Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

I'm interrupting my Top 20 countdown to catch up on some more recent books that I've completed. Among them is Garr Reynold's Presentation Zen, his book about . . . you guessed it: presentations! 



Actually, it's a fine book. Its main goal is to prevent Death by Powerpoint, perhaps the No. 1 health threat to the educated classes. Consider how many boring presentations you've been forced to sit through, presentations that, as delivered, ruin the ability to convey any useful information that the presenter may have to convey. Reynolds, a native of the U.S.  now residing in Japan, aims to help correct this threat to our sanity and welll-being. He does so through this book and his other writings. Reynolds uses the Zen aesthetic of minimalism to demonstrate to us how presentations don't need to bore us with too many words and too many bullet points. If you're a careful writer or speaker, none of his ideas should prove alien to you: brevity, clarity, and simiplicity are you're watchwords anyway. Nevertheless, it's good to have reminders, plus the aid of his eye for the visual. As a wordy guy myself, his pointers about using the visual for maximum effect--and we live in an increasingly visual world--are well worth the time, effort, and cost of the book. 

If you ever give a presentation, I highly recommend that you read this book before giving your next talk. I'll wager that both you and your audience will emerge the happier for your having done so. 

Favorites 5/20: Moral Man & Immoral Society

Moral Man and Immoral Society by Reinhold Niebuhr (1936). While Arendt presents a view of politics that arises out of her German existenz philosophy training with Heidegger and Jaspers, as well as her plight as a German-Jewish refugee and American émigré, Niebuhr is a homegrown American theologian (Lutheran) that provides an analysis of politics that I found captured my ascent and has maintained it. Niebuhr is rightly categorized as a political realist, but as you would expect from a Christian minister, his concern for fundamental values is not diminished. Indeed, his tragic view of politics has led me to re-read this book as an anchor about how to think of some of the great issues in our times. (I recall specifically re-reading it at the time of the first Iraq War.)

Favorites 4/20: The Human Condition

   The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (1956). This isn’t the firstArendt I read, I think that designation goes to Between Past and Future, which I have an image of reading in Cedar Falls the first year we were married. However, The Human Condition is probably the closest that Arendt came to laying out a systematic presentation of her very unique way of thinking about politics. Her ideas both fascinate and frustrate me, but then that’s what great books should do: push us to think. I haven’t read any Arendt in a while, but during my undergraduate and law school days, I had a real intellectual crush on her! 

Favorites 3/20: Moby Dick

    Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (1851). Fiction is under-represented on my list, and so are audiobooks,  and I've enjoyed both categories greatly, but this one belongs unquestionably. Melville is to my (limited) mind the greatest American novelist, and this book is the greatest American novel. Like ZAMM, it’s nominally about a journey, a quest, whaling, and so on, but when you put it all together, it’s a great tale, endlessly fascinating. 

Favorites 2/20: Nixon Agonistes

    NixonAgonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, by Garry Wills (1972). I owe a shout-out to political science (theory and philosophy) professor John S. Nelson for assigning this to an introduction to American politics class. I didn’t take the class, but I saw the book in the bookstore, and I’d taken other classes from him and found his selections sound. Well, this was more than sound. It combines the eye of a reporter with the analytic mind of a classicist (perhaps by necessity among the most versatile of scholars) in what is a classic of American political reporting the workings of American politics. If you had to read one book about American politics, this might be it. 

Intro & 1/20 Favorites: ZAMM

Having just finished reading ZAMM again, it led me to reflect on what other books belong on my all-time favorites list. I’ve done this with authors, but not with particular books (at least that I can remember). Of course, I have end-of-the-year lists of books and music that I should be attending to, and, of course, I worry that I’ll leave off some really great books (especially since I don’t have my library here in front of me). But even with all of these reasons not to attempt this, I’m going to do it anyway. What follows is in no particular order, just how they came to me as I started thinking and jotting my list about the subject. So for what it’s worth, here goes! 

     Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, by Robert Pirsig (1974; with a new introduction and postscript in later editions). One could go on at length about this book, but my most recent prior post will have to suffice for now. 

I'll continue posting until I have all 20 selections posted. Blogspot doesn't want to do 20 at once, it seems ("it's a piece of s**t" to borrow a turn of phrase). In any event, I will not be deterred.

Robert Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

If you haven’t read ZAMM, how should I describe it to you? It’s a travelogue, a father-son story, a ghost story, a journey story, a series of essays about topics philosophical and practical—I could go on, but for me it’s one of the best books that I’ve ever read (now for the third or fourth time), which I consider to be a high compliment indeed. 

This novel (perhaps too limiting a designation) created quite a sensation at the time of its publication in 1974. It reached bestseller status quickly, and it frequently appeared on college bookstore shelves, where I first saw it. I never had it assigned as a text, but a political science professor I had (John S. Nelson) assigned it in classes & often posted quotes from it (on 5/8 cards outside of  his Schaeffer Hall office). I don’t recall when exactly I first read it, but it immediately struck me as a great read. 

This time I happened to see it in a bookstore during a recent trip to Delhi, and I instinctively popped for it. Unlike many books that have to look at me for an extended period before I pick them up & read them, I didn’t let this one sit long before I plunged into it. It had been long enough since I’d last read it that I found it fresh, and, coincidentally, it proved topical because I’ve been working with young lawyers on their writing skills. The narrator taught rhetoric and composition, and he discusses teaching this topic as a part of the book. Indeed, a passing comment from a colleague while teaching rhetoric gave rise to this designation of “quality”, which becomes the key concept in the book. While “Chautauquas” (entertaining talks) on topics like teaching, motorcycle maintenance, and Quality (it quickly rises to the level of a proper noun) create an interesting part of the book, we also have the story of the narrator and his son Chris continuing their trek from Minnesota to San Francisco on the narrator’s motorcycle. A great number of poignant meetings and confrontations, with persons past and present and between father and son (past and present) mark this aspect of the story. 

I’m going to stop here because as I write this I'm frustrated by the fact that I can’t really do justice to this book. It has too many things going on for me to do justice to it. I suppose that the best thing that I can say is that I’ve never forgotten this book and I hope to read it again.  

I Hate Writing This Blog

In our compound, a young mother worries about her 2-year-old with a slight fever back in the U.S. with his dad. Iowa Guru & I anxiously await the arrival of our quite adult & capable daughters: just two drops in an ocean of concern and love that parents hold for their children. And then I read the news flash here in India about the shootings in Connecticut (Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown). I could not bear to look at the list of names & ages on the front page of the NYT this morning; it's too horrible. 

So horrible, so awful. President Obama's comments, here in video, display the common anguish that we all must feel. But after the shock and horror, which has become all too common, we must do something. 

Garry Wills in his blog post following this outrage puts our plight in biblical terms: we have our own Moloch--the gun. His refection on the outrage in Newtown, and repeated too many times before, captures my sense of despair at the idolatry that we practice in this country towards guns (among other things). We as a nation need to repent. 

This article by Nicholas Kristoff provides some thoughtful reflection and suggests changes that should prove politically feasible. I hope that he's only one of a flood of voices that creates a groundswell of action to address the issue of gun violence. I've set forth my opinions here and here. But I will not stop because this is too crazy. We, as a body politic, are crazy not to take practical and reasonable steps to limit gun violence. 

So as I write this and listen to Christmas music playing the background that celebrates the Nativity--the human joy of a new beginning with the birth of a child-- let me suggest a Christmas gift for me, you, and all of us: write the President, your senators, and your congressman, and tell them in no uncertain terms that we need to regulate firearms in an effective and reasonable manner. Let them know that you will hold them to account until we have a nation and as a state enact legislation that will truly work to prevent these all too common occasions of murder and mayhem.  





 

Movie Review: Coriolanus

This production of Shakespeare's Coriolanus  is the first production that I've seen, nor had I read it before. (By the way, this link is useful; also, it comforted me that  the great Shakespearean scholar A.C. Bradley and other agree with my sense of this play.) Directed and starring Ralph Fiennes in the title role, its an intense but not especially revealing drama. Similar to the Richard III filmed starring Ian McKellen from several years ago, it "updates" Shakespeare by using a contemporary setting. Indeed, as both films revolve around characters who make their mark in battle (and by general violence, with Richard), they are quite similar in this regard. Both reference fascist and militarist props--costumes, set design, and lots of guns & tanks--to set the scene. All of this works reasonably well, which is reassuring, because some contemporary settings for Shakespeare fizzle for me. One does, however, have to set aside the fact that until the advent of guns,  most fighting in both military and day-to-day situations was done hand-to-hand. (Okay, okay, I haven't forgotten Agincourt, but you get my point.) Guns take away this immediacy, but this production worked around this issue fairly well. 

Fiennes is a dynamic, raging, and proud Coriolanus, one that seems to fit the bill. Vanessa Redgrave as his mother, hautily proud, domineering, and ambitious for her son, provides a very compelling figure. Throw in Gerard Butler as Auffidius, the nemisis of Coriolanus, Brian Cox as Coriolanus' would-be mentor, and a pair of tribunes who play the roles of political hacks wonderfully, and you have a very sound production. 

In the end, Coriolanus isn't as compelling as Shakespeare's great tragedies, even of those about grasping for power, like Macbeth, but it does give us a strong image of the world of militarism, caesarism, mobacracy that we can still find in our world today. For this, it is worth seeing.  

Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

 
How does he do it? 

Alexander McCall Smith has a way with women that I can’t help but admire. Not a tom-cat way, not the way of a lothario; rather, he has a way of creating women in fiction that makes us like them right off. We—or I at least—find myself empathizing with his heroines, with the small and large battles they must fight in life, winning some and losing others, at times triumphant and other times feeling rather failures. Within the confines of this 276 page novel, we get to further know and appreciate Isabelle Dalhousie, the Scottish woman who edits The Journal of Applied Ethics. 

After creating the delightful Precious Romotswe and her world, you would have thought Smith could have said “good enough”. (If haven’t read any of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books or you haven’t seen the delightfully faithful HBO television production of some of the books, you have cheated yourself.) Instead, Smith has created the delightful Isabel Dalhousie, a single woman in her early forties who lives in Edinburgh, is independently wealthy, and who loves fine music and friends. She is not a detective, but she does get involved in things. In this book, she has a chance encounter with the recent recipient of a transplanted heart that leads her to new places and new thoughts. 

Assuming you read Iowa Guru in the Pink City, you know that I purchaed purchased Friends, Lovers, Chocolate on Saturday (examine the photo closely) and finished by Monday night. The writing is fine, but not difficult. McCall Smith’s style is workman-like, but his narrative touches lightly here and there, leaving little morsels of thoughtfulness revealed by Isabel’s actions and reflections. And while Isabel is a philosopher, one needn’t have any background to follow her thoughts or musings, just an appreciation of her inquisitive mind, much like Isabel’s housekeeper Grace keeps toward Isabel and her world. 

Like chocolate, one is tempted to gorge on this fare, but a rational mind, and further reflection (worthy of Isabel), prompt me to wait before acquiring the next book in the series, all in order to savor the delight that I expect to find in each one. Like a fine chocolate.

An Open Letter to the President, My Senators & Representives

Dear President Obama, Senators Grassley and Harkin, and Representatives Loebsak and Braley:

Now that the election has been decided and each of you will be serving our nation during the course of the next two years, I want to share my thoughts on issues that I hope you address. I know these are difficult issues, and not ones that politicians seem to want to avoid. Nevertheless, I think these are the issues that are in desperate need of appropriate action:

1. Economic Growth & Not Austerity as Our National Goal. We need to assure the long-term fiscal health of our nation, but we need to make sure that we do not torpedo badly needed economic growth and the restoration of good jobs in our nation. Going over the fiscal cliff would be among the stupidest decisions that our nation could make at this time. The main legitimate concern with the deficit comes from rising healthcare costs, and to the extent that controlling health care costs demand further attention, that issues should be addressed. We also need tax laws that benefit more than just the wealthiest Americans. Wealthier Americans need to accept a tax increase as a part of long-term fiscal stability. We always need to consider the efficiency of government and the appropriateness of programs, but slashing government programs at this time the kind of austerity that we’ve seen failing Britain and Europe and that would likely prove disastrous here.

2. Campaign Finance Reform. We need to reform our campaign finance system. Each party and each candidate and each PAC spends immense amounts of money on campaigns that usually sully the public discourse and that do not benefit voters. Much more importantly, each of all of us know that money talks, and that your honorable intentions notwithstanding, those who pay the piper call the tune. In the immediate aftermath of Watergate and the corruption of the political process that we experienced during that era, we had campaign-finance reform that did a reasonable job of leveling the playing field. That reform has now been hacked away and no longer provides us with meaningful protection. No billionaire, liberal or conservative, should be in a position to buy an election. An immediate change in our campaign finance system is imperative if we maintain the integrity of our political institutions. I don’t have an easy answer on how to do this, but this is an issue where Republicans and Democrats should find common ground if each side acts in the interest of American political institutions and not with an eye towards short-term advantage for their respective party.

3. Reasonable Firearms Regulation. The availability and abuse of firearms in the U.S. is disgraceful. As a resident of Iowa City over more than 30 years, our prosperous and generally law-abiding community as seen too much gun violence, and we are normally a sedate and happy group of people. As I’m now abroad, I am shocked and ashamed to read of continued gun violence in the U.S.: innocent victims are mowed down by individuals who’ve have quick and easy access to firearms. I won’t ask you to repeal the Second Amendment (although I would support repeal and replace it with something much more understandable and reasonable—I’m not talking about banning or confiscating firearms.)  However, I understand that repealing the Second Amendment is implausible. Instead, I do urge you to take every reasonable step to regulate firearms, as we do automobiles, pharmaceuticals, and any other number of items that could prove lethal. There are reasonable ways to do this, and both parties should be able to find some common ground as they did in the past to make some reasonable regulations that protect Americans from the random violence.

4. Action on Global Climate Change. Global climate change is no longer an issue that we can pretend doesn’t exist. The presidential campaign attempted to ignore it, but then came Sandy. I applaud President Obama for his acknowledgment of the issue in his victory speech. We must get past the head-in-the-sand approach that we’ve been taking and begin to think about how we can best address this common threat to humanity. It’s time for the U.S. to become a global leader again; not a laggard.

5. Avoid Wars. We must avoid military adventures as much as possible, acting only when no other option exists and when we are compelled to act by a very clear definition of our national interest (and not any other nation’s). This does not deny the importance of our allies; rather, if we act foolishly and continue to diminish our national resources on wasted wars we do no one any favors except those who would benefit by a diminishment of our capabilities.

Gentlemen, thank you for your continued service. I wish you the strength and courage that addressing these issues require. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely yours,

Stephen N. Greenleaf

Permanent address: 345 Magowan Ave., Iowa City, IA 52246

Temporary address: 4 Bhawani Singh Lane, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India 300005

Email: Greenleaf.stephen@gmail.com

Two Charlie Chaplain Films

Iowa Guru and I recently bought a box set of Charlie Chaplin films. We've watched two of them, and one learns that Chaplin was not simply a sad-sack, slapstick performer from the silent era, but an incredibly graceful and talented actor.

Modern Times is considered by many to be Chaplin's's greatest film. Made in 1936, it is in large measure a silent film, including large portions that use separate shots to display dialog, altougth later in the film some voice is used (as well as music). This film includes the famous scenes where Chaplin travels through a large series of gears. He winds through them like a reel of film through projector. This scene and other scenes that display work on an assembly line use his amazing slapstick sensibility. Yet, in another portion of the film, Chaplin dances, and he does so with the grace and litheness that is quite amazing.

Chaplin wrote and directed Modern Times, and in it you can appreciate his sense of concern about modern life and  especially the life of those less fortunate. The film centers on the destitution of those thrown out of work by the Depression and the often ugly demands placed on those who could work. The film also shows  "the little man" ensnared by the police and the legal system. Chaplin was eventually forced to leave Hollywood and the U.S. because of his alleged association with "Communists", but I think the fair assessment of hims would be of a person  who was concerned for the type of characters that he made famous. (If you haven't seen The Great Dictator, then you don't not have a complete appreciation of Chaplin's sense of injustice and support of democracy the belies any other charges that might be brought against him.)

The other film we viewed was A King in New York, the last feature film the Chaplin made. It was filmed in Great Britain and released in Great Britain in 1957, but was not released in  the US until 1967. In this film, Chaplin plays a king exiled to New York City. It again combines Chaplain's fascination with physical humor along with  cutting social satire. Chaplin ridicules the red hunting and red baiting that was plaguing the US in the 1950s. As a victim of such witch hunting, Chaplin had a full appreciation of what it entailed. Chaplin doesn't beat his audience over the head with anger or sarcasm, but instead he uses a gentle humorous ridicule and truly sympathetic characters who do their best when caught up in appalling circumstances. This latter Chaplin, which IG and I have seen in some other later films, is quite an appealing figure. For someone who began in the silent era, Chaplin always displays the utmost and consummate skills would truly fine actor.