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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Interview with Bob Brier | Sound Authors Radio

January 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors! In this week of the inauguration in Washington DC, we might hear the phrase Rome wasn’t built in a day and of course even way further back we all wonder how the great pyramid was built. It’s a mystery and I was actually just thinking about it a few weeks ago. Its something that pops into our minds every once in awhile. How did they finish that pyramid? So this book is called The Secret of the Great Pyramid: How one mans obsession led to the solution of ancient Egypt’s greatest mystery. Its by Bob Brier and John Pierre Hodein; I’m sure I slaughtered that pronunciation there; welcome to the show Bob.

Bob Brier: Thank you Dr. Kent.

Dr. Kent: How do I pronounce those names?

Bob Brier: Well, I’m briar spelled B-R-I-E-R and its Jon Pierre Hudan, you were pretty close.

Dr. Kent: Very nice. Well so tell me about how did this project get started?

Bob Brier: I’m an Egyptologist but my specialty isn’t pyramids, its mummies but I got an email from this French architect who said he had solved the mystery of how the great pyramid was built and it sounded like he might be the real deal. So I invited him over to the house when he came to New York and had dinner. And over dinner he gave me this amazing performance of how the pyramid was built. He brought his laptop with him and told me his story and that’s how it started.

Dr. Kent: Did you believe him right off the bat?

Bob Brier: At first it was just too amazing. He’s a strange guy John Pierre, he’s from France, but he’s a strange guy. He was an architect in Paris and a successful one. And then he became obsessed with how the pyramid was built. He knew that all the theories that Egyptologists have put out there couldn’t work. The idea of a big ramp going all the way to the top, he knew that couldn’t work and we knew it too. We were all agreed; you can’t have a ramp going to the top of 184-foot pyramid.

The ramp would have to be a mile long and as big in volume as the pyramid itself. It’s too big. So he became obsessed with this thing and he gave up his practice in France, he moved into a one room flat, sold his apartment so he could survive and for something like six years he just worked on his computer doing these very elaborate models of how the pyramid could’ve been built and after six or seven years he emerged with the answer. So it was kind of an amazing thing to see this. We weren’t convinced at first, no.

Dr. Kent: Now, when you talk about computer models, what were you looking at? Was it an architectural program he was sort of walking you around it? What was it?

Bob Brier: Yeah, it was a very sophisticated architecture program where you could go inside the pyramid. He showed the pyramid being built almost layer by layer, you could rotate it in 3D, you could go inside and do a flythrough so to speak. It is really quite impressive.

Dr. Kent: So for a person that is a mummy expert, what was it like thinking about the great pyramid? It’s quite a different kind of task.

Bob Brier: Yeah, it certainly is but you know all Egyptologists talk about the pyramid no matter what our specialty is, that great pyramid is still out there and its pretty impressive so we talk about it so we know a little bit about it though its not our specialty but it was interesting to hear him come up with a totally new theory that nobody had ever come up with before and I think the reason he could do it is that he was an outsider. He wasn’t an Egyptologist, he hadn’t grown up in the field and he just could think outside the box.

Dr. Kent: Now are you allowed to kind of give us a tip how it happened or do we have to read the book to find out?

Bob Brier: No, no, no, I’m going to reveal it right now. It’s an amazing thing. As I said, the best theory we had was this single ramp theory. The way Hollywood shows it with the slaves pulling the blocks up and the guy with the whip and that couldn’t work as I said because the ramp would have to be a mile long, the volume would be as great as the pyramid itself and also nobodies ever found a ramp like that or the remains of a ramp like that and you know a ramp like that would be would weigh like two million tons so it just doesn’t work.

So John Pierre was saying the same things we were saying, this ramp couldn’t work, it’s too big, its this its that and he said but I know how it was built. And I said okay John P how was it built? And he said, it was built with a ramp, but the ramp is inside the pyramid. Now at first it’s hard to wrap your head around it. What does he mean the ramp is inside the pyramid? And the best way I can suggest to visualize it and he showed it to us on the computer so it was easy. Think about when you go inside a parking garage and you go up the little road that corkscrews up the garage to level five where you finally find your parking spot. It’s that kind of thing. There’s a ramp inside the pyramid that corkscrews and makes left turns going up, up, up, inside the pyramid and that’s how the blocks were brought up to the very top of the pyramid, inside that ramp.

Dr. Kent: Huh.

Bob Brier: Yeah, and to make it even more interesting, the ramp is still there. It’s been hidden for 4,500 years waiting to be discovered.

Dr. Kent: My goodness. In what form is it still there?

Bob Brier: It was never filled in. It’s as if you could walk a tunnel. The ramp itself of course is a mile long but it makes those turns. It makes 22 turns so the ramp is almost walkable. You could actually walk through this tunnel, corkscrewing up inside this pyramid.

Dr. Kent: Now I’ve been to the pyramids, which can you give us a clue. Everyone’s seen these sort of three pyramids lining up and I went to the place out in the desert where you could see the three line up and I went to the really dark little cave underneath the pyramid. But describe the pyramid to someone who’s never been there.

Bob Brier: Well you know there’s more than 100 pyramids in Egypt and they’re all different.

Dr. Kent: Right.

Bob Brier: They are all different but on the Geisa plateau are the two largest ever built. The two largest ever built. There’s three fairly large pyramids on the Geisa plateau and another couple of pyramids between, but the really big one, the great pyramid of Geisa is the most complex and the biggest of them all. Its 480 feet high, right? It’s as tall as a 50 story building. It’s so large, that the base, which is a square, covers 13-1/2 acres and it’s built out of a couple of million blocks. Two million blocks that average about 2-1/2 tons each, blocks of limestone. So the thing is just immense.

To give you an idea of how amazing it was to build such a thing, the pyramid was built in about 20 years. The pharaoh who built it is Hutu and the architect was his brother Henry and they built it in about 20 years. If you got two million blocks, one block was pushed into place in that pyramid every 3-1/2 minutes for 20 years. Think about that, to chain one block to chain in another 3-1/2 minutes another block. It’s an amazing social event; an organized event to keep this going like that, it was just a phenomenal thing to do.

Dr. Kent: Wow.

Bob Brier: Yeah, it’s amazing. So this pyramid really is the best of them all, the great pyramid, because it’s also complex inside the pyramid. The pyramids aren’t solid, there are rooms inside, there are passageways connecting the rooms and all of this had to be planned with this ramp inside not intersecting any of the rooms and passageways and that’s one of the things that John Pierre figured out. Is it possible to do that? Can you have a mile long ramp corkscrewing up inside hidden with all these rooms and passages and the computer showed you bet you can.

Dr. Kent: So, talk about this character John Pierre Hudan. Besides just his theory, what drew you to him and his story?

Bob Brier: Well you know its sort of not my field. I didn’t know about his theory at first, it’s that a friend of mine who’s an engineer and an Egyptologist said to me, do me a favor and talk to this guy. So I figured if my friend Jack said to talk to this guy he must be the real deal. Then when John Pierre came over he really is an eccentric. He’s a dear friend now but I’ll give you an example. We’re listening to him, I had about five friends over to the house for dinner to hear it, I wanted to hear their ideas about it; I thought it would be interesting.

We’re listening to this guy and he’s showing us on his laptop this beautiful computer images of the pyramid. The best we had ever seen and it became clear after about an hour of listening to him that he knew the pyramids better than anyone alive, including the pyramid experts. He knew every block and when this block would be put in place in year seven, in year eight this happened, and we’re listening to him and then I said to John Pierre how did you feel when you first saw the pyramids and he looks at me and says oh I’ve never seen it. He had never been to Egypt. He had been working on his computer and I said to him, you got to go, right? And he said, no I know what the pyramid looks like.

To him it was this abstract puzzle to be solved not a monument to be visited. I said that was the most telling thing I can give you; the guy is really an eccentric and he’s a nice guy. You talk to him and he seems quite normal but I’ll tell you when I used that word obsessed in the title of my book How One Man’s Obsession, I meant it. Its all he talks about, he doesn’t have any interests other than the pyramid.

Dr. Kent: How about your obsession; how did you get into Egyptology?

Bob Brier: I got into it in a strange way, through an accident, literally an accident. I was a basketball player, I loved playing basketball and at the college I was still playing and I hurt my knees. Typical ball players knee injury and I was having these operations on my legs so I could play again and this is before arthroscopic surgery, this was years ago. So I was in casts from my ankles to my hips for months.

Somebody gave me a copy of a hieroglyphic textbook, how to read hieroglyphs and I became real obsessed with it and for eight hours a day I did hieroglyphs while I was in bed. When the casts came off I could translate so my university asked me would you teach a course to the students on hieroglyphs and I said sure, that would be fun. The kids really got into it and we were all doing hieroglyphs and I thought gee, you know it might be fun to go to Egypt. And then I was hooked.

Dr. Kent: It’s such a fascinating thing. I was there with a friend and as we pulled up there’s a throng of men running after the car yelling camel, trying to sell camel rides. My friend bribed someone to go into a special chamber and it’s just an experience that I’ve never had. It’s an interesting place.

Bob Brier: It’s certainly impressive, right?

Dr. Kent: Yes, and do you find it amusing, difficult, all of the above to work in that field and sort of gain access to places and all of that.

Bob Brier: Well you know, I’m lucky. My experience is a little different than yours and the average tourist because when I was working on the pyramid with John Pierre we had a tour ourselves. We work in there at night after the tourists are gone so it’s really quite something really different. We got the pyramid to ourselves, its quiet, its peaceful; we’re crawling in and out of holes that nobody really ever sees so it’s really quite special. And the more you learn about the pyramid, at least for me; you know when I started this project my job was just to help John Pierre, who’s theory it was.

He had no idea how to navigate the bureaucracy of Egypt and the Egyptian antiquities there so my job was to help him get in so he could see things and we could look at stuff. So I’m helping him and I’m learning at the same time and the more I learned the more impressed I was with the pyramid. I mean the more you learn about it, its not like oh that’s how they did it, not so impressive. It’s the other way around; that’s how they did it? That’s incredible! So the more you learn about the pyramid, the more impressed you are.

Dr. Kent: Its such a fascinating book full of diagrams, old pictures, going from page to page is just fascinating. What did it feel like to you to put together the pieces of this?

Bob Brier: I loved it; I’ve written I think six or seven books and this is my favorite I think in terms of putting it together. Partly because I was learning as I was doing it, learning from John Pierre, learning from my experiences in the pyramids, but also it was really like a bit of a mystery. Not a murder mystery, but a mystery. How did they build it, how did they put it together, what do the architects think now, how do they do it?

And it really was an awful lot of fun and it almost just happened and I wrote the book in about a year. It took a year to really write it. I worked with John Pierre for two or three years learning, getting up to speed so I could talk to him about it, ask questions, and then writing it was just a lot of fun putting those pieces together. I hope some of that comes through in the book. That there is an adventure, it’s an intellectual adventure; this guy solved the big archeological puzzle of our time.

Dr. Kent: Its something, must be neat to work on something that’s puzzled people for so very long.

Bob Brier: You get this ah-ha moment you know where you’re wondering and you’re wondering. In the beginning I wasn’t 100% sure that I was right and to tell you the truth still I’m not 100% sure, I’m 85% sure. But he’s 100% sure. He’s absolutely 100 percent, has no doubt, and I think he’s probably right; I would bet with him instead of against him but in the beginning I sort of thought this is pretty good, lets see, and I learned more, and it was yep, he’s right, he’s right. Oh look at that, yep, he’s right. So all these pieces started to make sense in the light of the theory. Even we had one wonderful experience.

There’s a big notch way up on the pyramid about 375 feet up on one of the corners. A big chunk of the pyramid is missing like a big birthday cake piece is taken out and I got permission to climb up; John Pierre stayed on the bottom, to climb up there to see if it was intentionally done that way so that maybe they were turning the blocks in that ramp and when I got up there at the very back of the notch was a little room that no Egyptologist had ever talked about. We figured out that this room was used to give more space for turning the blocks when they had to make that right angle turn to make a left turn and go up to the next level of the blocks in the tunnel. It just gave you more room to maneuver, and it was kind of really exciting to see this room that I’d never seen and then to come down and show John Pierre the pictures and he figures it out. It was a little bit of Sherlock Holmes there.

Dr. Kent: So is Las Vegas going to use John Pierre’s research and techniques to build their next pyramid? What do you think?

Bob Brier: I don’t think so. You can’t; I don’t think we could build the great pyramid again today. It would just take too much labor, too much cooperation, I mean the great thing is the reason Egypt could do something like the great pyramid was that the pharaoh was a god and he said it and he did it. There were no unions; there were no committees, that was it. The architect figures it out and the pharaoh says do it. I think we couldn’t do anything like that today, I mean think about it. How many people would be willing to undertake building a building that took 20 years? Well, we’re going to start now and it’ll be finished in 20 years. Not many people are going to fund that, its just not going to happen. I don’t think we could do it again, so I don’t think Las Vegas is going to use those techniques.

Dr. Kent: Let’s talk about some of your other books over the years. You’ve written about Tuten Kaman, how do you say it correctly? What’s your next obsession? How do you choose your obsessions? Do you just find things? Do they fall on your lap? What’s your secret?

Bob Brier: It’s almost like they fall in my lap. I mean you mention the Tuten Kaman book. I did this book which was the other book that I really liked doing. It’s called The Murder of Tuten Kaman and it’s where I figure out again, this is a murder mystery. Tuten Kaman dies as a young boy king; he was 18 years old when he died. By looking at the x-rays of the pharaoh’s skull, you know we have his mummy.

By looking at x-rays, by reading text from the time, it became clear to me that he was murdered and I try to put that together in an interesting way to show how this can evolve. So that was a fun book too; it was a little bit like this pyramid book where you’re solving a mystery. My next book is going to take me a couple years to write but it’s about moving obelisks. They pyramids aren’t the only great monuments that Egypt built. There are also obelisks which are a single piece of stone weighing 250 tons and are going up 100 feet high and how did they get them up? How did they erect them? How did they carve them out of the quarry and granite?

And then that’s part of the story but three of them were moved out of Egypt in the 19th century; one is in France, one is in England and one is in New York and my next book is going to be about these obelisks, how they were quarried and then how we moved them out of Egypt. I think it’s a great story that most people don’t know. Its going to be a nice little slice of history, not so much a mystery but a nice little slice of history; its fun to show people things they don’t know.

Dr. Kent: What’s your favorite thing? If you go to a museum and you get in behind the scenes when the lights are out, I’ve heard some funny stories such as in the Cairo Museum apparently they stored all the mummies in the hallway or something like that because of renovations and what are some amusing stories you’ve had over the years.

Bob Brier: Well that’s true. In the Egyptian museum in Cairo, the mummies are stored on the third floor. There are two stories basically where tourists go and on the third floor there’s a whole batch of mummies there. What I like to do when I’m in museums and have access is because I’m a mummy person, I always go directly to the mummies and one of the things we do, you know mummies are like little encyclopedias if you know how to read them there’s an awful lot of information in them.

For example, I have taken mummies out of museums to hospitals and CAT scan them, x-ray them, try to figure out what the person died from so again it’s a little bit like getting to play Sherlock Holmes. It’s a little bit of forensics; it’s a little bit of CSI Ancient Egypt, where you’re trying to figure out what killed those ancient Egyptians, what was their life like, what did he eat. By x-raying the bones for example, I can tell you what his diet was.

Did he have good protein and calcium; you can tell by looking at the bone density. I can look at his teeth and tell you what kind of diet he had or how old he was when he died by looking at the sutures so I love going into museums, taking mummies out, taking them to a hospital and figuring out what I can figure out.

Dr. Kent: When you were a kid did you ever get a chance to see a mummy?

Bob Brier: No I grew up in the Bronx and we didn’t go to museums much or anything like that. It wasn’t until I was older that I got to see things like that. But you know, you think about Egypt as a kid and you always see the mummy movies, right?

Dr. Kent: Yeah, I remember seeing one of the mummies as a kid, it must’ve been a traveling exhibit or something in the Midwest; I remember being completely terrified of this thing.

Bob Brier: You know it’s funny; most kids don’t react that way, most kids react with fascination. When you see a mummy, you’re looking at a person, it’s a recognizable human being who lived maybe 3,000 years ago, and I think kids sort of it’s a rare chance to look at death. Kids are afraid of death but they want to see what it looks like. My experience has been when you show them a mummy they’ll just stand there and stare. Then they’ll ask questions. I don’t think kids are a bit afraid of mummies it’s a very interesting thing.

Dr. Kent: At the same time this secret of the great pyramid and what you talked about with the obelisks, it’s almost like you get to play being a kid for the rest of your life in an incredibly well researched academic way.

Bob Brier: No, I’m very fortunate, I am. You’re right. I get to be a kid for the rest of my life.

Dr. Kent: Huh, so it’s been a real honor chatting with Bob Brier and he wrote a book with John Pierre Hudan.

Bob Brier: Yes, I did most of the writing; he did most of the thinking.

Dr. Kent: That’s a great way to do it. It’s called The Secret of the Great Pyramid: How one mans obsession led to the solution of ancient Egypt’s greatest mystery. I’ve barely cracked my copy but I’m definitely going to read through this thing carefully and maybe I’ll build my own pyramid in the back yard. Maybe not. Thank you so much for being on the show and I can’t wait to see what you come up with the next time.

Bob Brier: It’s a pleasure.

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is the author of a book about the Middle East called Unsettled, the Problem of Loving Israel. Come on back for that.

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

Interview with James Tabor | Sound Authors Radio

December 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors. Today is September 5, 2008. On this date in history Russia’s Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards in 1698. Other interesting things happened; On The Road was published on this day. George Bush nominated John Roberts for the Chief Justice and then what I find fascinating is my doctoral degree is in music; John Cage’s birthday is today. He was born in 1912, John Milton Cage Junior. He really revolutionized the classical music world with his music. And another classical composer was born on September 5, 1735, that’s Johan Christian Bach. Jessie James was born on this day so it’s really a packed day in history. Of course the republican convention just finished and people are thinking a lot about politics. On the show today I have four guests. My first three are authors and my fourth as always is a musician. The musician this week are called Old School Freight Train and they are an incredible singing group with a new album out and we’ll listen to them at the end of the show. My other two guests on the show are James M. Tabor and his incredible book Forever on the Mountain. It’s got amazing reviews and its award winning and we’ll talk to him in a minute. Kelly Adair who went through the program Body For Life and she’s going to talk to us about that in the book Champions Body For Life. So welcome to the show today, sound authors this is Dr. Kent. I want to welcome my first guest James M. Tabor. Are you there?

James Tabor: I sure am Dr. Kent, thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent: Forever on the Mountain by James M. Tabor was a Barnes & Noble great new writer’s selection, which is a big deal. It was the winner of the 2007 national outdoor book award for history and biography, a winner of the 2007 band mountain festival book awards grand prize and many others. A quote from Time Magazine says “A riveting account of a long ago mountaineering disaster.” People compare it to Into Thin Air. It’s had quite a few successes. Tell me a little about the story Forever on the Mountain.

James Tabor: Sure here’s the short version. In 1967, 12 young men set out to climb Mount McKinley, which is North America’s highest peak. Its one of the most dangerous mountains on earth. Unfortunately seven of them perished in the attempt and there were only five survivors. There were a number of mysterious things about this particular tragedy. One of them was that none of those seven bodies were ever recovered so we have no diaries, journals, cameras, no evidence of what happened to them or why.

The other mysterious thing is that although they were trapped in a known location for ten days and nothing was done to try to affect a rescue for them. You can imagine what would be happening today if we had seven guys trapped lets say near the summit of Mount Hood and nothing was done. There would be a human cry around the world. So there were several mysterious things about that and being an old mountaineer myself I learned about the story five years ago and was surprised that it hadn’t received more notoriety in the 40 years since then.

The biggest surprise was that I, despite being very well versed in what I had heard of it, I set out to do a little digging and without too much digging there was quite an untold story here so my book set out to answer a number of the unanswered questions that lingered in the aftermath of their seven deaths.

Dr. Kent: How did you get into writing about this kind of disaster? I know you have pretty extensive experience doing writing for Outside and Ski Magazines and things like that. How did you get into writing this long of an account of this story?

James Tabor: To be honest with you this is the first sort of disaster investigation that I had actually written certainly book length. I was intrigued by it because I did find an Alaskan myself in the 1980s and had remained intrigued in the area since then. I’m also a lifelong journalist and author and whenever a story with so much mystery and so much tragedy comes across your desk, I as an author just got hooked. It wouldn’t let me sleep at night so that’s kind of what drew me into it and then the rescue and a lot of research interviewing the survivors, interviewing a lot of people that were onsite in 1967. Maybe most importantly digging out of the government with a Freedom of Information action lots of documents of evidence that had not previously come to light.

Dr. Kent: You have experienced being on Mount McKinley. Tell us about that.

James Tabor: I will tell you quite frankly that it just kicked my butt. I attempted the mountain with a very experienced partner in 1981 and even though he was an averse we both substantially underestimated McKinley in both its size and its weather. We only got to about 14,000 feet, which is as one person said like stubbing your toe on the mountain. Then we turned around and fled back to base camp. I learned in that attempt what an amazingly challenging mountain McKinley is. I did go back some years later to climb other mountains in Alaska but never had the privilege of summiting McKinley. But I learned an awful lot about it in the three weeks I was there I can tell you that.

Dr. Kent: What is it like for the folks like me that haven’t been on a mountain? I’ve seen so much footage of Everest and they talk about you have to get ready with certain altitudes and things like that. What’s the difference with McKinley?

James Tabor: It’s really interesting. Everest is a very apt comparison because that’s kind of the gold standard that most people have for mountaineering accomplishments. The fact is that McKinley is 35 degrees of latitude farther north than Everest, which puts it much closer to the Arctic Circle, which means that it has much, much worse weather all the time. One guy who climbed both mountains multiple times said that he found Everest “tropical” by comparison. It’s also true that to climb McKinley from base to summit you have to ascend 18,000 vertical feet.

On Everest a similar ascent from base to summit is 10,000 so it’s more than a mile and a half extra vertical to climb on Mount McKinley. Finally, McKinley unfortunately holds a unique position east of the Bearing Sea and north of the Gulf of Alaska, which puts it squarely in the sights of some of the worst storm traps on earth. So you have conspiring against you on Mount McKinley many things which make most mountaineers to consider it to be one of the premier challenges on earth for mountain climbing.

Dr. Kent: Why did you get into in the first place writing about this kind of thing? Were you into this outdoor experiences and that’s how you sort of gravitated towards writing about them?

James Tabor: I would have to say from a very young age; my father was a life long outdoorsman. He was a hiker, a horseman, a hunter, a fisherman, and he had me out in the woods by the time I was six years old. I went to college in Vermont, where you’re surrounded by mountains and I think I fell in love with the outdoors at a very young age and a lot of my writing has been about outdoors and about adventure type things. So I guess I’m lucky enough to be able to combine a love of the outdoors with the love of writing and to focus on those things. As I said, when you have a tragedy like this with so many unanswered questions it was something a writer could not pass up. So I feel very fortunate to be able to tell the rest of that story.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about this tragedy. These guys start climbing the mountain and again what did the media report? What did people know from the outside? What was the easy information to find out?

James Tabor: The easy information was in the aftermath, it was asserted by some government agencies and “McKinley experts” that the seven men who died really were incompetent, poorly equipped, ill conditioned and shouldn’t have been on the mountain and in a sense invited their own destruction. One expert even used the word suicidal, that they committed suicide by getting in over their heads. So for 40 years the seven guys who died, they and their family lived under this shadow of death by incompetence if you will.

Well I found out that those assertions were made especially by government agencies who had really failed miserably to locate and rescue them and were in a sense trying to deflect blame and responsibility from themselves onto those seven men. In fact, the seven men were experienced, competent, very well equipped climbers who did everything right and unfortunately were caught by the worst storm in recorded Mount McKinley history up to that point. One of the great fruits for me in writing the book was to be able to clear the names of seven men whose memories had suffered for 40 years under these unfair accusations.

To really point out the fact that while the intentions might have been good by the park service, the United States air force and other agencies; they just really didn’t do a really good job of fulfilling their responsibilities at that time.

Dr. Kent: What’s interesting is now the entire political lens of the world is back on Alaska again.

James Tabor: You’ve certainly got that right. With Sarah Palin’s ascendancy we’re going to see a lot more scrutiny given to all things Alaskan. I will tell you that in the aftermath of the tragedy the scrutiny placed on the park service, the air force and other agencies really produced dramatic change and so on McKinley today you have the best equipped, most experienced, most expertise search and rescue operation on earth. Unfortunately there was not that in 1967 but it is that today and I think Alaskans and the national park service and all of us can be thankful for that.

Dr. Kent: Have you had some contact with the surviving families and is that how you were able to piece together some of these stories?

James Tabor: I had indeed. The first people I met with were the five survivors themselves, the climbers who are now in their mid 60s, and they were all very generous. They all shared their diaries, their logs, their pictures and most importantly their personal recollections. I was able to contact some of the deceased fellows’ families and interview them but more important because they were not on site so more important really were the survivors and people in the immediate area of Mount McKinley; park service employees, the pilots and folks like that who volunteered their recollections. Equally important were the records, its like radio tape, transcripts, and actual radio broadcasts and things like that allowed me to piece together things probably in a way that let me know more about what happened than anybody at that time or since then. It was a lengthy research project, it took about two years.

Dr. Kent: Going into it, when you first thought okay this will be a great book, have you uncovered things that you didn’t think you would uncover?

James Tabor: I did indeed. One of the major accusations that had been leveled in the wake of the tragedy was that the leader, a man named Joe Wilcox, who survived was one of the major agents of the tragedy by being a bad leader by just a number of bad judgments by him and he invited what happened. That turned out not to be true at all. He had for 40 years had been unfairly scapegoated so that was one thing. Another thing was that and no one really knew about this but on the mountain at the same time in 67 there were five young Alaskan men who pretty much volunteered to become a defacto rescue attempt.

Government agencies weren’t going to do anything and these five young men performed heroically. They didn’t save any lives but they risked their own trying to. So being able to tell their story for the first time in 40 years. I discovered that. I don’t think anybody else knew about these five young, now older men, and telling their story for the first time was really rewarding. It made me feel very good to be able to give them credit that they had never gotten before.

Dr. Kent: This is such a fascinating thing. Speaking to people that have done that kind of extreme rescue and extreme adventure. I have some contact with some people that do those kinds of extreme sports and certainly you have. What can you tell the listeners about those kind of extreme athletes, extreme rescuers?

James Tabor: One thing is that they have levels of commitment and courage that are almost impossible to really understand. I sat across the table from these fellows and said how could you do this day in and day out for five or six days in 40 below temperature, 100 mile an hour winds, and continue to pursue the goal of trying to help your fellow mountaineers? And they looked at me and said well we never thought about doing anything different. That’s just how mountaineers feel about each other. So that was certainly one thing, the lengths. They were like soldiers in combat, that’s what.

Dr. Kent: I think we just lost James. We’re going to try and get him back. In the meantime, I’m going to play a quick commercial. Be back in one minute.

[Commercial-ad]

Dr. Kent: We’re back on the show with James Tabor. Sorry about that.

James Tabor: Me too doctor, its good to be back.

Dr. Kent: Let’s talk about where folks can find this book. I know its now out in paperback.

James Tabor: That’s right. It was issued in paperback in July. Of course you can buy it at many of the popular online sites like Amazon. All your independent bookshops will also be carrying it because it has been reviewed very well and popularly. You can learn more about me if you like at my website at jamesmtabor.com. So yeah, that’s where it can be found.

Dr. Kent: What are you doing next?

James Tabor: My next book I’ve been working on for about a year now and is actually about the search for the deepest cave on earth. It’s the last great terrestrial discovery that was made in 2004. It’s like climbing Mount Everest in reverse is the way one person put it. It requires weeks and weeks underground, multiple camps, just an astonishing adventure that again to an outdoor reader who loves adventure this will be a great story. It will be out by the end of the year.

Dr. Kent: Is that something you’ve experienced also, cave diving?

James Tabor: I have, I did a bit of caving back in the late 80s and early 90s. Some very extreme caving in super deep caves. Some diving; I am a master diver and it’s another world down there. It’s like through the looking glass if you will. It’s an incredible underground wonderland and I hope to be able to bring readers through the book down there so they can experience it themselves.

Dr. Kent: Where did you get this bug and how does your family feel every time you go on these great adventures?

James Tabor: That’s why I don’t do them anymore actually. My family’s patience finally ran out but I guess there are some people who sort of biochemical need more stimulation than others just to feel comfortable and I think I might have been born with a brain like that. I’ve always liked things like hang gliding and scuba diving, climbing, and those kinds of things. As my children were born and began to grow older I really had to taper off those things so no, my life is a good bit tamer these days than it used to be.

Dr. Kent: I hope the next book does really well. Of course that’s the kind of adventure I’ve not seen on shelves and I hope it gets the same kind of exposure this one has. It’s been a real honor speaking with James M. Tabor, author of Forever on the Mountain: The truth behind one of mountaineering’s most controversial disasters. We can find him on the website at jamesmtabor.com. There’s some good stuff on there. Thank you so much for being on the show.

James Tabor: The pleasure is mine Dr. Kent, take care.

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is going to be Kelly Adair and she is a participant in a project called Champions Body for Life. It’s become a bestselling book and we’re going to talk with her next about how her life has changed and about this book itself. So come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Travel, History, Sports, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Interview with John Straley | Sound Authors Radio

November 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! Today is Friday, July 11, 2008. Today is the day that Apple is releasing the second version of the I-Phone. A bunch of things happened in history on this day; it’s always fun to check those out. The pope in 1533 excommunicated England’s King Henry VIII; very pertinent to today’s show. Maybe not, but E.B. White, an author of essays and children’s books was born in 1899. It’s been 109 years since then and he was a testament to writing. I’ve got three authors and one musician on the show today as always; it’s an exciting show. My first guest will be a fellow from Alaska who writes mysteries. My second guest is someone named Peter Webb; he has a book called Rainbows End. My third and fourth guest is a woman named Laura Duksta; she has a New York Times bestselling children’s book and she’s also a musician. So we’ll be featuring her on both of those segments. And now my first guest. His name is John Straley; he’s published with Alaska Northwest Books. His latest book is The Big Both Ways. Welcome to the show John.

John Straley: Well thank you, it’s great to be with you.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about how you got to this point? How did you start writing novels about Alaska from where you sit as a private investigator of a small town in Alaska?

John Straley: Well I grew up moving all around the country when my dad worked for the phone company when I was growing up. I ended up working in the woods in northeastern Washington and I fell in love with the story telling that you hear out in the woods and around campfires. I ended up getting a degree in writing and English literature in Washington and in 1977 I got married, graduated from college, got married and moved to Sitka, Alaska in 1977 with my wife and everything happened to me that summer.

I kept working in the woods, writing different things. I wrote essays and poetry and just by hook and crook I ended up getting a job as a private investigator tracking people down, talking to people and I thought since I’d always loved this story telling I thought I’d give that a try. In 1993 I published The Woman Who Married A Bear, which won a Shamus Award that private eye writers of America best first novel that year. Since then I’ve just kept writing, kept working. I’m the current writer laureate of Alaska appointed by the Governor and I’ve got a book of poetry coming out with the University of Alaska Press in September. So things have been good this year for me.

Dr. Kent: So as a writer out there in Alaska, do you feel like its really shapes the way you write as opposed to if you’re sitting in a cubicle in New York City.

John Straley: Oh yeah. I mean I love writing about Alaska. I mean the place, the setting, the wildness of the country, the wildness of the characters that come here. It’s just a perfect natural setting for a mystery. Now if you think of Raymond Chandlers mysteries about Los Angeles after the Second World War, it had all that mood and atmosphere and mysteriousness. I think southeastern Alaska, which is where I live, is the reigning country. Boardwalk towns, lots of fog, lots of desperate characters who maybe running their path living on the edge to the wilderness. It just has tremendous mood and atmosphere and I love writing about it.

Dr. Kent: So I lived for a little while in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State in a tiny little village and it was not that far away from the TV show Northern Exposure. It was a bit odd and people got a little stir crazy in winter. Is it a little bit like that up where you are? Are people a little different than elsewhere?

John Straley: Oh yeah, I mean I live in a town which is on an island. Sitka, Alaska is on Baranof Island. We have about 15 miles of main road. There’s 8900 people that live here. We get more than 100 inches of rain and the winters are not as cold as they are further north but its dark and we’re on the island all together so people get grouchy. It’s similar where I live to the Cascades. I lived in Washington; I lived in the Methow Valley in a place called Winthrop. I lived there and it used to be the end of the road up there in Winthrop. When I left there in the 60s and 70s. But yeah, people at these end of the road communities, isolated communities, they get a little grouchy and hence some of our crimes sort of involve this cabin fever.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little about your characters in this book. Its kind of the cover shows how the book itself is a little bit different than most mysteries. The characters have great names. Tell me a little bit about a couple of your main characters here.

John Straley: I have a series, an earlier series, that feature Cecil Younger and those are for the contemporary private eye novels and there’s six of those. The Big Both Ways is my seventh novel and it’s a departure from the series. It’s a historical novel set in 1935. It starts in the Cascade Mountains and a logger whose down on his luck named Slippery Wilson. He decides to quit working in the woods and he’s hitchhiking to Seattle and this is early spring 1935. He gets picked up by a woman who ends up having a corpse in the trunk of her car.

That crime leads them into all kinds of trouble down on the docks in Seattle and they have to get into a dory, a small boat and row north up through the inside package. They get picked up by boats and they’re being chased along the way by union organizers and by the Seattle detectives. So Ellie Hobbes is the woman and she has her niece named Annabelle. So its Slippery and Annabelle and Ellie are all in this dory and Annabelle is a ten year old girl and she has a birdcage with her little cockatiel in it. So it cuts quite a good figure of this boat rowing up the narrow fjords of the Inland Passage with these three wild characters in it.

They end up in Juno in the summer of 1935 just in time for a violent mine strike that occurred there in June of ’35. And I use all kinds of historical events; weave the history of the Pacific Northwest; the radical labor movement and some of the odd characters that lived up and down the coast in that era.

Dr. Kent: Your wife is a marine biologist and she studies whales. How does that influence your work?

John Straley: Well, yeah my wife is a really well known marine biologist. She’s out on a boat right now, she’s out on a crab boat filming hump back whales with a French film crew and doing research on the feeding behavior of the hump back whale. She leads a very exciting adventurous life. In my Cecil Younger books my first two books with Cecil, he was lovesick and he couldn’t get it together with his ex-girlfriend who he always refers to as the woman who used to love me. But in my third book called the Music of What Happened I just was getting bored with him not having a good love life so he fell in love with a marine biologist who studied hump back whales because it was something I knew something about.

My wife’s work is what brought me to Alaska. I would have stayed in the Cascades if it hadn’t been for her and her adventurous spirit and her independence that fit so perfectly in Alaska. So she’s been a tremendous influence on me. Also, all writers, any artist, having a supportive spouse, supportive spouses have done more for the arts than the MacArthur Foundation. She’s helped me tremendously.

Dr. Kent: Very nice. You have so many books out already, your seventh novel and they’ve all been fairly successful all across the world. Are you planning another one? Are you in the middle of writing? What’s going on with you?

John Straley: Yeah I am. As I’m speaking now I’m here at the public defender agency in Sitka and at nights and weekends I’m working on my eighth novel, which the characters in the Big Both Ways end up in a little village called Cold Storage Alaska and my eighth novel is called Cold Storage Alaska and it takes up into the future from where the Big Both Ways characters are. It’s going to be a story about the descendants of these people that made this trip in the dory.

My idea was inspired by the Steinbeck books of Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday and I really want to write a series about a place in Alaska, this little village called Cold Storage. So my series I did with these recurring characters back and forth in history whereas a place itself is really the central character, the central focus, the mood, the atmosphere, the mystery of life on this wild outside coast. And like Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, it’s the poetry of the place that really animates the story. I’m really excited about that. I’m hoping to have that up and out and around shopping to my publisher by September and hopefully have it out in the stores next year.

Dr. Kent: With your Cecil Younger series, with the Big Both Ways and with the upcoming book, why the Pacific Northwest? Do you have less interest in writing about say Africa or Asia or the Midwest? But is it really because you are rooted in that place? Talk a little about that.

John Straley: Well yeah, I mean I would love to write about Africa and Asia but I don’t know much about it. I really believe that we are made from the places that we live in and that we love. I think that people that love to live in rainy places or in rainforests are different than people that live in the desert so I really believe that the place helps shape culture and character and stories. I mean the crimes that happen in Sitka, Alaska are different than the crimes that happen in Phoenix or Seattle.

So I know something about the world here and I find it beautiful and mysterious and that’s what I want to write about. I’m not a real intellectual writer in that I will pick an abstraction that I want to write about. I write about the things that I hear, that I see, that I experience every day and I’m just trying to make sense of it.

Dr. Kent: Your job way up there has got to be different than somewhere in an urban area, even somewhere in a rural area. I know the story Into The Wild where the fellow ends up in a bus in the middle of nowhere. You must run into some pretty horrible stuff in your job out there.

John Straley: Working in real crime you’re always running into genuine grief; really hard situations where real people are really suffering and that makes it sort of different than crime fiction where it has a sort of atmosphere of the fun of the chase. Alaska sadly has the highest percentage per capita of domestic violence. The drug that is the scourge of the towns and villages is alcohol.

We have a huge number of alcohol related assaults and homicides. Anchorage has a different kind of crime scene. Anchorage has some more recognizably urban crime scenes but rural Alaska has real difficulty with alcohol, domestic violence and crimes that people commit without any real intention of getting away with anything. They’re impulse crimes and so those often really tear families apart. So yeah, it is a sobering place to work.

Dr. Kent: Do you end up processing a lot of that through your fiction or not so much?

John Straley: Yeah that’s a good question because most of my Cecil Younger works I wrote while I was working at the public defender. I’d work late at night and when I would sit at my typewriter or computer and work on these stories, I’m often trying to process kind of have work things out better in my own little world. I try to save the lives of some of these people I’ve encountered. I do process a lot of what goes on in my own mind through my books. But of course I have to exaggerate the adventures and exaggerate my characters’ own problems. But they’re not biographical, they’re not autobiographical but they are my attempt at making sense of what I’ve seen and heard.

Dr. Kent: This has been a real fascinating discussion. The Big Both Ways is John Straley’s last book. He has six books out in various editions. They’re all across the country and the world. The first one of those was the Woman Who Married A Bear. Is there one of those early ones that are your favorite?

John Straley: Of the Cecil Younger books you don’t really have to read them in order. There is sort of a character arc, he’s down and out and kind of a whiny drunk in the first and he really pulls himself together in the series. Sometimes I recommend to people if they’re coming to a goal to start with the third book right in the middle. That’s the Music of What Happened.

Dr. Kent: Well it’s been a real pleasure chatting with you. It’s not often that I get to speak to someone who’s actually in Alaska. How’s the weather out there?

John Straley: We’ve had a wet spring and some scattered days of sun in the summer but today is a beautiful day and people are catching King Salmon off the coast and the berries are ripening up and the bears are snuffling around through the woods and coming into our garbage cans so it’s a pretty nice day.

Dr. Kent: I envy you about the berries, that’s about the best thing in life. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show John Straley.

John Straley: Thank you for inviting me. I look forward to talking with you again sometime.

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

Interview with Richard Singer | Sound Authors Radio

November 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. My next guest on the show is Richard A. Singer. He’s the author of several books. One is called Daddy What is Success? A children’s self-help book. He is also the author of an upcoming book called Now and has written a book called Your Daily Walk With The Great Minds. That was a non-fiction book of the year. Welcome to the show.

Richard Singer: Thank you very much, it’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent: I gather that you are thinking about breaking a Guinness book of world records?

Richard Singer: I am. I am going to be running across the US for several charities.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about this, what some would say crazy attempt.

Richard Singer: I love to help people and I like to do things that are definitely a challenge that people think are impossible. I don’t think there is much in life that is impossible if we use our complete potential as human beings. So that is my reason for doing it and to raise awareness for several challenging issues in life and for several charities.

Dr. Kent: So you want to go across the United States n 46 days. How do you go about doing that?

Richard Singer: I’m going to run each day several miles. The average will be about 60 miles. I just did a similar training run which was successful; I did 60 miles. So I’m training for it and I have a crew that’s going to go with me; a publicist, a director and we’re going to attempt to do this in about a month.

Dr. Kent: So what brought you to this? You’re an author, you’re a psychotherapist. Why would you do something like this Guinness book of world records attempt?

Richard Singer: I think it will be a great way to raise awareness for mental health issues; that’s one of the charities I’m working with. Another is addiction, an addiction charity and some others, the cancer society and the AIDS foundation. So it’s to raise awareness and getting the attention of people that need to know this is something I’m serious about and a lot of people are serious about and we need to continue to work on these issues. So I think it will get attention and also show that nothing is impossible.

Dr. Kent: So now talk about your older books. You’ve got the book coming out soon called Daddy What is Success? It’s an illustrated children self help book. You’ve got some of your older books; You’re Daily Walk with the Great Minds and Eastern Wisdom for your Soul. Talk about your books.

Richard Singer: My books I believe are and my books come from my heart and I’m very passionate about them. I don’t consider myself a great writer but I like the truth that comes from within and I write for people to think and what are affective ways of living ### I believe shows us how to live and gives us a map of how you need to live. I think they’re all very effective and they teach ways to live our life. My books are about the truth that I see and anything that can help another human being I write about.

Dr. Kent: You know, I’ve got to come back to this world record run. How is it possible to do that many miles every day for 46 days? What part of the US are you running across? The middle, the top, the bottom?

Richard Singer: I’m going to run starting in the middle, a little bit south of the middle. As far as I know right now that’s about right. Is it possible? I don’t know, I’m going to see. But I’m going to do everything in my power to do it.

Dr. Kent: It’s a 27 year old record, right? Talk about the old record.

Richard Singer: Yes it is. It was done and I believe that if something is done by a human being then I can certainly do it. And I really believe if I’m healthy along the way. There’s two people trying to do it now, I don’t know if they’re going to break it. I know the one can’t run anymore and he’s on a bike. He’s not going to break it. But the other one was doing very well.

Dr. Kent: Let’s talk about your charities and about the book. I would assume its coming out of the attempt. What charities are you going to benefit? You’re trying to raise a million dollars and what are your plans for writing a book afterwards, whether you’re successful or not?

Richard Singer: Yes, I’m definitely going to write a book afterwards and talk about the whole experience of this. One of the experiences for me was trying to get money out of people and that’s a very difficult experience. I’d like to write something about that. I live in the Cayman Islands so I’m trying to do a similar run across the Cayman Islands; which is about 85.5 miles to raise money for charity too. There are three separate charities in the Cayman Islands one is my own scholarship fund for at-risk youths, another is a mental health facility that’s here on the island and the last one is a great one. They help handicapped children scuba dive.

The incredible organization needed to do that on an island is like living in New York City. So those are here. The other charities in the US The ### Mental Health Foundation, The American Cancer Society, Make A Wish Foundation, Truth Drug & Alcohol Treatment Program, Animal Sanctuary that treats abused animals and I think the final one well I don’t have my notes in front of me. That may be all of them, but its distinct areas of life that I’m trying to benefit and things that I am passionate towards. Hopefully we can raise a lot of money towards that goal.

Dr. Kent: Now you have a couple of websites online, one is of course ricksinger.org, but you also have nowthemilliondollarrun. Is that the website for this project?

Richard Singer: Yes and there’s a lot of information on my website about is also called the milliondollarrun.org and that’s the site set up by the public system so there’s information on both websites. There’s a lot of information on ricksinger.org and anybody can call or email if they have questions or want to help out to do whatever for this project because it’s tremendous.

Dr. Kent: What do you hope to achieve with that project, with your children’s book, and with all of your books?

Richard Singer: I would like to achieve a transformation and I’m talking about a transformation of our world because I think it’s a mess. I think that if we all join together as one, which is very ideal but people can make changes and if we all join together we can make changes in society as well as the world as a whole because everything is connected. If we make changes ourselves it will emanate across the world.

Dr. Kent: It’s been a real pleasure chatting with Richard Singer. He’s the author of Daddy, What is Success? When’s that book going to come out?

Richard Singer: It’s coming out in December.

Dr. Kent: So we’ll look for that and we’ll check out milliondollarrun.org. We wish you the best of luck on that and even if you’re not successful with the run I think it’ll make a great story. It was a real pleasure chatting with you on the show.

Richard Singer: Thanks a lot. I would love to come back any time.

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is a musician of course the fourth guest of each show on sound authors is an author of sound. This group is called Circus Contraption. They are a non-profit organization and they are a hoot and they play incredible music. Here’s a song from Circus Contraption called Pink Elephants on Parade. When we come back after the tune, I’ll be chatting with Circus Contraption. Come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Sports, Travel, Motivation, TRANSCRIPTS, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST

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