From Work to Ancient Warfare

Well, I didn't quite finish Working, but I needed to move on so I could get to more of my books. I've chosen one of my "M" books this time: Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World, by Adrienne Mayor, a research scholar in the Classics Department at Stanford University. Here is her website: Adrienne Mayor. And here is her picture, which I copied from that website:

Adrienne Mayor

The book was published in 2003, but has been since updated with a new introduction by the author. It is quite fascinating so far. I had a notion that chemical and biological weapons were deployed in ancient times, but really didn't know the vast extent. This area of history is Ms. Mayor's life's work, apparently, and you can feel her enthusiasm on every page.

People are capable of quite diabolical means of terrorizing and destroying one another, a reality we continue to face. Not much has changed over the millennia, except that our methods have become ever more lethal. I'll have more to say about particulars as I read further. Later . . .

Working Winding Down at Last

Well, I've been away for a while, but I've been continuing to read Working and enjoying it. The book is so big that it's taking a long time to finish.

Some of the things I found worth noting about this book:

1.  There are a great many different jobs out there, some of them still in existence despite the passage of forty years.

2.  Almost every person interviewed liked something about his or her job.  A few people liked everything about their jobs.

3.  A few people were not very likable and were in fact despicable. A couple of people were downright frightening. But most of the people seemed to be ordinary people with some flaws and some virtues. I wonder if they weeded out all the really bad people before putting the book together. 

4.  There were a number of people who were prescient concerning the way things were going with respect to work.  For instance, some people thought that automation was slowly taking away jobs. Other people feared that unions were fading out of importance.  Some people could see the demise of mom and pop stores and independent businesses.

5.  The interviewees were steeped in their time--the early 70s, with all its hippies and counter culture and racial strife and war worries and women's lib. It was fun to get that reminder of what things were like back then for ordinary people.

6.  There are a wide variety of people interviewed, each different from the other. I appreciated that.  I think the compilers did a very good job of making it an interesting book.

I'll be glad to be finished with it, however, because I'm finally going to get done with the T's (except for one more Terkel book which I am saving for later).

I don't know what I'm reading next, but I'll keep you posted!


Studs Terkel

Mysteries of Working

I took a little detour the last couple of weeks to read a Ruth Rendell mystery--her latest, No Man's Nightingale--as a reward for staying on my diet for an entire week. (More on that in my diet blog, Following Shirley.) But yesterday I went back to reading Studs Terkel's Working and was once again reminded of what an excellent book it is.

One of the things that struck me about Working is its descriptions of jobs that are no longer available to people. There were quite a few, but those I remember the best so far are telephone operator and installment dealer.

The job of telephone operator was very important back before direct dialing was common and when people didn't have long distance because it was so expensive or because they didn't have a private line. Also very common then was to use a pay phone. So there were a lot of operators, but they weren't paid very well, probably because they were women for the most part and because it wasn't a highly skilled job (at least, according to employers). But the interviewee's description made the work sound very difficult--long days spent sitting in one spot in an uncomfortable chair with a headset on, talking, talking, talking, pulling and pushing the connectors, biting her tongue when a caller was rude or abusive.

The operators weren't allowed many breaks and they weren't allowed to waste time chatting with a caller. Sometimes that was a problem, such as when the person on the other end of the line seemed to desperately need to talk to someone. The operator Terkel interviewed said that she felt bad when a soldier would call from Vietnam and the number he was wanting was busy or not answering and she would have to disconnect even though she could tell he was really lonely and wanted to talk to her.

That made me remember the song by Jim Croce, "Operator," in which he tells the operator that she was "so much more than kind" to stay on the line with him when he was trying to call his old girlfriend who had dumped him for his best friend. I also remembered how little we cared about the soldier during the Vietnam War and how now we would bend over backward to provide the soldier with someone to talk to. Of course, these days we provide them with cell phones and Skype and every other kind of communication device such as email and Facebook and Twitter so they can stay in touch with their loved ones. It makes me feel sad that we were so indifferent to those guys during the Vietnam War.

The job of installment dealer was one I'd never heard of. The man being interviewed said that he sells credit rather than merchandise. He goes door to door asking people what they need and he gets it for them on the installment plan. He works for himself, catering to people who can't go shopping or don't want to and extends credit to them for the cost of the item. He then collects the weekly payment in person. It's amazing to think that this service was still needed back in 1970 when these interviews were being conducted. No one needs the service anymore, of course, thanks to the ubiquity of credit cards, catalogs and online shopping opportunities. And that's too bad, I think. Another opportunity for face-to-face human interaction is gone.

The dealer told an interesting story about riots in the city where he worked (Chicago, probably) following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. He had many customers in the ghetto, he said, and had a hard time getting to them to collect his weekly payment during and after the riots. A few of his customers were burned out. Some of them, afraid for his life, sent him the payments in the mail. In his description, he speaks respectfully of his impoverished customers. I think he really felt he was needed and was doing them a genuine service. When later in his career he changed to working in the white suburbs, he said, he was dealing with "honkies" who fled the city due to the changing racial mix. He didn't seem to have as much respect for those people.

This is a fascinating collection of stories and one I believe everyone should read. But it's a thick book, so I'll be dwelling in this world a while longer.

Until next time . . .

Woman Wandering in the Working Class, Wondering about Will

Well, I finished Working Class Women in the Academy, and was inspired to get back to my dissertation topic. I came up with all kinds of ideas that I could apply to a possible article or book on working class as represented in Shakespeare. I've also been reading Radical Shakespeare, by Chris Fitter. It's a literary criticism book on the element of lower class resistance in some of Shakespeare's plays. That is, of course my topic, but I see that no one is arguing exactly what I'm arguing yet. It gives me hope.

In addition to those two books, a third book that I've started reading is actually on my reading list, Working, the famous and wonderful book of oral history by Studs Terkel. It relates to my topic, and I can check off one more "T" book when I've finished it!

So, I'm steeped in working class issues at a very good time, it seems, since it's lately been a media focus: the increasingly wide gap between rich and poor giving people a cause for concern.

I'm having fun with all this. I'll get back to you with my thoughts soon.