Review: People of the Book

In People of the Book author Geraldine Brooks provides a compelling historical novel around the very real Sarajevo Haggadah. While there are some aspects of her story I could quibble with, I found it largely to be a pleasure to read listen to. After nearly 14 hours of audio, my first thought when the playback ended was: wow, that was a lot.

Spoilers Below

First off, I give full credit to Brooks for creating a clever story that brings the 650-year lifespan of the haggadah to life. I was expecting we'd be jumping back in time as the main character, Dr. Hanna Heath, worked on restoring the text. Which we did, but Brooks found interesting ways to pull this off that exceeded my expectations.

I was also not expecting a modern connection to the book. And while a bit silly at times (there's a heist!) this brought yet another dimension to the story, which I appreciated.

One message of the Haggadah's story, which one of the characters in the book directly voices, is the never-ending battle between acceptance and rejection of minorities. Brooks brings the reader face to face with moments throughout history when Jews go from feeling safe and included to being tormented and decimated. Even with my knowledge of Jewish events, I found Brooks' storytelling to reveal new aspects of our tragic and miraculous history.

The section on the Inquisition, for example, was so vivid and heartbreaking that I wanted to abandon the book altogether. Though, I knew this was exactly the wrong thing to do, and I'm glad I persevered.

At times, the book did test my ability to suspend disbelief. Take the Ruti storyline. Am I really supposed to believe that a young lady on the run from the Inquisition, with no resources, can bring a traumatically born baby to a new life in a new country? And yet, the moment that Ruti converts the infant to be a Jew is a powerful one, and so sure, I guess I'm onboard with this storyline.

Or how about the moment in the vault where the improvised red light reveals the name of the book's illustrator? I mean, really?

I suppose this is a fundamental challenge in historical fiction: the author can conjure up any story they wish and it's up to readers to buy it or not. I guess I'm more of a romantic than I'd like to admit.

The other potentially troubling aspect of the text is how nearly every character in the text is packing a heap of flaws. In the Venetian scenes, Father Vistorini is an alcoholic and Rabbi Aryeh has a gambling problem. Nearly all the characters are having sex with people they shouldn't be. And then there's the main character, Hanna, who's carrying around her own baggage.

Are these faults simply there to move the story along? Are they designed to humanize the characters and make the story better fit reality? In this case, I fear it's me, not Brooks that has the problem. I suppose I want a simpler story, where the bad people behave badly and the good people are model citizens.

I'm still not entirely sure what to make of Hanna and her mother's story. Other than to say that Hanna's behavior strikes me as logically following her upbringing. She's acting like a person with insecure attachment, and which makes sense, as her mother crafted a daughter with insecure attachment. So I may not love all of Dr. Heath's actions, but they fit within the world Brooks has established. And that world, like ours, is filled with people who carry the scars of trauma with them.

My only true criticism of the audiobook is that it does not include the afterword that the print version appears to offer. I'm guessing that the afterword sheds some light on what was truth and what was fiction in the story, which would have been highly appreciated. I'm guessing this is the publisher's, not author's sin.

As I've let this story gel for the last few days, I've found that I've enjoyed it more and more. Does Brooks get a bit dramatic in her telling? Sure, but a 600-year-old text that by all accounts should not exist is worth getting dramatic over.

A Bissle Torah

I would be remiss if I didn't tack on this story that occurred while I was listening to People of the Book. For context, I've been leigning at shul on a regular basis. This means that I've been chanting parts of the Torah at services and doing so from a traditional scroll that lacks vowels, punctuation and musical notation. It's tricky business, to say the least.

My strategy for success has been to focus on understanding the text in as much depth as possible. With understanding, the words and tune are much more predictable.

In the sofer's storyline, Brooks spends time explaining to the reader the different ways David Ben Shoushan's children relate to the Torah. For Shoushan's son, Reuben, the connection is technical. He's training as a scribe, so it's all about getting the letter forms and spacing correct. For his daughter, Ruti, it's a connection based on meaning, so her emphasis is on exploration and insight.

To elucidate Ruti's perspective, Brooks offers a specific example. Out of the entire Torah, she selects Exodus 25:8 as her prooftext. In English, the verse reads as follows:

And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.

Pause here and imagine me listening to this section of the book. Not only am I vibing with Ruti on the value of appreciating every word and every letter, but the example that Brooks selected is one that I chanted just a few days earlier. What are the odds that I'd be poring over this same text?

But wait, it gets better.

Brooks' point is best appreciated by looking at the Hebrew of this verse, which is:

ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם

The insight Brooks offers is all about the last letter in the verse. Hebrew is read from right to left, so the letter we're looking at is that squarish final mem: ם.

Because the last word is בתוכם it means "in them." Had the last letter been a ו, the verse would have been translated as "in it."

The Torah is telling us that the newly minted Jewish people were commanded to build a holy space so that G-d could dwell in them, the people. Not, as one might expect, so G-d could dwell in it, the building. The former being a far more sophisticated approach to holy spaces than the latter. What a profound distinction, and all powered by a single letter.

I'd totally missed the elegance of this one letter distinction until Brooks brought it to my attention.

Perhaps I need to cut Brooks some slack in the believability department. After all, who would believe that out of a Torah full of interesting verses, she would both select one that I'd studied days before and teach me a valuable insight that I'd missed.

Review: The Line Becomes a River

Last week the White House gleefully announced that, thanks to their efforts, 4000 "criminal illegals" had been removed from the streets of Minnesota.

My sense is that pronouncement could serve as a sort of immigration issues Rorschach test. Some will greet this news with a sense of relief: finally, progress is being made to keep Americans safe. Others will read the article with a sense of horror, fearing that countless individuals and families have had their lives derailed for little more than political theater. To the first group, border issues revolve around drugs and violence. To the second group, it's all about neighbors getting swallowed up by bigotry and bad policy.

Who's right?

Francisco Cantú's The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border brings a unique perspective to this debate. Cantú is a gifted writer who spent 4 years working as a Border Patrol Agent. His book, The Line Becomes a River tracks his experiences, giving the reader a front row seat to America's immigration challenges.

Warning: Spoilers Below

Cantú gives us views into the border in three acts: first as a field agent, then zoomed out a bit as he works in border intelligence and finally, through the lens of a citizen who has a friend swallowed up by the system. I found the writing to be excellent and I zipped through the book in record time. I listened to the audio version, which he read, and found him to be an excellent narrator.

I could tell that I was enjoying the book because I found myself trying to relay the text to Shira on a regular basis.

I appreciate that Cantú's book is descriptive, not prescriptive. He doesn't say what border policy should be; he just puts his experiences vividly out there for the reader to learn from. He lets the reader connect the dots.

One example, to prove the point. Over the years, the US has made crossing the border more difficult. Personnel, sensors, cameras, drones, have all increased the level of difficulty. The hope, of course, is that this will deter migrants from making the trip. Maybe for some, the deterrent works. But for many, this simply means that migrants now need to turn to more extreme means to make the trip. The result, as Cantú shows, is that a harder to cross border is an aid to narco terrorists. Desperate crossers are easy fodder for carrying drugs or serving as kidnapping and ransom victims.

While Cantú doesn't say it, he seems to show it: hardening the border is a win for the cartel. One wonders what outcome doing the opposite would be.

So, who's right? Is the border a place of horrific violence, or the site of a policy that tears apart families and keeps good people out of our country? My take after reading The Line is: Yes.

Cantú makes it clear that there is horrific, out of control violence in Mexico. Narco terrorists have committed unspeakable atrocities. You can sense the physical toll on Cantú as he simply tries to process what happens along the border on a day to day basis. The Line was published in 2018, so perhaps there have been changes in the level of violence along the border. But given the scope described in Cantú's writing, it's hard to imagine it's ebbed in a significant way.

But the story doesn't end there. The narrative of the law abiding, hard working, community contributing would-be citizen is also real. Cantú shows us the impact first hand as a beloved father of three finds himself trying to illegally enter the border to reunite with his family. Refusing entry to this man means depriving three vulnerable US citizens of their father. How is that just? How is that in the best interest of America?

Thanks to Cantú's book, I feel like I have a more complete picture of the challenges that are at the root of the immigration headlines I see daily. I'm not sure what the solution is, but at least I understand the problem better. And that's a start.

ESOXOFFORE Kids Camera - Command Line Tool Automation

As my recent review implied, I've been enjoying my new ESOXOFFORE Kids Instant Print Camera. It didn't take long, however, before I identified a couple of camera-related tasks that I could streamline with code. I give you: toycameraassist, a command-line tool for working with the ESOXOFFORE.

This short script, which depends on gphotoassist and sdcardassist handles two common workflows: archiving pictures from, and loading pictures to, the camera. Here's the script in action.

Archiving Photos

Step one, of course, is to shoot some photos. My morning tea may not be the most interesting subject, but it's one that I had at my fingertips:

Next, I popped the SD card out of the camera and into my laptop. I'm running Mint Linux, but toycameraassist should work equally well from a WSL2 or Mac OS terminal. I then ran toycameraassist -a archive.

$ toycameraassist -a archive -v | mightee
PICT0000.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgstn16lDqnQQrVMfHk6gO8fdEpEjvIeTpSsxhcSZceegzJv0y02L2CfEahXoumYzj9Ri6YS7TTHIkT6KbAf5qftppapcw
PICT0001.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgsorU4SZmzW0wjCxwgoyRk3Yp17wLMX6gKLlS1jQw61BZSwX2dlJt8TjZ4CzRc3YkaLOGQhgfY-GHEoPI1mbIUM3XMycQ
PICT0002.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgvh2-7_R680yo6RdqpTI5Syz0xoKCXwUozB8IkZmhyEr1dDDv-_UobwpJmfvUGXDud87ImYvlZPyobHwD9c6JbMcMLjCg
PICT0003.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgvrr7dsmQ1F3SMm7GWg0g312kkfbgyF9WlP4BpHkb8PDaDu_zJVUaJokZmzFR5Fk9ySSagXLGLb12SUxzojVnZewHCmNQ
PICT0004.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgukO4g_SYSd3MG18iKA59WFBiyIL-pl-GFLSWpfpvpVAIgZiv1i8ZFrLL56pzmGv_srClEcAvRGMrN7vtmou_sIYKyLIw
PICT0005.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgtznwDNI8dPAJKbI0aqvLBc3_jBVVAAJbY_I6WcmM5dZq62PeCyNMVItWcJR7tyqFmIeET0zJyVTKOHQYNEvVd4KaFO8Q
PICT0006.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgulFX2cWEgLjZN6RLrajeSxYJR0mJYdwl0RWvnLJjenyJoZtpqOOAChbCuJexWEZLHe1O4otS4jIqk844caQ1zLWhHXhw
PICT0007.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgvHd-eicj_6aqYhBuHtEtgZwzWteTjYAwIcCtywQpHfVaJWsZm-7DyuE9tKAenc2OQ6bLobuLf3SSQ65oepK99KipQbbg
PICT0008.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgu3ucZo8ogslauMNYnFc7rlgD5eQMHpu3zhTqnbGhyFLE_YltjI9Tos6kg4MlMN0GG8zbar0_7pfQdPyL2LzsQ1XCJFTg
PICT0009.jpg:https://photos.google.com/lr/photo/AHnaBgsDu4KbJO5JoLeHAWvRNoWtNi5EyMuqga7n8KFAb1C3WbNrQBQHz8Xe80qmJEpKNT6ZGHXJwZDWOvi3mEktmaTE9ib7rg

And that's it. All the images have been taken off the card and pushed to a Google Photos album that's defined in ~/.config/toycameraassist/default.config.

After a few moments, the images appeared in my Google Photos feed, as well as in the default folder that I set.

The process isn't as magical as Google Photos' backup on Android, but it's miles ahead of manually managing and uploading photos.

Loading Photos

Next up, toycameraassist allows you to load arbitrary photos into the camera, so you can use the camera as a low-cost photo printer.

Step one again begins with a selection of photos. This time, however, I'm pulling them from Google Photos as they're taken with my Galaxy S22 Ultra.

I downloaded these photos to a local directory, and put the camera's SD card into my laptop. I then ran toycameraassist -a load.

  # In Google Photos, I clicked 'Download all' on a 'Print Photos'
  $ unzip Print\ Photos-1-001.zip
  $ cd Print\ Photos
  $ toycameraassist -a load *.jpg

The SD card now has the photos scaled, stripped of EXIF data and named as the camera expects. Surprisingly, stripping the image metadata is a key step, as the camera refused to read images that skipped this step.

I then ejected the card from my laptop and put it back into the camera. Finally, I fired up the camera and was able to browse and print the pictures as though they had been captured with the ESOXOFFORE.

Here are the prints from the camera, hastily mounted on 3x5 index cards:

Not bad for a $30 camera and $0.09 worth of materials.

You can grab the script and its dependencies here. Enjoy!

ESOXOFFORE Kids Camera - Review

Back in June, I picked up a ESOXOFFORE 'Kids Instant Camera' from Amazon for the impressively low price of $30.00. Ostensibly, I bought it for various kids in our lives. But let's be real; I totally bought it for me.

The Amazon product page promised a fully-featured camera, but given the low price and random brand, I braced myself for disappointment.

Quirk and Flaws

Spending a few minutes with the ESOXOFFORE reveals its biggest flaw: its user experience (UX). To an adult, the buttons and menu system are clunky. To a child, they must seem utterly random.

To print a picture you've previously captured, you just have to: long press #4 to turn the camera on, press #3 three times to highlight playback, press #5 to select playback, use buttons #1 and #2 to pick the image. At some point, you need to press #5 to toggle printing. Finally, when the image you want to print is selected, press #3 to print the photo. Easy, right?

At one point, I was chatting with Shira about the camera's UX and said, you know, the camera really needs a touchscreen. Her response: wait, it doesn't have one? No wonder she struggled to get it to work.

An interesting exercise would be to tweak the buttons and camera software to be kid-friendly without significant hardware upgrades. Some obvious improvements: make the buttons into clear predictable shapes; stop using text on the buttons; and consider dropping the "OK" button and making the shutter button do double-duty for capturing photos and selecting an item.

Another quirk is that there's a single volume level for the camera. To hear audio during video playback, you need to crank the audio setting way up. This results in making the beep that occurs after pressing every button equally loud, which gets annoying quickly.

Toggling whether prints are produced or a filter is enabled can be subtle and easy to miss. This can result in wasted paper or capturing images with an unexpected filter.

But, All Isn't Lost

So the ESOXOFFORE has its flaws, but here's the thing: the photo quality of this camera is downright impressive for $30.00.

Both the digital images and "prints" are totally usable. Here are some examples (most taken by kids):

The built-in filters are surprisingly fun and are far more of an asset than I imagined.

AI, especially Google's Nano Banana, will gladly take the digital images and turn them into a fun creation. Here's L transported into the kitchen of a fancy restaurant:

Photo printing is accomplished by using a cheap thermal printer. The three rolls of receipt paper included with the camera promise about 372 photos and you can buy refills at about $0.013 cents a print. This is far more kid-friendly than $0.50 cents a print ZINK cartridges or $1.50 per photo of an Instax Fulfilm.

All this means that you can unleash your little Ansel Adams and let them shoot and print as much as they want. And if they happen to capture some amazing shots, then the quality will be good enough to share on Instagram and Facebook their blog.

To put the quality in perspective, consider the twice as expensive Phonemo printer's output against the ESOXOFFORE's.

That's impressive, right? It's possible that I could have further tuned the Phonemo's image, but the ESOXOFFORE's is solid by default.

The thermal-paper-based prints are fragile and curly. Mounting them on a standard 3x5 index card using glue tape has proven to be an easy way to increase their durability.

I also use clear packing tape to secure the loose photos to my notebook, making for an easy way to use them in a collage.

I experimented with using our laminator to protect the flimsy pictures, but this was a bad idea. The laminator works by sealing the plastic with heat, and the photo paper is printed with heat. Laminating added a layer of dark gray over the picture. It looks like cold lamination is a thing, so maybe that would work. It's hard to beat the simplicity of a strip of clear packing tape, though.

Skip or Buy?

Is the ESOXOFFORE 'worth it?' I think so! With one caveat: there are heaps of kids' cameras out there, so it's possible that another model delivers on both the UX and quality front. But until I find such a model, ESOXOFFORE is an excellent choice.

I say, buy the camera for your toddler to save your iPhone. Or, buy it for your teen with some fairy light photo clips, so they can cover their walls in fun moments. Heck, even the photographer in your life who covets pricey gear will appreciate the camera as an opportunity to find creativity through limits. In short, if you need a cheap camera that produces surprisingly usable pics, the ESOXOFFORE is a winner.

Review: Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

Over the years, I've consumed the story of Shackleton's successfully failed Antarctic expedition a number of times in a number of formats: from books to movies to museum exhibitions. Even with all that background, I still found Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing to be a page turner. Part of this is due to Lansing's skill and thoroughness, and part of this is due to the sheer miraculousness of Shackleton's self-rescue.

There are so many tiny moments of joy, fear, misery, and countless other emotions in the 550+ days that the crew of the Endurance worked to survive that it's impossible to catalog them all. Still, Lansing manages to bring us as many of these moments, both big and small, as possible. Other than exhaustively reading the crew's diaries and published works, I can't imagine getting this level of detail anywhere else.

At times, it could feel like a bit much. When Lansing belabors how cold, hungry, or just plain bored the crew is, he does it in a way that can be borderline tedious. Surely, however, that's also the point. The survival of the expedition was in the extreme, so a few extra pages putting this into context is ultimately a win.

Lansing gives us a view into both the genius and flaws of Shackleton and his crew. In the text, Shackleton lives up to, if not exceeds, his reputation for being a leader. We appreciate how he prioritizes the survival of his crew above all else; he tirelessly works to make this happen. We also appreciate that he could be impulsive and how his optimism could lead him astray. In short, he's a human who managed to pull off a superhuman feat.

Lansing also puts the crew into context. I often imagined Shackleton and his crew as being hearty explorers, ready to endure all. And that may be true for some of the crew. But for others, they were far outmatched by the conditions. The fact that Shackleton got them all home is all the more impressive in this light.

Shackleton's self-rescue is one of mankind's greatest feats. And yet, a nagging question remains: did Shackleton set himself up for failure in the first place? Did he do a sloppy job of picking the crew? Did he venture off into the Antarctic when the conditions were less than ideal? Did hubris put the lives of 28 men in the balance?

Maybe. Lansing doesn't dwell on this question, though he does give you plenty of facts so you can. Ultimately, it's complicated.

Take Frank Worsley, the captain of the Endurance, for example. Worsley is inspired to join Shackleton's expedition thanks to a dream. Shackleton selects him as captain after only a few minute interviews. At the start of their journey, Worsley captained the Endurance from England to Buenos Aires without Shackleton aboard. Lansing recounts a number of incidents on this sailing that show Worsley as a less-than-stellar leader.

Is Shackleton phased? Not especially. He keeps Worsley on. In the end, Worsley distinguishes himself as perhaps one of the greatest navigators to ever live. A rescue often attributed to Shackleton could only be made possible through Worsley's exceptional seamanship.

Does that make Shackleton a genius for selecting Worsley? Or just lucky? This kind of twist is common in this story, and it's one that makes it such a joy to follow.

Another question in the back of my head as I made my way through Endurance was: what does it take to survive the seemingly unsurvivable? Here are six characteristics that came up over and over throughout the story. I offer them in no particular order.

Patience. For large swaths of time, the men are just plain bored. Putting up with utter tedium was a significant challenge and one that was a surprisingly necessary skill.

Discipline. Between limited supplies and unpredictable conditions, the men had to be incredibly disciplined about nearly every action they took. Despite being a private expedition, Shackleton maintained the role of master and commander, and his crew were his subordinates. Food, sleep, and all activities were at Shackleton's discretion, and his crew, for the most part, dutifully obeyed. Shackleton gets credit for the crew's survival because nearly every decision was his. It was a rigorous way to live, but it allowed the crew to survive.

Ingenuity. The resources at the crew's disposal were extremely limited. And yet, when challenges were encountered, solutions were constructed. From turning lifeboats into ocean sailing vessels, to constructing a surgical suite from a dilapidated shelter, to a thousand tiny hacks. Without creative construction, the crew would certainly have been lost. It brings to mind this classic scene in Apollo 13, except there was no support team for Shackleton and his crew. Every problem they encountered, they needed to MacGyver on their own.

Fortitude. As the self-rescue progressed, men went through every misfortune possible: frostbite, being drenched with freezing water, sleep-deprived, thirsty, and starving to name a few. At times—probably most of the time—there was almost no hope of survival. And yet, they all managed to push through. Here an extreme level of physical and mental fortitude made the difference.

Expertise. As mentioned above, without the masterful navigation and seamanship of Frank Worsley, making it home simply wouldn't have been possible. Yes, the crew had to be flexible and improvise on the fly, but expert-level experience absolutely made a key difference in their survival.

Luck. Consider Shackleton's vessel, the Endurance: she may have looked like a normal ship but she was massively overbuilt. Her sides were between 18 and 30 inches thick, and her bow was 52 inches thick. She was specifically designed to endure the ice of the Arctic. Once trapped in pack ice, however, the ship became the ice's play toy. Her fate was to snap like a twig. And that was the reality of the crew's situation: they were insignificant compared to the forces around them. The fact that they survived comes down to luck as much as anything else.

The story of Shackleton and his crew's extraordinary self-rescue is a worth knowing. And while you could read just the highlights, Lansing's text adds much appreciated depth and context to a tale that only improves with detail.

The Three C's of a Pocket Tenach

While cleaning out my mother-in-law's estate, we came across the Tanakh she was gifted by her temple on her Bat Mitzvah. Incidentally, I had my Bar Mitzvah at the same temple.

The book has made its way into my tallit bag, where I have it on hand while davening. Over time, this small volume has become a treasured possession. Obviously, it has sentimental value, but more than that, I've found it to be quite practical. Here are three C's that make it so.

Complete

The name Tanakh is an acronym for the texts it contains. Sefaria explains:

The Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, is Judaism’s foundational text. “Tanakh” is an acronym for the three sections of the canon, the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings).

So while we pore over the Torah during services, that's just the first 5 books of our Bible. There are 39 sacred texts in all. And that's the first place a pocket Tanakh shines: it gives you access to the full canon, not just parts of it.

Want to read a Psalm we don't typically recite during services? Or see a part of the Book of Isaiah not covered by a haftarah? Or read the Book of Nahum? A Tanakh has you covered.

Context

A Tanakh can add context to the fragments of text that we encounter during services, giving way to fresh insights and additional levels of appreciation. Haftorot, for example, frequently start or end in the middle of a chapter; being able to read the surrounding text can often be illuminating.

Take the haftarah that we read on the first day of Passover. In it, we read about the Israelites preparing to assault Jericho. However, the haftarah stops short of the famous moment when the walls come tumbling down. A Tanakh lets you peek ahead and read all the action.

This also works well for shorter bits of text that we reference while praying. For example, during Tachanun, we recite the words of King David: “I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hands of Adonai, for His compassion is great; and let me not fall into the hands of men.”

The question is, what did King David do to be in such great distress? You can read all about it in II Samuel, Chapter 24.

Knowing the story behind King David's woe adds another level to the prayer that cites it.

Curiosity

No doubt, there's something magical about studying the same text day after day, year after year and yet, coming away with fresh insights and appreciation. That's the benefit we get from davening with a fixed set of prayers and a regular cycle of the Torah and haftarah readings. And yet, there's also something to be said for exploring new ground. A Tanakh gives you easy access to the latter.

There are countless stories, lessons, and insights waiting to be discovered in the 39 volumes that make up our Bible. Like the time that Israel was saved by a loaf of barley bread, or Satan meddled with Job, or Daniel hung out in a lion's den. These stories haven't been included among our standard readings, so you won't come across them unless you go off and explore them yourself. With a Tanakh, you can do just this.

In short, a pocket Tanakh is a gateway to better appreciating the text we read regularly, and finding new favorite texts. Thanks, Mom!*

---

*It's with a dose of sadness that I hit publish on this post. My Mother-in-Law was my most loyal reader. No matter how technical or obscure the post, she read every one. I think she really would have enjoyed this one. Yet one more reason she's missed.

Review: The Ways We Hide

While G was visiting from Tampa, we took her to the Spy Museum. And while there, I captured this photo:

Given how compact the radio was for its age, I was curious about its history. A Google search for this model, the M-19, turned up no results.

With more digging, I realized my error: that's not an M19 (M-nineteen) radio; that's a radio provided by MI9 (M-eye-9). And thus I learned about MI9: a World War II era, secret branch of British Intelligence that focused on equipping soldiers for escape and evasion.

This discovery hit close to home. We're practically neighbors with Fort Hunt, a WWII installation known only as 'P.O. Box 1142' during the war, that you guessed it, had a similar mission.

Given my interest in hacking, survival, history and this local connection, I was eager to learn more. A Libby search for one of the main personalities of MI9, Christopher Hutton, turned up not a biography but a novel by Kristina McMorris. Within a few minutes of listening to The Ways We Hide, I was hooked.

Spoilers Ahead

(Stop reading my blog and go read The Ways We Hide)

I love jumping into a book completely uninformed. So it wasn't until McMorris spent a few chapters unspooling the main character's childhood that it clicked: this is a Long Story.

In my experience, what marks a Short Story isn't so much its length, but the author's use of narrative sleight-of-hand to conjure backstory and depth without explicitly writing it. A Long Story takes the opposite approach: the author delivers comprehensive detail through prose.

All this to say that at times the pace of The Ways We Hide felt a bit slow. Ultimately, all was more than forgiven thanks to the author's notes at the end of the audiobook. Here McMorris explains that one of her primary goals was to educate the public about the difficult stories embedded in The Ways We Hide.

For example, the Christmas Eve crush tragedy that the main character Fenna endures is based on the Italian Hall Disaster. When McMorris gives us a thorough description of this event and its aftermath, she's honoring a real tragedy with real victims. And here was I being an impatient jerk, wishing the story would move along. In short, she was right and I was wrong.

One feature of McMorris's writing that I found myself regularly smiling about was her clue management. As The Ways We Hide unfolds, as with any story, the author faces a dilemma. On one hand, she needs to fully inform her readers about the origin of the knowledge and skills her characters will ultimately deploy. On the other hand, she wants to avoid making the story predictable.

In short, if Fenna is going to be called on to pick a lock, then somewhere in her backstory she needs to have lock-picking experience.

Some clues are simply too obvious to camouflage. For example, once we learn that Fenna is an escape artist on stage, we can guess that she'll be using this skill in real life. And when we learn that she's going behind enemy lines, it's clear she will be using her escape skills to outfox the Nazis.

What I thought McMorris did especially well was how she cleverly reused information; essentially hiding a clue in the 'already used' pile. Consider Fenna's experience with the shady palm reader. At first, this information exists to support the well-rounded nature of Fenna's magic education. Then it pops up again as proof of how uncompromising her foster mother is when it comes to matters of religion. And then, even more surprisingly, this information allows Fenna to develop a method for self-heating soup.

Every time a clue would be reused in a way I hadn't predicted I'd think, well played McMorris, well played.

The Ways We Hide contains a number of twists and turns. Some I saw coming, some I didn't. But it was a moment in the final chapter that caught me the most off guard and added significant depth to the story. In that moment, I thought of McMorris as the magician: all along I'd been watching her perform card tricks, then out of the blue, she made a tiger appear.

The scene I'm speaking of is the moment when Fenna, her foster mother, and her foster daughter are all sitting together on a bed flipping through a family photo album. It's obviously a touching moment, as Fenna ends up feeling a profound sense of belonging. But to me, and perhaps just me, this encounter is so much more.

At this moment, the text takes on fresh meaning by answering the most perplexing of questions: what does it mean to live? Fenna's long and messy journey, which McMorris has carefully shared with us, serves as the answer. To live means to experience both joy and heartache; miracles and grief. Perhaps most importantly, Fenna's life underscores that loss and trauma are not terminal states. When Fenna sits on the bed with Aveleen (sp?) and Mrs. Johnson (sp?), the loss of Ari and her father remain significant. And yet, the love and joy offered by these two women and an unwritten future is powerful in its own right.

I was expecting a number of things from The Ways We Hide, deep thoughts on what it means to live weren't one of them. Bravo, McMorris!

Review: The Lost Apothecary

I randomly picked up The Lost Apothecary, by Sarah Penner, from my Mother-in-Law's (z"l) bookshelf, read a few pages and was hooked. F from there, I couldn't put it down. In short, while it's not perfect, it was a delightful read and one that was both entertaining and thought-provoking.

Spoilers Below. Go read the book.

The plot, the philosophizing, the characters, I'm here for it all. I appreciated the symmetry and timelessness of both the historic and modern-day story and was impressed with how poisons were tied into both. I fell into every trap Penner set for me, from thinking that James may be a decent guy to thinking Eliza was dead. I'm sure a more observant reader would have picked up on the (in hindsight) obvious clues; but not me.

I liked the story enough that I was fine with suspending my disbelief that a property in downtown London would lay untouched for hundreds of years. And the fact that just about every man in the text is some degree of sleazeball, well sure, why not. Girl power for the win!

I generally appreciated the book's philosophizing. When Caroline challenges that there's a difference between being happy and being fulfilled, I found myself agreeing. Clearly delaying gratification for a bigger goal is a powerful life skill. But what are the limits of this? More than anything, I appreciated that the book gave me a chance to chew on these ideas.

I also appreciated Nella's mission of capturing the names of the women she helps in her registrar. That humble act was a way of recording for posterity that which would normally be forgotten. One of the missions of my blog is to do the same: to try to leave a mark, however insignificant, for those to find in the future.

So yeah, Penner had me. That was, until the last two pages of the book. When Caroline decides that Eliza and the vial would be "one secret I would not share." I found myself mouthing a slow-motion 'Noooooooooo' as she chucked the vial in the Thames.

This decision to withhold Eliza's story from her research struck me as flawed in a number of ways. First off, it seems to have the ethical equivalence of a police officer planting evidence 'just this once.' And more to the theme of the text, isn't Caroline's goal to bring stories of regular people to life? Hiding Eliza and the physical evidence she existed seems directly counter to this.

Respecting the story itself, Eliza's elixir fended off hypothermia. If such a concoction could be replicated in the lab, Eliza's 'magic' could have potentially life-saving implications. How could Caroline not see that there's an opportunity to not just tell Eliza's story, but have it be elevated into one of discovery and world impact?

If you're looking for a fun, fast paced, historic read The Lost Apothecary may be just the tonic you're looking for.

Review: The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy

The year is 2012 and Florida Man has struck again. This time, he is accused of the surprisingly sophisticated crime of smuggling a nearly complete Tyrannosaurus battar skeleton out of Mongolia, and selling it at auction for over $1 million dollars. Here's the headline: Florida man pleads guilty in New York to smuggling dinosaur fossils.

The Florida Man in this case is Erik Prokopi, the main character of Page Williams' engaging story The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy. Williams' text uses Prokopi's case to take a deep dive into the world of paleontology, with an emphasis on amateurs.

A good chunk of Williams' story is spent bringing the reader up to speed on how the field of paleontology developed. This alone makes the book a worthwhile read. Topics like the Central Asiatic Expeditions or the trailblazer Mary Anning were riveting and I can't believe that as an adult I'd never heard of them. I hope to do a deep dive into many of these topics.

I found Williams's exploration of the amateur side of paleontology to be equally fascinating. I buy her argument that dinosaurs make for an easy entry into the world of STEM. My four year old nephew's infatuation for dinos could easily blossom into a love of science.

While listening to the Dinosaur Artist, Shira and I attended a Foster Parent training seminar on teens and screentime. Yes, the pull of devices is strong, but the Dinosaur Artist offers a unique antidote: fossil hunting. In my experience, kids will gladly put down their phones if you can give them real world experiences as profound as finding the remains of prehistoric creatures. I know it was a special thrill for our crew when we found shark teeth at Westmoreland State Park.

The Dinosaur Artist also helped me appreciate the relatively level playing field among expert and amateur paleontologists; a scenario rare in most scientific fields. Many fossil discoveries depend on being in the right place at the right time, rather than say extensive knowledge or specialized equipment. That explains how three kids could find a scientifically interesting T-rex, a feat any professional would be eager to accomplish.

As for Eric Prokopi, Williams unpacks his case: she makes you appreciate that it's more complicated than the headlines suggest. No, he didn't smuggle a skeleton out of Mongolia; he used shady business dealings to buy raw material, which he painstakingly assembled into a masterpiece. Was Prokopi guilty? Definitely. But ultimately, the three month sentence he received seems fair. He crossed ethical lines and allowed privilege to cloud his judgement. But no, he wasn't some cartoon villain looking to rip off the people of Mongolia.

And speaking of Mongolia, it's remarkable how science has turned its unusually large concentration of dinosaur fossils into a new natural resource it can harness. This would be a plus for any country, but is especially critical for one that's as resource-strapped, and geopolitically tenuous as Mongolia. Well played, science.

Perhaps the biggest side effect from the Dinosaur Artist is my fresh appreciation for natural science museums. I'm looking at you, Natural History, Smithsonian. I admit it: I'd gotten desensitized to these amazing exhibits. I now have a fresh appreciation for the effort and artistry that goes into making fossil displays. The kids who are blown away by what they see have the right idea; the science, countless hours of prep, and creativity that goes into crafting a life-like scene should truly be savored.

Williams does an excellent job of showing how dinosaurs and their fossils impact science, business, governments, and young minds. Not bad for a species that went extinct 66 million years ago.

Review: Cryptonomicon

Finishing Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon feels like a literary accomplishment nearly 25 years in the making. For as long as I can remember, Cryptonomicon has been recommended as sort of the ultimate Unix geek novel. Finishing it feels like earning a critical nerd merit badge.

The audio version, weighing in at nearly 43 hours, is twice as long as Moby Dick and over three times the length of the last audiobook I listened to. In fairness, it's still shorter than War and Peace, which comes in at a whopping 59 hours.

So, what do you get for all this text? Well, quite a bit. Some of it exceedingly enjoyable, other parts less so. Below, I'll ramble on about what struck me most. But first, a warning.

Cryptonomicon started off strong for me, and for the first half of the text, I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. In many respects, I felt like the novel was written just for me. The text contains both a modern storyline, as well as one that takes place in World War II. The modern storyline includes Randy, a socially awkward nerd who morphs into a Linux guru and becomes involved in various Internet startups. In 1999, when the book was published, this was--in a much, much tamer version--my story. So yeah, I had no problem relating to Randy and his character's growth.

The World War II storyline, because of its focus on obscure topics, is exactly the kind of historical fiction I relish. For example, being a book with a heavy emphasis on cryptography, one might expect it to focus primarily on, say, cracking Enigma. Instead, it focuses on Detachment 2702, an effort to allow the allies to act on intelligence while keeping the enemy oblivious to the fact that their codes have been broken. I haven't yet researched what parts of Cryptonomicon are truth and what parts are fiction, so I'm not entirely sure if there even was a Detachment 2702 in real life. But there must have been efforts like it, and learning about them is a treat.

It was halfway to two-thirds through the Cryptonomicon when I started to get impatient. I was fine with the long story arc, and I was all for the teachable moments throughout the text. But the incredibly detailed yet seemingly tangents to nowhere started to weigh on me.

The chapter titled Phreaking was a quintessential example of this. First, out of the blue, we meet a new character: Pekka. We naturally get Pekka's backstory. I mean, we'll never hear from Pekka again, but sure, why not? And then we get a detailed description of Van Eck phreaking. This is a bit clumsy because it's all seemingly for no reason, but OK, I can live with that. My guess is that Van Eck phreaking will play an important role in the future of the text, so we need to be educated about it (spoiler alert: it does). Then we get a lengthy, completely unrelated education on the topic of hive minds. Unlike Van Eck hacking, what we learn about hive minds doesn't appear to contribute to the story.

Ultimately, the chapter closes out with the setup that Van Eck phreaking is a sort of x-ray vision that allows Randy, Pekka, and Cantrell to see Tom's screen. By the rules of any teen comedy, Tom has to be doing something embarrassing while Randy and his cohorts are watching his screen. Most authors would have gone with porn as that awkward subject, and everyone would have had a good giggle. But Stephenson isn't most authors. He opts to have Randy, Pekka, and Cantrell observe Tom writing about his most secret sexual musings. Fair enough. But this goes on for what seems like 30 minutes of the audiobook. Looking at the ebook version, Stephenson devotes 10 pages to Tom's writing. The writing seems earnest and strives to be as thoughtful as a text on sexual fetishes can be. But why bother? Why subject your readers to this?

So as the second half of the book slowly unwound itself, I found myself trying to crack this puzzle of Stephenson's verbosity.

Did he simply love to write? Where one author would be satisfied by saying Randy was crushing on a girl unlike any he'd ever met, Stephenson gives us an intense 9-page essay on Randy's wisdom teeth. The entire story seems to exist so that Stephenson can write one paragraph about how bad Randy has it for a girl. I can just imagine Stephenson talking to his editor:

Stephenson: I'm thinking about adding

Editor (interrupting): Yes.

For a good chunk of the text, I decided that all this verbosity was a sort of Detachment 2702 style answer to the challenge of keeping the reader informed yet surprised. The approach: bury critical details under a mountain of text. Will Randy's success hinge on Van Eck phreaking, hive minds, Tom's sexual preferences, or the extraction of his wisdom teeth? Through information overload and camouflaging, it's possible to have told the reader the answer and yet still keep the twist a secret.

As the text closed out and gaps in the storyline were filled in, I found myself developing a new theory of Stephenson's insistence on complete detail. As a programmer, I'm vividly aware of the duality of computers. On one hand, they are amazingly powerful, completing complex tasks in milliseconds. On the other hand, without specific instructions—that is, code—they are little more than expensive doorstops. For example, when I type:

 wget -r https://pallas.eruditorium.org/

I'm essentially instructing my computer to download every web page on pallas.eruditorium.org. This task is both tedious (considering there could be thousands of pages to download) and complex (as it involves establishing a secure connection for each page). Nevertheless, the computer handles this task effortlessly. It accomplishes this feat thanks to the thousands, if not millions, of lines of code meticulously crafted to guide it through the process.

In this light, I can see Cryptonomicon as the polar opposite of a short story. With a short story, the author relies on the reader's imagination to fill in gaps in the text. It's a clever bit of mental judo that lets a few fragments of a story be shaped into an entire narrative. Cryptonomicon takes the opposite approach: not only does it describe the characters and circumstances of the text, but it also teaches the reader how all of the technology that these characters and circumstances call for works. In other words, Stephenson has strived to write a fully defined story. You can roll your eyes at the verbosity, but unlike many stories that involve technology, there's no magic being deployed here. Pull on any thread you want; it all holds together (at least the tech side of things does).

With this perspective, I found that I could answer a question that had been baffling me for a good portion of the text: what is Cryptonomicon about? Sure, it involves Detachment 2702, Epiphyte Corp., a data haven, the Battle of Manila, the search for gold, cryptocurrency, and many other topics. But using my computing example, I can see the narrative in a new light. Cryptonomicon is simply all of the supporting material for the final moment of the book: "Randy Waterhouse, sitting on a boulder above a stream flowing with molten gold, is happy." Like the wget command, this statement may look simple, but it calls for 40 hours of audiobook to allow this statement to make sense.

I can also see in Stephenson's verbosity a suggestion for why the book is called Cryptonomicon. The Cryptonomicon that's alluded to in the novel is a collection of resources to help would-be code breakers learn from each other and advance the art of cryptanalysis. Because I haven't researched what parts of the story are true or not, I don't yet know if the Cryptonomicon is a real thing or an idea invented by Stephenson. And while it comes up a few times in the story, it doesn't jump out to me as being pivotal enough to earn its place as the book's title.

However, if I consider Stephenson's side-trips into technology as not just an attempt at being uber-complete or wishing to obscure the plot but instead look at these passages as essential, then a new picture begins to develop. In that case, Cryptonomicon is a sort of Cryptonomicon itself. Instead of being focused solely on cryptography, it takes a wider view. But the result is the same: if you're interested in being a hacker*, then here's your handbook. Sure, it's got a storyline running through it, but don't let that fool you; this is far more guidebook than love story.

Perhaps these theories explain my primary frustration point with the text: the characters never seem to acknowledge how they are connected. For example, how does Goto Dengo never discover or acknowledge that he's connected up with his beloved friend's son and grandson? It's maddening. But, to explain Randy's state of happiness or to create a hacker's bible, this moment of mushiness isn't really needed. So, we don't get it. It kills me, but surely Stephenson had a good reason to not give us this moment of reunion. It certainly wasn't for lack of interest in writing; after all, he's given us vivid descriptions of so much else.

OK, so those are my thoughts and theories. Now it's time to run a few well-placed Google searches and see just how far off the mark they are. This should be fun!

*Hacker in this context refers to a positive definition; not the up-to-no-good definition that you may be thinking of.

How It's Done: The Moby Wrap Hip Hug Carry

A while back, a friend who knew I'm a Moby Wrap evangelist, asked if it was possible to comfortably carry her 16-month-old on her hip using the Moby Wrap. I responded with a resounding 'yes' and told her that I'd send her some YouTube videos showing how.

Looking through tutorials on YouTube, I couldn't find one that used the relatively simple technique I've deployed in the past. So, I borrowed her daughter, propped up Shira's phone, and shot my own quick tutorial.

This wrapping method comes straight from the Moby Wrap user manual:

As an aside, I love this manual. Published in 2006, not only does it cover the different holds—some of which are no longer mentioned on the Moby Wrap website—but it also includes advice on Kangaroo Care, how to breastfeed a baby in the Moby, and offers workout ideas you can engage in while wearing your baby. The pamphlet is part baby-wearing inspiration, part how-to, and all a liability nightmare. It's no surprise that it's no longer included with the Moby. It pairs well with my old school (now called classic) Moby Wrap: less sexy than modern options, but still so very effective.*

Shout out to our friend Lori who gifted us this Moby Wrap for our first placement, 14 years ago. Who knew that it would become such a fan favorite, and hold babies of every shape and size. From chunky toddlers, to two itty bitty twins, the Moby Wrap has brought joy and comfort to them all.

*Now I feel like I sound like my grandparents who might offer advice like: a little whiskey on the baby's gums will make those teething woes a thing of the past.

Review: Cold as Hell by Rhett C. Bruno and Jaime Castle

Books with supernatural characters, like werewolves and vampires, tend not to make the top of my reading list. Sure, I'm down for the occasional zombie apocalypse, but I've never been into storylines packed with mythical monsters. So I was more than a little surprised when I found myself thoroughly engrossed in Rhett C. Bruno and Jaime Castle's Cold as Hell, a book that squarely falls into this genre.

Cold as Hell delivers in a few different ways. First of all, I'm loving the historic Wild West setting. It's like I'm getting a side order of historical fiction with my fantasy plotline. And then there's the well-balanced main character: James Crowley. Sure, Crowley is (or rather, was?) an outlaw bastard, but he's also kind, thoughtful, inventive, and honorable. Bruno and Castle have created a main character that I can proudly root for, and one that I can learn a thing or two from.

The book includes just enough philosophical musings on topics like free will and the struggle between good and evil to be interesting, without getting bogged down in minutiae. I think the book navigates issues of racial and religious diversity reasonably well. On one hand, the majority of the secondary characters fit predictable stereotypes: from cruel and indifferent outlaws, to full of themselves sheriffs, to a cryptic-talking Native American sage. Some of these tropes are tired, others may be downright offensive. Yet, the authors have endowed Crowley with a degree of self-awareness that lets him navigate his world with something approaching nuance. All this is to say that Crowley comes across as relatively enlightened, and my modern sensibilities appreciate this.

The book has the additional challenge of needing to balance religious diversity along with racial diversity. The primary premise of the book hinges on the existence of an old-school biblical God. And yet Bruno and Castle found a way to make space for Native American faith traditions, allowing them to exist simultaneously and authentically.

But what really makes the book work is its voice. And I don't mean the tone of the text; I'm talking about the actual voice of the narrator who read the book to me. Roger Clark is the actor who voices Crowley in the audio version of the book, and his performance is brilliant. Clark's distinctive western drawl brings Crowley to life in a way that's hard to appreciate until you've heard it.

My only complaint with Cold as Hell is that by the end, it started to get tedious. I appreciate the detailed account of every stage of Crowley's adventure, but at some point, I was like, man, this is just a bit much. Still, that's a minor complaint and I'm eager to see where the next book takes me.

Bottom line: Cold as Hell is a fun read. After recently tackling weightier topics, I didn't realize how much I needed a good old-fashioned western shoot 'em up. Throw in the fantasy element and you've got a clever "page-turner" I couldn't put down.

Review: How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy

This year we had a 12 year old Taylor Swift fan on our holiday gift list. I thought I'd get sneaky and do a bit of research into Ms. Swift to find a unique gift. One aspect of Swift's career that jumped out at me was how young she was when she started creating music. In fact, Swift's first song, Lucky You was written when she was 12. I thought, aha!, I'll get our Swifty a gift to help her write her first song. That way, she can have a unique connection to one of her favorite artists.

Looking around on Amazon, Jeff Tweedy's How To Write One Song jumped out at me as what I had in mind. Using the Amazon preview feature I read the introduction and it sounded promising. Still, there was a bit of salty language and in the end, I got nervous that it may contain themes that were a bit much for a tween. I was delighted to see that our library had the audio version of the book, so I could dig deeper and find out the whole story.

In short, I was blown away by How To Write One Song. You should probably just stop reading this review and go listen to it. I can tell how impactful a book is by how frequently I find myself trying to explain its attributes to Shira. And poor Shira needed to hear over and over again how on target Tweedy's text was. I'm sure she was relieved when I finally finished the book so she could stop hearing these disjointed explanations.

Part of what makes the book so successful is that it's the right blend of motivational speaker, cheerleader, coach and workbook. The book, in equal parts, convinces you that song writing is a good idea, that you're the person to do it, how to generally approach the task as well as concrete exercises to painlessly craft your first song. As I read the book, I found my thinking changing from: I want to assess this book's value as a gift; to hmm, looks like even I could write song; to I definitely need to write a song; to I must stop every creative pursuit I'm undertaking and write a song this very moment!

Ultimately, I backed off from this last goal, but I have added song writing to my 'Blog Ideas' spreadsheet where I track projects I want to take on and remain eager to give it a go. And I'm not talking about focusing on arguably what would be in my comfort zone: generating my song via code; I'm talking about me belting out a love song, while strumming my canjo. Tweedy has me convinced that the journey of discovery that I'd undertake to write this mythical love song will be well worth the effort.

The value of How To Write one Song goes well beyond song writing. I'd argue its blueprint can help with any complex creative endeavor. It probably won't surprise you when I suggest that by changing the song writing exercises, you could easily have the book "How To Write One Novel" or "How To Sculpt One Sculpture." What may surprise you is the suggestion that Tweedy's philosophy and approach works equally well for pursuits that on the surface don't appear as creative arts. I'd argue that by tweaking the specifics, you could publish "How To Write One Web App" or "How To Run One Ultramarathon."

When Tweedy talks about needing to redefine success, find and savor flow, the importance of reading and stealing from existing work, he's giving the same advice I'd give a want-to-be programmer. If you watch videos from top level ultra distance runners, they talk at length about the joy of flow, overcoming self doubt, finding your why and figuring out how to break down an impossibly large task into approachable parts. That's exactly what song writers do, and Tweedy gives you the tools to get this done.

The audio version of How To Write One Song is read by the author and contains some nuanced and creative content. It's one of the few times I can recall where listening to a book had clear advantages over the paper version. Still, I've rented the hard copy of the book because I want to see and work through the exercises.

This past weekend we visited our nieces and nephew in Florida. 10 year old G told me she wanted to be a singer when she grew up; though she explained to me that she'll probably have a songwriter. I suggested she could write her own songs, and for about 8 seconds I had her rapt attention. Then she lost interest and moved on to a new topic. If I'd had some of Tweedy's exercises at the ready, it's possible she would have given them a go. In short, adding song writing skills to my Uncle/Foster-Dad toolkit seems like a smart move.

Now that I've been through How To Write One Song, I'm confident that the language and themes are almost certainly fine for a twelve year old. Like an R-rated movie, there are a few well placed cuss words, but I'm sure it's nothing kids haven't heard before. There is some talk about drugs and alcohol, but that talk is positive, reinforcing that the creative process doesn't need these to be successful.

As for older teens and adults, I'd say that How To Write One Song should be required reading. There's huge value in creative endeavors, and the roadblocks that keep us from embracing these pursuits are real. But How To Write One Song can help break these down. And for that alone, it's worth your time.

Hmmm, maybe I should be writing a song about that. Let's see, what rhymes with roadblock? Sunblock. Cuckoo-clock. Aftershock. Johann Sebastian Bach. Yes, that's it. And we're off and running!