“ I am Sam. Sam I am.” “Do you like Green Eggs and Ham?” “I do not like them Sam I am.”

I probably could quote from memory may more lines of this book — I read it so many times to each of my nephews, to my niece, to my daughters….and had it read to me at least three dozen times by Casey, the little red headed boy I worked with through the SMART program — he loved, loved, loved this book.  And I loved hearing the delight in his voice as he read it again and again until he practically could recite it without looking at the text.

I now have a nephew named Sam and I am sure that someday we will make for him green eggs and ham . . . and I hope he has the same delight in his eyes eating them as we will have in making them … and I hope that he too loves the book and the message of trying new things — and the value of persistence (how many times can you urge someone to try something (like eatingt green eggs and ham)  before they finally capitulate and do what you asked — and like it too!)

Phew, November is over and I posted a review a day!  I probably won’t keep up that same pace but it has been fun to do and I’ll keep at it….and will be linking all the books to my Powell’s partner page — so if you’re inclined to purchase the book, just click through and buy it at Powell’s — I’ll earn a small commission on each sale (at no cost to you) and I’ll donate all the proceeds to support charities in Ethiopia that support kids and education.

This is one of the most intellectually difficult books I’ve ever read.  Paul Farmer is a physician and a medical anthropologist.  Through the lens of health care around the world, he teaches us how  the world’s power structure ensures that the rich get richer, the poor suffer more and that the way to change is through hard work.

The book is part academic analysis and part storytelling with a purpose — just enough of the academic analysis to push you to stretch your brain cells to understand, but (luckily!) enough storytelling to keep you interested and willing to look up words you don’t know and thinking about ideas that you’ve never thought about before and finish the book.

Farmer takes you to villages on the high plateau of Haiti and prisons in northern Russia and clinics in Boston — all with his perspective of believing that the Bible and all human morals dictate a ‘preferential option for the poor.’  Farmer lives that preferential option and shows that even mere mortals can make choices that promote treating all people as truly equal.  Through the organization he started, Partners in Health, Farmer does just that.

So many of my friends know of Melissa Fay Greene’s writing because of her fabulous book There is No Me Without You.  But I came to know Melissa because of Praying for Sheetrock.  A dear friend sent me a copy as a gift with a card inside that said “those of us who spend our lives tilting at windmills must read this book.”

He was right.  It made me wish I had been born earlier so that I would have been old enough to have lived through the Civil Rights Movement as an adult — I would hope that I would have been there as a Freedom Rider….

And, Praying for Sheetrock was the most beautifully written book I’d ever read.  I didn’t know that prose could read like poetry (or maybe it is vice versa?)  The story is heartwarming and it tells of the civil rights movement in the south from the perspective of real people living their real lives in a way that created and caused real change.  It is a lovely book — and even if you don’t spend your life tilting at windmills, you should read it…

The story of Paul Farmer, as told by Tracy Kidder is extraordinary — not simply is Paul Farmer and the work he has done to improve the health and lives of  the poorest of the poor, in Haiti and elsewhere, but it is extraordinary in its literary narrative.  Kidder takes you inside — not just inside the health clinic that Farmer build in Haiti, or the prison he visited to treat TB in Russia, or the organization he started with Ophelia Dahl and Jim Kim (Partners in Health)  but inside the heart and soul of an amazing man, Paul Farmer.

I have given this book as a gift more times than I can count, and am reluctant to say much more about how great it is — because then some might think it was okay to just read the reviews and not read the book; but no review can capture the importance of this book, and no writer does justice to the excellence that Kidder achieves here.

I had the opportunity to interview Kidder once — here’s an excerpt from the Q&A that was published on Etude:

How did you chose Paul Farmer as a topic for this book?

I didn’t really pick him — fate put me in his path. I was doing a story on American soldiers in Haiti, and he showed up at an army outpost. I ran into him a few weeks later when we were on the same flight to Miami and we got to talking. I got so absorbed in the conversation — he was so friendly, so helpful. I saw him one more time after that, and kept in touch — at a distance — although my daughter says that I talked about him quite a bit. I didn’t pursue him for 6 years — though I got to know the outlines of his life well enough to believe it probably would be worth writing about.

I think I may have been hesitant about the story because Haiti shocked me. I’d been a soldier in Vietnam, but Haiti was so much worse. I’d never seen so much suffering and unnecessary death, and after I got back, I tried to reconcile the fact of Haiti with my very privileged life, which I thought I had earned. I knew if I started following Farmer around, it was going to disturb my life.

Somewhere in the late 90’s, 1999, I started hearing more about Farmer. Just as I say in the book, I heard that he was doing something notable in international health, something to do with tuberculosis. And it seemed to me that I’d waited long enough to try to approach him, and that I’d willfully turned away from a good story. So I did approach him, and he wasn’t eager to be written about. His two closest colleagues, in particular Jim Kim, encouraged him to do so. I think they felt, not so much that it would be good for Partners in Health, but it might be a way for them to get a little more attention, and maybe a way to help them raise more money which they are always in need of.

I traveled with [Farmer] for a month and wrote a profile for the New Yorker (“The Good Doctor” July 10,2000) which I think worked, but I was unsatisfied because there were so many stories yet to tell. So I asked him if he’d give me access to do a book and after some months he said yes.

Has your book had an impact on Farmer’s work?

I don’t really know. But Ophelia Dahl [Partners in Health Executive Director] tells me it that has brought attention, and a lot of fresh inquiries [to Partners in Health.] But unfortunately, a lot of the inquiries haven’t been accompanied by checks. At least not so far. It’s been a lot of people just wanting to volunteer for Partners in Health, but the problem is that PIH is so small that they are really not set up to take on the volunteers.

You do a wonderful job in the book of showing that Farmer is a human being, not a saint – was that difficult?

Thank you. It was clear to me, by the time I started writing –part of it came from a remark by a friend — that the reader would need an “everyman.” I needed someone to acknowledge, first of all, that this guy is for real, and also to acknowledge what anyone less virtuous is bound to feel in the company of someone who is so dedicated.

But built into this work is a kind of distance. It is an inherently unequal transaction because we’re talking and having a conversation about our lives and I’m taking notes and he is not.

For Thanksgiving Day, instead of a review, here are some of the books I’m most thankful for; books that have changed my life:

Miles from Nowhere by Barbara Savage — I would have never gone on Odyssey 2000 if I hadn’t first read that book.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume — the first book I remember loving; it made me feel so ‘normal’

Green Eggs & Ham by Dr. Suess — I read this book with a little boy named Casey when I was a volunteer for the SMART program.  He loved the book so much that we read it pretty much every single week.  Sometimes twice in a day.  Once, he read it backwards.  He taught me that you can love words even if you read them in an order different from how the author wrote them.

There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene — MFG tells the story of children like my daughters with love and compassion and such beautiful language that it makes you cry.

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder – Paul Farmer became my hero and Partners in Health my guide for how to do good in the world.

This Voice in My Heart by Gilbert Tuhabondye – Gilbert taught me what courage really means, and how hope can overcome hatred.

Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer — with his description of structural violence Farmer gave language to the phenomenon I had seen in my work but never knew how to describe and through his dedication to the poor, Farmer gave me a framework for viewing every thing I do.

There are so many more books to be grateful for….

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind:  Paul Newman and a ride home.”

So begins (and ends) one of the best books I’ve ever read.  I read it for the first time more than 30 years ago, and have re-read it dozens of times.  I still laugh (when Cherry Valance throws the Coke in Two Bits face) and cry (when Johnny talks about how his parents don’t care whether he is alive or dead) every time I read it.

I’m not sure what it is about the book — it is not like I really relate to the characters’ lives — I grew up in a middle class neighborhood filled win intact families, never considered joining a gang or going to a rumble.  And even the Socs aren’t really descriptive of anybody I know.

Perhaps it is the language, which is evocative of emotion.  Or maybe it is the universal truths — that ‘family’ can be defined by more than those to whom you are related by blood.

My belief in the greatness of this novel was reinforced when I began to read it to my 12 year old daughters — they really don’t love being read to.  But this book, these characters, kept them begging for ‘one more chapter, pleeeeaaaassseee mom.’   And months later, one will say “hey, that guy looks like I imagine Ponyboy to look like.” “No he doesn’t” her sister will argue.  And they will fight about whether Ponyboy had brown hair or dirty blond and then begin to talk about the book.  That never happens. — or at least it had never happened before.  I’m sure we’ll read The Outsiders again and again — and hopefully will continue to argue about what Ponyboy and Sodapop really look like for many years to come.

As you drive north from Eugene to Portland, at mile marker 225, look west.  You will see a range of hills.  The end one, known to most as Mary’s Peak, looks — to those who have read The Little Prince — exactly like an elephant inside of a boa constrictor.  Every time I make the trip, I look  forward to that mile post. When I  see that elephant, I think of my good friend, The Little Prince.

I have read this book more times than I can count and in two different languages.  It is a children’s book, but it is so much more than that. It has more wisdom in its 96 pages than tomes of philosophy or those labeled the Great American Novel.

There are so many things about this book that I love:  the simplicity of the characters, the depth of their souls.  The rose that the little prince cares for (even though she is a bit of a whiner…)  And the fox, who reminds the prince that consistency of affection is important.  What is essential is invisible to the eye.  With that in mind, I re-read The Little Prince time and time again for the opportunity to glimpse the essential, to be reminded of what really matters.

There are a few books that have literally changed my life — and this is one of them.  Miles from Nowhere is a book about a couple who take about two years to ride their bikes around the world.  They suffer through bad drivers in Florida, monkeys in the toilet in India and too many pastries in many European countries.  They have flat tires and sunburnt faces and cold showers — and enough adventures to last a lifetime.

I read the book back when I was in law school and vowed that someday, someway, I too would ride my bike around the world.  I imagined doing it with a friend or spouse or maybe a small group.  I never imagined that 15 years after I read the book I would take off for a year with 250 other kindred (and perhaps not so kindred) souls for a year long bike trip around the world.  But I did, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of Odyssey 2000 — and I know that I would have never even known to want to do that trip if I hadn’t first read Miles from Nowhere.   It is a book that will entertain you with every page and open your heart for dreaming.

I have read and re-read this book at least a dozen times, but the best time is now — I’m reading it out loud to my daughters who are reading it for a class.  The story is engaging, but it is the language that enthralls me — I love reading with a southern drawl (my daughters complain that I read to slow — but one cannot read this book quickly — one must savor each drawn out syllable.)

I used to be a criminal defense attorney, and have always admired Atticus’ commitment to represent those without a voice.  What an inspiration. . . .but it is Scout, that little girl with a huge heart and an independent spirit beyond her size that I hope will inspire my daughters.  I hope they will fight like she does and ignore convention when convention is wrong.  And I hope that they will see how awful it was for people of color in the Jim Crow South, and know how far we’ve come — but also know that there are still many fights to be fought, and they can be like Scout in fighting those fights.

Early in March, Thomas Friedman spoke to a sold out audience at Portland State University about his latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – And How it Can Renew America. He focused his lecture – which was really just an hour-long description of his book – on the big, broad theme of ‘the Energy-Climate era’ we live in.

In the book he describes five big problems – energy supply and demand, petro-dictatorship, climate change, energy poverty, and biodiversity loss. He explains – in great detail, over many chapters of the book — how each of these problems has been growing  more serious for many years, and how they have reached a ‘critical mass’ or a ‘tipping point’ in the last few years.

Friedman is very America-centric.  He seems to believe that America – and only America – can solve the world’s environmental problems.  But he does recognize (and illustrates it rather humorously) that the rest of the world does not always agree with him.  He started his lecture the way he starts his book: with an advertising slogan appearing on a billboard in South Africa by Daimler promoting the Smart “forfour” car.  “German Engineering, Swiss innovation, American nothing.”

Friedman ended his lecture the way he ends his book:  with a story from a eulogy given by Amory Lovins at a memorial service for the environmental pioneer Dana Meadows. Lovins describes an email that he received from Dana about a father home alone with his daughter.  ‘He was trying to read the paper but was totally frustrated by the constant interruptions.  When he came across a full page of the NASA photo of the Earth from space, he got a brilliant idea.  He ripped it up into small pieces and told his child to try to put it back together.  He then settled in for what he expected to be a good half-hour of peace and quiet.  But only a few minutes had gone by before the child appeared at his side with a big grin on her face.  ‘You’ve finished already?’ he asked.  ‘Yep’ she replied.  ‘So how did you do it?’  ‘Well, I saw there was a picture of a person on the other side, so when I put the person together, the Earth got put together too.”

It’s a good story and it reflects Friedman’s optimism that we humans can solve these global problems.  It also reflects the beauty of the organization I work for, ELAW, which is a global network of environmental and human rights advocates:  Connecting people – putting people together –  might be the best way to protect our planet.