Saturday October 9 7:30 pm
If you have a fondness for psychedelica, Paul Krassner’s new compilation, Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs: From Toad Slime to Ecstasy, will prove to be a pleasurable trip. Modeled, in a sense, on the Chicken Soup for the Soul franchise (Krassner dropped the original title, Magic Mushrooms for the Soul, when threatened with a lawsuit), it contains a profusion of stories by or about such luminaries as John Lennon, Ken Kesey, Ram Dass, William Burroughs, and John Lilly. Krassner begins with his own piece about the late Terence McKenna, to whom the book is dedicated.
Tuesday October 12 7:30 pm
In the anthology Secrets and Confidences: The Complicated Truth About Women’s Friendships, you will find recollections of friends made and friends lost, of friends who are lifesavers and friends who could not be saved, of the lure of the dangerous friend and the comfort of the one who knows you best—not to mention a cheerful tribute to Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous. Joining editor and contributor Karen Eng are Sara Bir, who writes of that archetypal childhood girlfriend activity of playing with Barbies—only these Barbies were fortyish and ran design companies and investment brokerages—and Joshunda Sanders, who remembers the girl at school who seemed at first to be the most threatening person there but who later turned out to be her best support.
Wednesday October 13 7:30 pm
George Lakoff, professor of linguistics and cognitive science at UC Berkeley, and author of Moral Politics, returns to Black Oak in a timely way to discuss his new book, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate—The Essential Guide for Progressives. He believes that the Republicans have become expert at framing issues, and because of this they are able to repeatedly define what gets debated. Meanwhile, the Democrats, by not utilizing this skill, are continually caught in the trap of being forced to respond on Republican terms. “Progressives have a lot to learn about persuading swing voters to our cause, and there’s no better teacher than George Lakoff.”—Daniel Ellsberg
Thursday October 14 7:30 pm
Michael Parenti, author of The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome, will discuss his new book, Superpatriotism. In it he argues that fear, unthinking support of governmental policies, and the suppression of dissent have supplanted the real patriotism of informed debate and commitment to democracy. Finding what he calls a “messianic nationalistic morality” woven into many aspects of America’s culture such as sports, the military, and religion, Parenti calls for replacing this jingoism with policies that actually serve the needs of humanity at home and abroad.
Sunday October 17 7:30 pm
Award-winning natural historian Gary Paul Nabhan takes us on a culinary odyssey through the new field of evolutionary gastronomy. In Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity, he explores the “ghosts of evolution” hidden within every culture and its traditional cuisine, finding that some biological traits that are typically considered to be genetic disorders may at the same time be seen as positive adaptations that allow people to better fit the environments they are living in. He writes that “our ancestral homelands do not lie in some remote, nearly unreachable place, but instead are embedded in our genes and cultural food preferences.”
|
Tuesday October 19 7:30 pm
Glenn W. Smith has covered politics as a journalist, managed campaigns, and worked with advisors to both the Democratic and Republican parties. In The Politics of Deceit: Saving Freedom and Democracy from Extinction he asserts that both parties increasingly rely on the cynical manipulation of public opinion as their chief means of winning elections, which in turn is eroding the American tradition of participatory democracy. He believes that, in counterpoint to this trend, the tremendous evolution of new interactive media—including the successful efforts of MoveOn.org and other online groups—signals a new era of grassroots political activism. “From straight out of the frontline trenches of political warfare, Glenn Smith gives us some genuinely original thinking, a few laughs, and a glimpse of a better world.” --Molly Ivins
Wednesday October 20 7:30 pm
Asad AbuKhalil, professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, and visiting professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley, joins us to discuss The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power, a critical account of Saudi Arabia and the complex relationship between it and the United States. He argues that the United States has for decades protected Saudi Arabia from criticism of its long history of repression and human rights abuses. “For anyone who wishes to understand the background of perhaps the most extreme ideology in the Middle East, this book is a must.” --Rashid Khalidi
Tuesday October 26 7:30 pm
Esteemed poet Gary Snyder returns to Black Oak to read from Danger on Peaks, his first collection of new poems in twenty years. He begins with poems about climbing Mount St. Helens in 1945 as atomic bombs are being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He visits there again in 2000 to view the site of the 1980 eruption, writing that “I had asked Mt. St. Helens for help / the day I climbed it… / If you ask for help it comes. / But not in any way you’d ever know….” He follows this with poems on the statues of Buddha destroyed by the Taliban, and the attack on the World Trade Center. Interspersed with these are poems of the every day, of “intimate, immediate life, gossip, and insight.”
Wednesday October 27 7:30 pm
Ray Raphael, author of A People’s History of the American Revolution, brings us another re-examination of our country’s history in Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past. Thirteen well-known tales—among them Paul Revere’s ride, the “shot heard ’round the world” (the opening salvo of the Revolutionary War), and Patrick Henry’s famous rallying cry, “Give me liberty or give me death”—come into question under Raphael’s skeptical gaze. He feels it is crucial that these exaggerated tales of individual heroism be replaced with the understanding that much of the founding of America was a collaborative enterprise, “the work of hundreds of thousands of dedicated patriots. . . . That’s a story we do not have to conjure, and what an epic it is.”
|
