Flu-enabled Book Review: Lone Survivor

My son shared his sickness with me this week, so I spent 2 days sick from work. When I'm not feeling well, I read.

Just by chance, I had been lent a copy of Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell the day before. It is the true story of Operation RedWing, an attempt to capture someone Marcus pseudonymous calls Ben Sharmak. 4 SEALS go into the Afghan mountains. 1 survives.

The book is comprehensive of the experience - he spends 2 chapters on SEAL training, some more time on life in Baghdad and his first month in Afghanistan. Then he dives into Operation RedWing. From the initial insertion to the firefight with Sharmak's army, and then Marcus' final capture by friendly Afghans who save his life and grant him sanctuary.

There are stereotypes a-plenty: the tough, cussing, lovable SEALS, the wimpy liberal media, the evil Taliban. There isn't a lot of gray in Luttrell's world. Maybe he doesn't do nuance. But the man is tough, loves his buddies, and loves his country. He needs this "I am invincible and my cause is right" attitude to do his job well, and it's a job that needs doing. And he doesn't hate all Afghans. He's just so used to interacting with Afghans that he's supposed to fight that it takes him a while to figure out that the friendly people are actually friendly.

The book is really informative, engrossing (although his arrogance bugged me sometimes), and makes you think. Operation RedWing went awry when the SEAL team was surprised by 3 Afghan goatherds and a flock of goats. The unarmed goatherds surrendered and waiting while the SEALs discussed their options. Kill them now and get out to save themselves; let them go and hope the goatherds didn't tell anyone about them and get out. Option 1 meant almost certain trial for murder back home. Option 2 meant that they all might die. Evidently, tying them up was not an option.

If you don't mind constant profanity, this is as good of a first-hand account of a SEAL operation as you're likely to ever read. I came away from it changed.

Concert Review: Casting Crowns

I'm generally not a Christian Rock listener. I know that God is great, and sure I love Him, but music can say so much more about our journey on earth. It was at first with skepticism that I listened to Casting Crowns about a year ago. They turned into one of my favorite bands.

Casting Crowns is a 7-person ensemble: 3 guitars, lead vocalist, piano, drums, and violin. They all work in youth ministries in Atlanta. Being a band is a secondary thing for them. Their music is viscerally real - you can tell when you listen to them that these songs are from real experiences. And they're good. The lyrics are not overly predictable, the melodies are not too predictable, either. The performance is tight - what you hear on the album is what you hear on the stage.

Stained Glass Masquerade starts off with, "Is there anyone that fails? Is there anyone that falls? Am I the only one in church today feeling so small?" and goes on to deal with the facade we so often put up at church despite the turmoil in our lives. The Voice of Truth tells the story of the lead singer's struggles with dyslexia and ADD, "...and the waves look down and they laugh at me, reminding me of all the times I've tried before and failed" and he vows that because "the voice of truth tells me a different story, the voice of truth says 'do not be afraid'", he will listen and obey the voice of truth.

These are heart-rending, and strengthening stories that have helped Katrina and I to reconnect with each other and get better perspective on our lives.

The concert was great. It was at the Rolling Hills Community Church in Tualatin. It seats a little over 2,000 people and it was nearly a sellout crowd. Brenton Brown opened. I didn't know any of his stuff, and most of it was praise songs. But some of them were really nice. He played a subdued 40-minute set, and Casting Crowns came out. There was a lot of good music, some genuine plugs for Global Vision, some explanations for where songs came from, and some preaching. It was a really great mix - entertaining, uplifting, awesome.

We'll go to their next show in the area, too. It had better be soon!

Mortality and Sugar

I had a physical 2 weeks ago. The blood work came back, predictably, with high cholesterol. I'd had the diagnosis before, but I had 2 infants, school, and work to deal with and I put it off. With Katrina's consent.

This time, I have no excuses. I am known in the office for having a desk drawer piled to the brim with snacks. I'm a little overweight by medical standards, but perfectly normal by American standards. Nonetheless, it was time to lose those extra 30 pounds.

Directions from the doctor: gain upper body muscle mass, change my diet to low-fat and low carb. Come back in 6 months for a retest. Goal: reduce/remove belly fat, reduce bad cholesterol to more reasonable level. Given that calories consumed - calories burned = weight lost/gained, I resolved to work on both sides of the equation.

1) add some weight routine to my bike commute. Slow start on this, but I've been off the weights for a few months

2) reduce snack consumption at work. No soda at work this week, haven't opened my Oreos, and cut my Hershey mini-bar and cashew/cranberry consumption in half

3) reduce high fat/high calorie portions in meals. I've substituted salads and fruit for larger portions of entrees.

Results: I am shocked, SHOCKED by the difference in my concentration level at work. I'm getting more done with higher quality. I used to grab some sugary thing to "get going", but now I realize that the constant sugar buzz made thinking simply impossible. I'm able to deal with a low-level hunger pang for longer. I don't know if I've lost weight this week. I'm going to give this particular lifestyle a few weeks to see if it makes any difference in my Dr's goals, and then I'll start to weigh in. I'll go more aggressive if I need to at that point.

So I guess the big shock is that sugar is bad. Lay off it, America! It only brings you down!

September 11th in Perspective

8 years ago this morning, I woke up, got ready for work, kissed my wife and baby girl goodbye and, humming to myself, plopped into my black 1990 Ford Taurus to go to work in Silicon Valley. The first things I heard out of the radio were simply unbelievable. NPR was reporting that airplanes had run into skyscrapers in NY.

At the office, we had 2 TVs tuned to the news. I watched one of the towers crumble on live TV. I was struck with horror, and thought to myself, "This will be known as some kind of terrible Tuesday forever." I had watched people die on TV. It made my skin crawl to realize it.

The unity and grief I felt were real and visceral. I was shell-shocked for the rest of the day, and took several weeks for my life, even on the left coast, to feel normal again. But normal was different - there was a war in Afghanistan and the whole world was behind us. Terrorism had suddenly become something that did not just happen in far away places any more.

Over the past 8 years, I've put 9/11 in a long list of obvious tragedies that never should have happened: Stalin starving the Ukrainians, the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Tokyo, Chernobyl, Rwanda. Those were all events that had a date. And most of them get press coverage. I've also added a long list of individual tragedies that do not receive similar attention: deaths from diabetes, drunk driving, child abuse, addiction, torture.

I will never have as deep a connection with 9/11 as I do with drunk driving. When I was working as an interpreter, I got a call from the Japanese consulate one evening. I had to call the family of an exchange student and tell them their daughter was not going to survive the night. I met them in the hospital later to discuss taking their child off life support. Death due to drunk driving is 100% preventable. It kills thousands of people each and every year, not just once. I have a similar personal connection with cancer and mental illness.

I do not expect anyone else to share my personal connections with these issues. Everyone has a life story that speaks to them uniquely. In my life story, 9/11 was a major event. Hearing a father wail in agony when I told him his daughter would not live was life changing. Talking a dear friend through a suicide attempt was life-changing.

So I don't begrudge people their desire to keep 9/11 as a private day of grief. In their life perspectives, that will always be a defining moment.

For me, who has been touched much more strongly by other life events, please allow me to put 9/11 in my own life perspective. A tragedy, certainly. But over 100,000 people have died from drunk driving in the last 8 years. 21,000 people die each year from lack of health care. Do 2,9993 individuals who died on the same day overshadow the same thousands that die on individual days? In my life perspective, they do not.

So think of 9/11 in your way, and I'll think of it in mine. We will probably never agree. And that's okay. We've lived different lives.

Book Review: The Final Encyclopedia by Gordon R Dickson

This is my first book by Gordon R Dickson, so I offer no judgments on him as an author. This is one of the last books of the Childe Cycle, a series that Dickson started early in his career and hadn't finished 30 years later.

The story involves Hal Mayne, a remarkable 16 year-old who was found as an orphan and raised by 3 tutors from very different societies. Dickson posits the homogeneity and mutual exclusivity of these societies as a given - the Dorsai are all good fighters, the Friendlies are all religious fanatics, the Exotics are all wimpy rich philosophers. The people on other inhabited planets are not really part of the story. There is a group of people called the Others that are gradually taking control of human societies, and Bleys Ahren's goal is to stop humanity's evolution so that he and the Others can control it. Hal's job, obviously, is to stop Bleys from his nefarious plot.

Hal is a very likable character. I did not like Eragon early on his journey. Hal is never petulant, though, and doesn't complain. He is extremely fortunate in that meets the exact people he has to meet to survive at every step of the way. By the end of the book, Hal is in his early 20s. This is just one part of an epic story - there is no final showdown at the end. That must be in the next book. Dickson lets Hal take some hard knocks, and he is not immediately well-liked. He comes through each right of passage pretty well, though.

This is a largely intellectual book - the ideas and societal flows are just as important to the plot as the life-and-death action sequences. There are large sections of bloviating - page after page of expository, reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged. The most important thing any character seems to do is give a 10-minute speech to a large audience. This will obviously motivate them to give up everything they have for the speaker's cause.

Despite the novel's obvious oversimplifications and bloviatingness, though, I found myself drawn to it time and again. I wasn't sad when it was over - but if it had continued I would have kept reading. Overall, a good book, a coherent book, and a book with characters we can like even though the minor characters are caricatures. It is also an interesting thought experiment on the future of humanity - this is a future that sounds somewhat plausible, and that is what makes it worth the effort.