Ahsoka

Star Wars was not a huge part of my childhood.  I had some friends who knew more about it than I did, but it really wasn’t part of what I grew up with.  My biggest Star Wars memory from my early childhood is that we had a Play-Doh® set that included molds for various Star Wars characters.  Since mushing lots of different colors of Play-Doh® together results in kind of an olive green, I think we probably had a pretty realistic Yoda.  In high school, I had a friend whose car had a dome light that popped out of the ceiling and could pivot around.  He referred to his car as Vader and this light as his lightsaber.  That’s about as close as I got to Star Wars for a while since it was something the popular kids liked, meaning I avoided it.  In college, a roommate was a big fan and tried to show us the prequels.  I fell asleep.  One of my other roommates powered through, but only because he thought Natalie Portman was hot.  This distance from one of the world’s largest franchises changed a couple years ago when, during Christmas break, we checked out the original movies, watched them, and the kids went nuts about them.  That hasn’t really subsided.

Ahsoka by E. K. Johnston (ISBN: 978-1-4847-8231-6) is the story of former Jedi Padawan, Ahsoka Tano (trained by no other than Darth Vader’s former self, Anakin Skywalker), no longer a Jedi, constantly on the run like others who had been Jedi or Jedi in training at the time of the infamous Order 66.  She has hopped from one outlandish Star Wars planet to another, always trying to steer clear of the Empire, but never really managing to do so.  Her background as a warrior and soldier is constantly catching up to her, too.  The book follows her adventures as she lands in another situation where her better nature and her military skills come in handy to help a few people fight against the oppression of the Empire.  She ends up, after overcoming an internal struggle between Ahsoka on the run and Ahsoka the Jedi, helping people from multiple planets, all the while fighting off evil Imperials, including the super creepy inquisitors, who care nothing for the people and planets they oppress.

This was my first-ever attempt at reading a Star Wars-related novel (although I had seen some of the original, now called the “Extended Universe,” when I was a kid on the shelves at others’ homes or in the library).  It was better than I expected, but, then again, I didn’t know what I expected.  I thought it was written just fine and included a couple decently memorable characters in addition to the eponymous heroine.  Her character was probably my favorite, though.  It was maybe a little obvious what was going to happen, but it didn’t detract from the story or make it boring.  Even when it’s fiction, it’s nice to see the good guys overcome the bad guys.  Like all things Star Wars, the book left plenty of open ends so people can come in and write sequels or make movies or produce cartoon series.  Fans of the Jedi will like the novel.

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A P.O.W.’s Story

This policy of “communistic humanitarianism” was not invented for the POWs.  It was the standard policy of treatment toward their own people as well.  Play ball with the party or get your skull crushed in!  Here was a policy that held no promise for individual rights and freedom, the dream of all people, but instead threatened punishment for nonconformity to a dehumanizing system.  It was a dirty blanket thrown over the heads of the people, to extend absolute control over them, depriving them of their individuality and eliminating personal initiative to strive for a better life.
The Vietnam War is one I — probably to my detriment — know little about.  It is skipped over in American high school with little more than a few comments about just what the word “quagmire” means and how it was an example of American — sometimes described as “imperialist” — overreach.  I think that is the prevailing opinion of most people born since about 1970.  As I have watched events unfold in my lifetime, and especially since September 11th, I have come to question that well-established assessment a little more.  Couple that line of thought with a natural interest in history, and stuff about one of America’s forgotten wars has caught my eye a little.

A P.O.W.’s Story: 2801 Days in Hanoi by Larry Guarino (ISBN: 0-449-00099-0) is one POW’s memories of his time as a prisoner during the Vietnam War.  The book, essentially a memoir, described Guarino’s memories of his experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.  He describes many aspects of the experience from the mundane everyday to the surreal to the explosive.  The reader learns about going to the bathroom as a POW, being used in a propaganda film, and the cruel torture sessions.  The majority of POWs lived true to the code of honor that the U.S. military asked them to live by, doing all that was in their power to stymie the Vietcong.  They thought up codes and other ways of communicating, they went on hunger strikes, they frustrated the Vietnamese attempts at using the POWs in propaganda, and they held out as long as they could under torture.  For some, the results were deathly or resulted in lifelong crippling.  For all, there were ghosts that lingered long after the war.  The story told chronologically and had a lot more detail in the beginning; toward the end it was just more of the same.  The detailed view into life as a POW included a view light moments, too.  Eventually, the war is over and repatriation becomes real, not just a dream.

A memoir may not be the most academically rigorous place to start one’s exploration of the Vietnam War, but the book was available for free, and, if nothing else, sparked a greater interest.  I was appreciative of Guarino’s openness about some aspects of the whole situation.  He noted that each POW could tell his own story and that, because everyone’s experiences are different and are interpreted in our own minds differently, each story would be unique.  He understood that not all men could hold out as he did and that he himself was not as strong as others.  He and the other POWs respected all who put forth their best efforts.  I found him to be open-minded and respectful of differing viewpoints.  He realized that America afforded all people the chance to think as we like, and he claimed (and I believe him) to have no problem with people who were against the war, only those who took steps to aid and abet the enemy.  It seemed a fair viewpoint.  I was struck by the dedication and commitment shown by many of the POWs.  Since there were hundreds of POWs, I can’t be certain, but my impression was that a majority came out and, sooner or later, carried on with life.  It seems that, as with most things, they just made them different back then.  Most of the men were simply doing what their country asked of them.  Most of them understood or came to understand that Communism was a mess and stood for everything that America didn’t.  War, of course, is a messy business, one better off left untouched, so before making too many judgements on this one, I’d like to learn more, and Guarino’s book helped stoke that interest, both because of the personal stories and because of the larger geopolitical issues at stake.

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Pros and Cons

I’ve never been a big NFL fan (for the most part, the games are played on the wrong day).  When I was a kid, Steve Young played for the 49ers, and since he had previously played for BYU, I was nominally a 49ers fan.  Steve Young, though, seems to have been a pretty decent guy and was (and is) a guy worthy of emulation by young boys tossing footballs around backyards and parks across America (if anyone still does that since that level of freedom requires unscheduled time and so-called free-range kids, both a rarity and both not really the subject of these couple paragraphs).  On the other side of Steve Young, there was the NBA’s Charles Barkley selling products by telling the world, “I am not a role model.”  Even as a young kid, I knew that was an out-and-out lie.  Whether professional athletes want to be or not, they are role models.  That is unfortunate, considering the standard behavior of most of them.

Pros and Cons: The Criminals Who Play in the NFL (ISBN: 0-446-60747-9) by Jeff Benedict and Don Yaeger delves into the subject of the behavior of professional athletes (and, in a way, college and high school athletes since the authors not that professional athletes who get a pass on bad behavior have been getting similar passes for years).  The book relies heavily on statistics, which everyone knows are open to manipulation, but the authors go into detail about their methodology.  The bulk of the book is anecdotes regarding various players and their criminal undertakings, ranging from gambling (probably the least harmful thing discussed) to robbery, burglary, and assault, and then on up to murder.  It’s tough reading in some places as this raw, and real people are involved.  The authors’ position is that players, team management, NFL management, and fans are at fault, but the bulk of the fault lies with team and league management, since they are the ones that push for light punishments, involve their lawyers in an effort to get players off the hook, and stick up for guys who spend their days off skirting the law in myriad ways.  They do proffer some solutions, most of which center around harsh penalties for all encounters with the law, not just convictions and not just for what people normally think of as “serious crimes.”

While the book is over ten years old, it seems things haven’t changed much.  Athletes still get away with murder, sometimes literally, while average people get the book thrown at them.  As long as big money is involved, things are unlikely to change unless the ultimate source of that money, the fans, become too disgusted with the behavior of their idols, and stop going to games, turning on TVs, and buying merchandise.  I tend to agree with the authors in their assessment that the statistics for professional athletes (while this book was about football players, the authors subsequently wrote a book about basketball players) skew high for athletes, meaning the percentage of the population that is criminal is higher among athletes than among the rest of us, and I agree with them that the punishments need to be much more severe from the teams and the leagues, as well as the criminal justice system.  Personally, I don’t see that happening any time soon, and behavior that is rightfully condemned in all other areas of life will continue to be quietly and quickly dismissed when the one doing it can effectively move balls across goal lines.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXIV John Pruess.