Mandela’s World Cup, James Gregory’s Goodbye, Bafana

James Gregory's memoir served as the basis for the movie Goodbye, Bafana.

In a concession to his age and increasing frailty, South African icon Nelson Mandela announced recently that he will watch the opening ceremony of June’s World Cup at home.

It’s been 15 years since then-President Mandela prowled the sideline wearing a copy of Francois Pienaar’s number 6, green Springbok jersey in the Rugby World Cup-action that was depicted in John Carlin’s Playing the Enemy, and, more recently on the screen, in Invictus.

According to the article, part of the reason Mandela will not be attending is that his passion for victory remains undimmed.

His grandson, in India for South African national day celebrations, said Mandela would watch the games on television. His rural home is in Qunu in the Eastern Cape province, his birthplace.

“We always watch soccer with him but unless the team is winning 2-0 he doesn’t feel comfortable,” he said. “Once it’s a tight situation, he usually walks away and says it’s too nerve-wracking.”

Mandela’s unquenched desire for lopsided victories is just one part of his remarkable personality that has made him such a compelling and rewarding subject for authors.  I have written before about The Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela’s autobiography, and Allister Sparks’ Tomorrow is Another Country, the story of the secret negotiations that led to South Africa’s “bloodless revolution.”

People wanting to learn more about Mandela’s tenacity magnanimity should consider reading James Gregory’s Goodbye, Bafana.  Written by a man who served as one of Mandela’s prison guards for more than 20 years , the book tells the tale of a gradual thawing of relations and forging of a friendship based on mutual respect and affection.

Michele’s Weldon Journey Through Domestic Violence

Michele Weldon's account of surviving domestic violence is worthwhile reading.

Journalism professor Michele Weldon came to the Reporter office to check on the two of our interns that she is supervising.

She asked after my family, informed me that I had missed the publication of her most recent book and told me that I had married a fine woman (I couldn’t agree more.).

While I have not yet read Everyman News, I did read I Closed My Eyes, her harrowing tale of enduring, and ultimately living through, domestic violence at her husband’s hands.

Key to better business leadership is in your brain.

The key to better business leadership is in your brain.

There are literally hundreds of books about business leadership.

Some are first-person accounts from leaders like Jack Welch or John Bogle.

Other emphasize group dynamics, while still others discuss personal qualities like integrity, authenticity, decisiveness and vision.

But few that I’ve read talk about your brain.

Until now.

The Brain Advantage is the result of a collaboration between Madeleine Van Hecke, Lisa P. Callahan, Brad Kolar and Ken A. Paller.

A former colleague once offered the old quote that “A camel is a horse designed by a committee,” but, in this case, the combination of writers and academic worked together effectively.

The book’s central point is that different parts of the brain control different sorts of responses.  Being aware of, and working with, these neurological realities can help leaders do their jobs more effectively.

For example, the authors have a section in which they make the point that we don’t always see things as accurately as we believe we do.  This knowledge should temper workers’ and leaders’ utter certainty about how they proceed.

Chicago’s declining black population, Bill Grimshaw’s Bitter Fruit.

Bill Grimshaw's Bitter Fruit shows the meager results black Chicagoans have gotten from supporting the political machine.

A New York Times article this weekend courtesy of the Chicago News Cooperative wrote that Chicago and suburban Cook County have seen a decline in their black populations, and that this drop has political implications.

Former Tribster James Warren has two major assertions in his column.  Offered  in the article’s opening paragraph, the first draws on data from the American Community Survey to say that black people represent the city’s most important voting bloc:

Whether you’re Mayor Richard M. Daley or Mayor-In-His-Mind-Rahm Emanuel, no voting group is more important for a Democrat than the city’s African-Americans. Increasingly, there are fewer of them.

The second and related point Warren makes is that these lower numbers could mean less clout for the city’s black communities:

When it comes to big-city declines in the number of blacks, there is the prospect of less influence in determining elected officials in those cities. There is also, as State Senator Kwame Raoul puts it, the possibility of diminished power in the allocation of resources, namely who gets the most public transportation, public construction and education money.

IIT Professor William Grimshaw is likely to disagree strongly with the first point, and to a lesser degree with the second.  In Bitter Fruit, he explores the communities’ relationship with the Democratic machine and the decidedly meager results it has borne.

Judge Goldstone’s bar mitzvah attendance, books that mention Jeffrey Benzien.

Controversial judge Richard Goldstone will be allowed to attend his grandson's bar mitzvah next month.

Judge Richard Goldstone will attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah after all.

A Mail and Guardian article explained that the SA Zionist Federation (SAZF) and the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol in Sandton were reported to have barred Goldstone from the synagogue service after an outcry over his criticism of the Israeli military in the Goldstone Report.

In the report, Goldstone accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza.

This is not the first time that Goldstone has waded into controversial waters.

The former head of an eponymous commission, Goldstone and his colleagues provided strong evidence during the waning years of the apartheid era of a “third force” that implemented many of the government’s bloody initiatives.

The commission contributed to a consensus about the need for a public body that later became the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Goldstone later served as the chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda from 15 August 1994 to September 1996.

Michael Moore’s Capitalism, book connections.

Michael Moore's latest film has a number of intriguing book connections.

Dunreith and I rented Michael Moore’s latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, last night.

While I did sleep through a certain amount of  the movie due to being extremely tired, I did see enough to see that it contained many of the standard Moore elements: the guerrilla stunts that usually involve him; the roads that lead inevitably back to Flint, Michigan; the moral clarity that divides the world into good and evil; the capturing of poignant moments from ordinary people; and the dubious use of history.

The last was most prominently on display in his call for revolution-a call that he said was based on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s World War II proposal of a Second Bill of Rights. These rights, which he offered as part of democracy-a system that he erroneously called the opposite of capitalism, include the right to education, health care, and a decent job, among others.

Roosevelt as revolutionary is a theory that does not square well with the historical record.  I have written before about James MacGregor Burns‘ The Lion and the Fox, which is one of the earlier biographies about the Hyde Park aristocrat who is the only man to have been elected to the presidency four times.

While many would agree that Roosevelt was a transcendent figure, perhaps one of the two or three most important presidents in our nation’s history, they also would argue convincingly that the New Deal was designed in part to ward off a truly radical assault on the democracy’s, yes, capitalist underpinnings.

Arizona’s immigration law, Luis Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway

Luis Alberto Urrea's The Devil's Highway provides context for the passage of yesterday's anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona.

Yesterday afternoon,  despite President Barack Obama’s calling it “misguided”  and “irresponsible,” Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed anti-immigrant Senate Bill 1070 into law.

The newly signed legislation gives police new powers to detain anyone who they think looks to be illegal, and, according to the Christian Science Monitor, may be a galvanizing issue for conservative Republicans angry about Obama’s election and tenure.

In a prescient story, friend and former colleague at The Chicago Reporter Fernando Diaz wrote about undocumented immigrants being stopped for traffic violations and ending up deported in last year’s March/April issue.  We also worked in 2007 on a story about fatal police shootings in Phoenix during a collaboration with ColorLines magazine.

In signing the legislation, Brewer called the bill a solution “to a crisis we did not create, and which the federal government has refused to address.”

The crisis to which Brewer refers has been much chronicled.  My brother Jon Lowenstein has masterfully documented the issue of the largest transnational migration in world history in the United States,Mexico and Guatemala.

I’ve read far from all of the fiction and non-fiction on this topic, and one of the most moving books I have read is Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway.

In this gripping tale, Urrea writes about the slow and agonizing deaths of the “Yuma 14,” a group of 26 immigrants who perished during an attempted desert crossing from Mexico  to the United States.  Although a work of non-fiction, Urrea brings his considerable literary talents to bear in describing the men’s haunting realization that the coyote has abandoned them and their deaths are assured.

In one characteristic section, he writes:

“The dead have open mouths and white teeth.  They are stretched in angular poses, caught in last gasps or shouts, their eyes burned an eerie red by the sun.  Many of them are naked. Some of them have dirt in their mouths.  When the corpses are those of women, their breasts have shrunk and withered and cracked under the sun.  The deads’ open mouths reveal gums that have turned to some substance that looks like baked adobe, crumbling and almost orange.  They look like roadside attractions, like wax-and-paper torsos in a gas station Dungeon of Terror.  For many of them, these are the first portraits for which they have posed.

The Yuma 14 are all male.”

The book includes sections on the men’s lives in Mexico before their harrowing and, for many, fatal journey North.

I would hope that people of all political stripes could find some compassion for the suffering the men experienced, and that compassion can be the basis for the formation of comprehensive and just immigration reform.

Based on yesterday’s events, that hope may seem like a naive pipe dream.  But after reading Urrea’s book, it’s what I’m working with for now.

NFL Draft, Great Quarterbacks of the NFL

 

Today's NFL draft sparked memories of this childhood favorite.

UPDATE: Another evocative comment from fellow Massachusetts boy Jack Crane:

October 1970, Baltimore Colts vs. Boston Patriots, Harvard Stadium. I recall freezing my butt off watching Johnny Unitas pick away at the Pats towards victory, and Joe Kapp throwing the ball at the stars, literally straight up into the air. The Colts would go on to win the Super Bowl. The Pats could only look forward to a #1 draft choice in 1971. We would soon hear the thrilling play-by-play call at the new Schaefer Stadium, “Plunkett to Vataha!” And years later, I was cheering on my teenage hero as the East San Jose chicano kid, raised by blind parents, came off the bench as a back-up quarterback to lead the Raiders to Super Bowl victories in 1980 and 1983.

Jim Plunkett had an opportunity to drop out of Stanford and enter the Pros early. He certainly could have used the money having come from a very poor family, but decided to stay and graduate because he had been tutoring Chicano kids to work hard and stay in school, and wanted to set an example.

And how Vataha could catch a bomb floating over his shoulder without barely looking back, will always remain an enchanting puzzle…

ORIGINAL POST:

This year’s NFL draft is set to begin in a few short hours, and, according to many pundits, it’s a strong year for quarterbacks.

Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford is widely predicted to be the first pick, while Jimmy Clausen, Colt McCoy and Tim Tebow could all be picked before the first round is over.

Sports Illustrated this week has a draft preview with Bradford on the cover and a piece about the five greatest draft classes for quarterbacks in league history.

As a kid growing up in Brookline, I feasted again and again on Dave Anderson’s Great Quarterbacks of the NFL.

The book contained profiles of legendary QBs like Slingin’ Sammy Baugh, the Texan who doubled as a record-setting punter, Bart Starr, who overcame early career stumbles to lead Green Bay to five championships, including the first two Super Bowl.  Sid Luckman, the son of Jewish immigrants who attended Columbia and led the Chicago Bears to unprecedented glory, got a chapter.

So, too of course,  did Johnny Unitas, the standard-bearer from Western Pennsylvania held most of the passing records before Fran Tarkenton, Dan Marino and Brett Favre passed him.

I drank in their exploits, memorized their statistics and the anecdotes about their careers.

Someday Bradford, Clausen and the rest may inspire their own books.  For now, though, when seeing their freshly scrubbed faces and neatly pressed suits, I’ll think about the legends of my childhood and the gridiron glory they earned.

Harnessing The Rudolph Factor at Work

The Rudolph Factor looks at how Boeing rose from the ashes by tapping their workers' creative contributions.

I had Christmas envy as a kid.

Hearing friends tell me about their 20-minute orgy of opening presents seemed pretty good compared with our nightly haul of a single present for Hannukah-a feeling that was heightened by our annual receipt on the first night of tickets to see The Nutcracker and the trailing off by night six to the yearly gift of a Cross pen.

Christmas had it all over Hannukah when it came to music and television specials, too.

Although the Grinch terrified me to the point of tears the first time I saw him-we were public television kids, so one of my initial forays into commercial tv didn’t go well-and I didn’t love the Charlie Brown Christmas or Frosty the Snowman, at least there were options.

Hannukah in the mid-70s had nothing.

I did like the story of Rudolph and his journey from reindeer outcast to hero, though I did not completely understand the abominable snowman’s transformation from ogreish to amiable until I met an Italian gardener years later who talked about “il mio unico dento,” or his single tooth.

I also didn’t realize until last night that I may have had something in common with Rudolph at work.

That was when I read Cyndi Laurin and Craig Morningstar’s The Rudolph Factor: Finding the Bright Lights that Drive Innovation in Your Business.

Boston Marathon, Jim Fixx’s Running

Jim Fixx's book is a classic running primer.

Kenyan Robert K. Cheruyiot won today’s Boston Marathon in record time, become the first able-bodied man to finish in less than 2:06.

In addition to his record-setting run, Cheruyiot became the second person with his name to win the fabled race.

He is not alone in having a namesake who won the marathon.

Johnny A. Kelley, one of the event’s true legends, ran the race 61 times, finishing 58.  He was at times confused with 1957 winner by the same name, Johnny J. “The Younger” Kelley.

Watching the crowd cheer the elder Kelley as he made his way through Mile 24 at Coolidge Corner was a childhood highlight.  I met him years later at the John Gray classic in Cape Cod and asked him if he remembered Mike Kelley, a friend of mine and a nephew of his.

“Mike Kelley?” he exclaimed.  “I’ve got 19 Mike Kelleys, 22 Johnny Kelleys.”

You get the idea.  The list of Kelley relatives with the most popular Irish names was not short.

I first got the marathon bug in seventh grade, when Kelley was a mere 70 years old. I started running three miles with my friend David Sharff before we did our paper routes.

Dad got me Jim Fixx’s The Complete Book of Running, the classic primer on the then-national craze that had a red cover and his musclebound legs in mid-stride.

Fixx died suddenly of a heart attack at age 52, giving ammunition to all non-runners, but not before he left behind an accessible and helpful book that got you oriented for how to approach running, including a chapter on Boston.

My training has suffered in the past couple of months, and I’m still optimistic about getting ready for Chicago in October.  At some point along the way I imagine I’ll be thinking about Johnny Kelley, Robert Cheruyiot and Jim Fixx.