.  I mean there definitely is a cottage industry around divorce and child custody and a lot of my interview respondents really complained about this.  There are social workers that can become involved when custody is in contention, there are psychologists, there are mental health evaluators and what is a little bit troubling is that they do try to play God in a sense where they become involved in a particular case and try to create a report for the judge saying in their view who might be the parent for primary custody.  I think this can be definitely problematic.

The mental health professional might not have the best idea of who the best parent might be after exposure to the family only for a brief period of time.  I understand the force of those complaints.  Again I think ideally at one point in time we are going to move toward the more 50-50 standard of custody if that’s possible if both parents live near each other but at the same time we do need to encourage fathers to take more responsibility for childcare while their families are together so when the judge does look at what’s going on in the family, he or she can say look, both parents did equal amounts of care giving, therefore a 50-50 decision is warranted.

Dr. Kent:  I just had someone comment in on the show and they said, there are no such things as father’s rights.  There’s a great deal of vitriol on both sides; whether an individuals had a bad experience as a man or woman in one of these situations.  What kind of stories did you find when researching all of these?

Jocelyn Crowley:  It’s definitely true.  Wherever you are, when you have a family that breaks up emotions are high on both sides and in my book I only spoke to these fathers’ rights activists so I didn’t speak to their former partners to get their side of the story but definitely emotions are running high.  Although I’m critical of some of the father’s rights policy positions in that I don’t know if they’re necessarily helpful to women and children, what I did find was they created in many cases a positive set of circumstances by which fathers could start to rebuild their lives and make the best possible relationship with their ex-partner and their children.

For example one of the father’s rights activists that I interviewed was in one of his group meetings and talked about how he was extremely angry with his ex because she never told him about his daughter’s doctor appointments, dentist appointments and all these things and he yelled at her.  The group really gave him a talking to and said that’s not the way to make things work.  You’re not supposed to be yelling at your child’s mother.  If you have an issue, speak in a civil non confrontational way.  He actually took from that group that experience and advice and ended up writing a card to his ex saying I’m really sorry for what I did.  The group also tends to give really good advice when it comes to making sure fathers are confident in their new roles as perhaps non-residential fathers.

So one man in a group described his experience of wanting his son to stay with him the entire summer because he didn’t get a lot of time during the year but that son wanted to go back to school early because he wanted to try out for the football team.  The father was struggling because although he wanted his son to play football, at the same time he wanted the most amount of time with him.  The group really counseled him to go and be a little bit generous and make sure that child was able to play football because that was what would make him happiest at that stage in his life.  So he ultimately decided to give up some of his time to benefit his son down the road.  So there were lots of stories like that and lots of ways the group was able to help these fathers move along and like I said rebuild relationships in families.

Dr. Kent:  So what’s with the title Defiant Dads?

Jocelyn Crowley:  I was thinking of what a catchy title might be and when I talk about them being defiant, what I mean is they are definitely trying to defy current policy positions in the areas of child support and custody. They think they’re paying too much child support in most cases and definitely want more custody.  So they’re trying to organize politically and trying to defy the current status quo in those two areas.

Dr. Kent:  It’s such a fascinating topic and I have a good friend who is a wonderful house dad and his wife goes off to work and he stays home with the kids.  I have a brother in law who took my sisters name so there are some very sensitive men.  What is the future of moms and dads and fathers rights and all that?

Jocelyn Crowley:  Well I definitely think that these fathers’ rights groups have a role to play in American family policy.  I think they should continue to provide the support that they do to fathers going through a break up to provide them with legal information regarding obtaining a lawyer, getting proper advice as to what to do in their case.  I would ask and encourage them to reconsider some of their more hard-line policies on child support and custody because I think we need to really take into account not necessarily completely what they want and desire but what’s in the best interest of the children and the former family unit.  So I encourage them to think about modifying some of their position but continue the really good work in terms of helping fathers rebuild their life in the aftermath of a breakup.

Dr. Kent:  It’s been a fascinating discussion, it’s not something I think about every day but it’s a beautiful book; Defiant Dads:  Fathers’ rights activists in America and are you working on any new projects?

Jocelyn Crowley:  Right now I’m working on a project that focuses on mothers.  Mothers for a change; I’m interested in how mothers right now in 2009 are trying to combine having careers with having children and how did they balance it all?  So I decided to take a step back from fathers and now focus on mothers.

Dr. Kent:  And it’s such an important time right now to think about single mothers because they really are the ones suffering the most in this economic downturn.

Jocelyn Crowley:  Absolutely I agree.

Dr. Kent:  Well it’s been such an honor chatting with you and the book is called Defiant Dads:  Fathers’ rights activists in America by Jocelyn Elise Crowley, thank you so much.

Jocelyn Crowley:  Thank you for having me, I really appreciate it.

Dr. Kent:  My next guest on the show will be a birth activist.  Her name is Karen Brody and her latest book is called Birth and we’ll talk to her in just a minute so come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, TRANSCRIPTS, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Interview with Marc Aronson | Sound Authors Radio

February 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors!  One of the key issues going on today right in the middle of the inauguration season is this awful, awful war in Gaza. It’s a place that I care about deeply; I’ve spent some time in the Middle East and done quite a bit of work there and it’s personally gripping for me and for anyone who has any sort of connection to that area.  My next guest on the show Marc Aronson has written a book called Unsettled, it’s got a gorgeous cover which shows a picture of Jerusalem inverted with the blue sky on top and the dirt on the bottom.  It’s a gorgeous book called Unsettled: The Problem of Loving Israel.  Welcome to the show Marc Aronson.

Marc Aronson:  Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent:  Let’s start off with the hard questions.  What’s your take on what’s happening right now in Gaza?

Marc Aronson:  My take is this.  On the one hand, you cannot deny that Hamas is a provocation to Israel.  Their purpose, their reason for existence as opposed to Fatas they say we do not accept the existence of Israel and we will fight to destroy it and they have acted on that, sending rockets, using the six month cease fire as a way to rearm and build up their military capacity.  Once the cease fire ended they showed that they intended to use it.  So I do not question Israel’s right as any state has a right to defend itself against a force that both rhetorically and actually seeks its destruction.

However, I think it is a very reasonable question and a question that I don’t know how to answer and many of the experts that I’ve read say the same thing as to whether strategically the military action of diminishing Hamas’ ability to shoot rockets, destroying as many tunnels as possible, weakening their place in Gaza, whether that goal, which it looks like Israel has largely achieved made Israel more secure by weakening Hamas or less secure by further enflaming forces such as such as those in the west bank that were calming down and becoming more willing to work out some kind of agreement.

Whether the radical fighting forces in other parts of the Middle East was worth the gain of diminishing Hamas’ military capacity.  So my feeling about is from a human rights point of view it’s tragic to watch.  from a political right point of view I don’t think you can question that Israel had a right to act but whether the actions they’ve taken will prove in the long run to have been the most or the best for enhancing their own national security is something on which I think the jury is well out and there can be a lot of question about.

Dr. Kent:  In a book like Unsettled, which was actually written for young adults its interesting because mainstream books, novels, everything are usually written on a sixth to tenth grade reading level, which is similar to what you’re writing also.  What makes a good young adult book?

Marc Aronson:  That’s a great question.  I think what makes a good young adult book is that you speak directly because teenagers are defining themselves as saying I’m not a kid anymore.  I don’t need things sugarcoated, I know the world has darker sides, I know my own self has impulses I’m trying to deal with and so whether its fiction or nonfiction kids respond well to books that take them seriously and the term of phrase that’s most often used by teenagers is that feels real.  And now we know teenagers also love fantasy, et cetera, there’s a whole discussion we could go into about that but as a standard term of phrase if you think of one, the classic young adult novel which of course wasn’t written for young adults, its Catcher in the Rye.

Its all about telling the truth, being real and so I think in nonfiction as I tried to do in unsettled is you can say look, Israel is a subject I personally, me, Marc Aronson thinks these things so I’m not going to write here as ask Mr. Science, a completely distant author with no stake in this. I have a stake in it, but having a stake in it, I also have conflicts about it.  There are things about Israel that I find deeply disturbing.  So I don’t need to, I’m saying to you teenager, I expect your intelligence enough to think with me as I go through these conflicts and these issues and I can tell you both when I’ve met with teenagers in schools and when they’ve written to me afterwards, they’ve been grateful to me for that.

They’ve been grateful, that right now in Gaza they’re being bombarded with messages, Israel is genocidal, its horrible, they should be put up on war crimes, Israel is great, its attacked, its vulnerable, and I’ll stand with it.  Well that’s completely binary.  Its saying you teenager must line up with one side or another and I don’t believe that.  You teenager can think and I’m trying to help you have an opportunity to think.

Dr. Kent:  And you’ve written a book many books in the past and one of your last books was called Race: A History beyond Black and White.  Again, a very difficult topic for children.  A book about Robert Kennedy, all of these are very, their not what I grew up reading.  When I was eight, nine years old I was reading way above my level.  I ended up either read children books or adult books, so I ended up reading books for adults.

Marc Aronson:  And I think that’s what’s changed.  Its changed in fiction in that there’s whether you like fantasy or whether you like chicklet or whatever it is that you like reading about; relationships or whatever, there’s a lot of young adult literature in fiction and some other writers are trying to do is do the same for nonfiction.  To give you exactly the reader you were.  Because I was the same thing.  I went from reading kids books to reading The Rise and the Fall the Third Reich.  There was nothing in between or if you were interested in philosophy you read Bertram Russell and that was great and it was wonderful, but I was stretching to try and understand that.

But there should be something in the middle, there should be something that takes you as seriously as an adult because your mind is developing that way but recognizes that you don’t necessarily have the background that an adult reader has.  So that’s what we try to do in nonfiction.  It was interesting, I read in your background that you have a classical music background so my eight year old son is taking piano lessons so last night I showed him a YouTube clip of Vladimir Horowitz playing a Chopin Ballad and I laughed as my son was saying that’s not possible.  He said he’s not doing that, he said there must be something mechanical in the piano and I’m thinking no, I want him to know that it is possible.

Dr. Kent:  Right and I remember when I was a child I remember thinking that also when I saw a musician, yep.  Kids do have really complicated thoughts at younger ages now I think.  They’re being exposed to the media, they’re being exposed to all these things, we have to really educate them about it.

Marc Aronson:  I should tell you all week I’ve been interviewing on different posts online about my thoughts on Israel, Gaza, et cetera, and the response there are fascinating because you definitely see I think sort of three kinds of voices emerging right now about Israel.  On the one hand there’s the voice of attack.  Israel is demonic and terrible and horrible.  You see exactly the reverse of that.  Israel must defend itself; the rest of the world hates us.  And then the beginning of what I hope I stood for in my book, which is to say I love Israel but that doesn’t mean that I like many Israelis cant question it.

I think the analogy to me that I said on the Jerusalem post online is that in the 60s in America, there were people who said that martin Luther King was unpatriotic, that he was communistic because he was questioning the rules in America.  J. Edgar Hoover said that, but that was wrong.  He wasn’t diminishing America, he was asking America to live up to its own ideals and I’ve tried to write a book for teenagers who I hope I encourage them in the book, go to Israel, see what they’ve built.  It is a beautiful, beautiful country in every sense of the world.  Physically beautiful, emotionally beautiful; beautiful in its depth and richness but bring when you go to Israel who you are.

You who’ve grown up in a multi ethnic and multi cultural society and discuss that perspective with Israelis and that third view, which I’ve really tried to bring to this book and which I do trust that teenagers are fully capable of entertaining.  They may not agree with me; that’s fine but they can consider it.

Dr. Kent:  It’s such a fascinating place to talk about.  I studied the conflict when I was in university and visited Jerusalem and then I lived there for a year.  I’m attached to people through an organization called Seeds of Peace but.

Marc Aronson:  Oh I know Seeds of Peace very well.

Dr. Kent:  Right so I know thousands of these kids from working with them and the one thing that I always saw was that the more they explore the more they read the more they expanded their horizons, the less they would hate other people and I think that really was something.  Whatever this thing in Gaza is right now, it’s so frustrating because it might be stirring up a lot of hate, that’s what I’m worried about.

Marc Aronson:  Right, and that’s the question I would ask.  Now I think it’s a lot to ask of Israel to have said okay they wont do a cease fire, okay their shooting more rockets, but we’re going to let that go because we want to build a stronger link with moderate Arab.  I think that is asking a tremendous amount of Israel to have done that but I think it’s possible to argue that that would have enhanced Israel’s security.  I should mention to you and your listeners an organization that I think they should all get to know and you should get to know.

It’s called Sikkuy and while Seeds of Peace works to bring together young people from seemingly opposed backgrounds, Arabs and Jews or Hindus and Muslims or in Ireland the northern Irish and the Catholics, what Sikkuy does, it’s an Israeli organization run entirely by Israelis that works for the rights of Arab citizens within Israel.  I think one thing I didn’t know until I wrote this book, perhaps you did, is that 20 percent of the citizenship of Israel, leaving aside the west bank, just regular Israel, are Arabs.  What Sikkuy argues and really I was very moved by their and inspired by them is that for Israel to be strong, its Arab citizens must be full citizens.

Now they are legally, there’s no legal segregation or second class citizenship, but culturally many Israeli Jews do not accept that they live in a bicultural country.  Sikkuy is arguing for that sensibility and to me they are some of the most heroic and most inspiring of the Israelis that I’ve met and to give you and your listeners a little bit of optimism amidst this misery in Gaza.  ### is one of the most Arab villages in Israel, its sort of the center of the Arab sensibility within Israel so a very, very right wing Israeli Jewish organization decided to march to ###, which was sort of like when the Neo-Nazis wanted to march into Skokie because they knew there were so many holocaust survivors there.

The idea of this march was to provoke the Arabs so they would react and there would be TV images and the Arabs would look bad.  Well 600 Israelis, most of them Jews came rushing to ### to show they didn’t want this to happen, they didn’t want this kind of provocation.  The march was called off and that was on December 13.  So just at this moment we’re headlines around the world are about this horrible death, destruction, misery and anger within Israel itself.  We’ve seen this expression of humanity and understanding and depth, which I think is just so praiseworthy and that we should know about it.  Again, the organization is Sikkuy, they have a website and they really speak for what I find as the best in Israel.

Dr. Kent:  Israel is so interesting politically comparing them to the United States it’s so complicated and with immigrants from Russia, from the Arab world, the internal issues are so complex.  I do know quite a bit about the Arab Israelis just from knowing people who are, and one of my closest students lets say, one of my Seeds of Peace charges was killed in 2000 and he’s an Arab-Israeli.  His name was Asel Aslef.

Marc Aronson:  Yeah, I knew about this.  I did know.  At one point I had approached them about doing a kids book about Seeds of Peace so I knew that story.

Dr. Kent:  So this book is called Unsettled, the Problem of Loving Israel.  Let’s get into that title.  Unsettled is fascinating because obviously the real sticking point in a lot of these discussions is in settlement and ### from the right comes in and says we’re dismantling the Gaza settlement.  What’s your take on the issue?

Marc Aronson:  My take is that Israel has to get out of the west bank.  Here’s the simple fact, if Israel stays in the west bank it is governing over a hostile population that doesn’t want it there and who lives there and that means Israel would be an occupier for ever, which is not only militarily dangerous and humanly dangerous to the Israelis, many Israelis talk about it and I talk about it in the book how it actually damages the soul of the nation.  It forces the nation to become harder in a way that is a variance from the best that is Israel.

So my feeling is Israel has to get out, that the Palestinians need to have a state, very likely a couple of the settlements are too large and too established so there will be some accommodation for them and some compensation to the Palestinians for the loss of land there.  The analogy I make is that if you can recall from American history, when we fought the Mexican war, which basically gave us the southwest and Texas and California et cetera, it inspired all kinds of hopes in America of manifest destiny.  White Protestants are destined to control the continent, whatever, et cetera.  But it also directly led to the civil war and inspired revulsion against that exact sensibility from people like Lincoln and Henry David Thoreau.

The west bank is the same in Israel.  It inspired this idea this is a biblical land of Judah and Samaria, greater Israel, et cetera and it inspired deep revulsion from other Israelis and I think Israel would be severely, just Israel, forget about the rights of the Palestinians, Israel for its own safety and security and future has to give up the west bank.  If you think about it, in the modern world, it’s not a few more miles that makes a country safe, in the age of rockets and perhaps nuclear rockets and missiles.  Its peace.  So my feeling is Israel must get out of the west bank and again with perhaps some accommodation for situations that is unfortunately developed so far that it’s the game isn’t worth the camel.

There’s a surveyor in the New York Times two months ago; 40 percent of the Jewish settlers in the west bank said they would take a buy out.  It’s too hard; it’s too rough, so okay.  So 60 percent are there ideologically but 40 percent just leave when you pay them.  I feel like I think it is historically understandable why Israel conquered the territory during the 67 war, it makes sense, but they have to get out.  Because the other alternative is if you make a greater Israel you deny the population.  If you make a greater Israel in which Palestinians don’t have a regular vote, then you really have created an apartheid state.

Dr. Kent:  When I was there I remember I had a professor, his name was Paul Lipps and in Jerusalem and his theory was that they should build a wall.  I remember arguing with that theory.  I had both Palestinian and Israeli teachers and I thought if you build a wall people are going to try and climb the wall or get through the wall.  You can’t wall people in, it doesn’t work, we’ve proven that.

Marc Aronson:  I think the physical wall that Israel has built from the strictly steel eyed security point of view has enhanced security.  The question is whether again is a walled in sensibility, which I also think has grown it ultimately makes your country safer or less safe and again you were there, you know.  It’s not fun to be in a country that is surrounded by people who really don’t like you.  I think that is one must understand the sense of vulnerability.  That’s true.  But the thing that the Israelis pride themselves on which is this supple intelligence with which they deal with challenges.

Sometimes the supplely thing to do is challenge is to be more flexible.  I didn’t know you had spent that time in Jerusalem.  In the book I make use of the memoir written by the Palestinian philosopher ### and it’s a wonderful memoir.  He went to Oxford and Harvard; he’s a philosopher who was a Jeffersonian.  He’s someone I think any American whose gone to college recognize the professorial type, but he also was one of the leaders of the first ###.  His memoir is just a very rich and fascinating read.  One part of it was I was in Jerusalem in 68 and so was he, and his description to me it was this wondrous moment.  You could go to the western wall and have this devastating.  It was very mind opening for me to walk the same streets I had walked which is through his book.

Dr. Kent:  That was a fascinating thing for me was to have I went through a program with Wesleyan University at the time and it doesn’t exist any more.  We had professors from Palestine and professors from Israel and on the same day they’d teach us the same history lesson and one would talk about the day of independence and the other would be talking about the Nachba, the tragedy, the catastrophe.

Marc Aronson:  It was interesting for me because I had to think through 48 in writing this book and here again you have the problem of kids getting binary history.  The old way 48 was told, it was basically taken from Mexico.  It was basically lucky heroic Jews, vicious demonic Nazi supporting Arabs who run off and plan to come back and destroy the Jews.  That existed, the leader of the Arabs was a Nazi supporter, there were all of that was true.  It was also true that emotionally many of the Jews fighting envisioned a state in which there would be no Arabs.  And that resulted in massacres on the Jewish side.

The Jews inflicted on Arabs as well. Now it is Jewish scholars who exposed this and you have to admire that.  There’s no similar investigation by Palestinian scholars but the story of 48 is the story like any war, which is a mixed story.  I guess I feel like again, American kids, we’ve gotten used to seeing the dark strands in our history.  It’s not unusual now to talk about efforts that were made to exterminate Indians or how Jeffrey Amherst used small pox blankets and slavery.  All of that is in our curriculum so why if we’re used to a more three dimensional portrait of our own past, why not have a more three dimensional portrait of Israel’s past?

Dr. Kent:  Absolutely.

Marc Aronson:  Isn’t that respecting kids?  So let me tell you the outcome of this.  Kirkus Review Service called my book the book of the year, great, great, great.  The Jewish library association condemned it.  So here we are at the crosshairs of this, again this binary vision of how you talk about Israel.

Dr. Kent:  It’s a fascinating topic; I could talk about it all day.

Marc Aronson:  Well I know you must have other things to do but I would love to talk again sometime, I’d be fascinated to hear about your history and maybe we’ll get a chance to do this again.

Dr. Kent:  Absolutely and Marc Aronson has not only written this book Unsettled: The Problem of Loving Israel, he’s also written Race: A history beyond black and white, he’s written a book about Robert Kennedy, The World Made New and many other books.  If I had children I’d buy them all, so thank you so much for being on the show.

Marc Aronson:  Come to my website marcaronson.com and see them all!  Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Kent:  Thank you.  The book is called Unsettled: The Problem of Loving Israel by Marc Aronson, visit his website at marcaronson.com.  My next guest on the show is a musician, and she has a couple amazing songs that we’re going to play.   Her name is Mae Moore, she is from Canada and she stands apart with her soulful songs.  Come on back for that.

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