Meeting: August 12, 2015

Linda Jenkins hosted our August meeting. After some indecision about where we should conduct the meeting, we settled on meeting indoors due to the warm temperature.  Ellen Bowes, Nancy French, Christe Gillespie, Julie Howard, Linda Jenkins, Annie Larkin, Jo Smith, and Liz Webster were in attendance.  Our non-book conversation included public health initiatives, politics, the railroad ties, education, Annie embarking on empty nesting, and Jo, Judy, and Nanc's recent bike tour.

I neglected to take a photo from Linda's house, so I thought I'd include this one of the American Queen as it came through Trempealeau at about 1:00 this morning.

The Boys In The Boat is a compelling story of nine University of Washington students capturing the attention of the nation as they overcome personal adversities to win Olympic gold. The team was built with working-class / country boys when historically rowing had been a sport for the rich. Since all the boys were new to the sport, they had to learn about competitive rowing.

It’s not a question of whether you will hurt, or of how much you will hurt; it’s a question of what you will do, and how well you will do it, while pain has her wanton way with you.

The book is much more than a book about rowing, as Daniel James Brown weaves in matters of historical importance along with rowing: the depression, the Dust Bowl, Leni Riefenstahl's role in Hitler's rise to Nazi power, and the magic that happens when individuals learn to become a team.

Joe Rantz is the central character in the book. Due to being abandoned by his family at age 14, Joe needed to find a way to rise above his fundamental mistrust of people. The coaches and boat-builder George Pocock, in particular, help Joe to learn to trust his teammates. 

As Pocock talked, Joe grew mesmerized. It wasn’t just what the Englishman was saying, or the soft, earthy cadence of his voice, it was the calm reverence with which he talked about the wood — as if there was something holy and sacred about it — that drew Joe in. The wood, Pocock murmured, taught us about survival, about overcoming difficultty, about prevailing over adversity, but it also taught us something about the underlying reason for surviving in the first place. Sometimes about infinite beauty, about undying grace, about things larger and greater than ourselves. About the reasons we were all here. ...

... The ability to yield, to bend, to give way, to accommodate, he said, was sometimes a source of strength in men as well as in wood, so long as it was helmed by inner resolve and by principle. 

George Pocock's boat-building expertise was unmatched, but behind the scenes he added so much more to the University of Washington's success.

George Pocock learned much about the hearts and souls of young men. He learned to see hope where a boy thought there was no hope, to see skill where skill was obscured by ego or by anxiety. He observed the fragility of confidence and the redemptive power of trust. He detected the strength of the gossamer threads of affection that sometimes grew between a pair of young men or among a boatload of them striving honestly to do their best. And he came to understand how those almost mystical bonds of trust and affection, if nurtured correctly, might lift a crew above the ordinary sphere, transport it to a place where nine boys somehow became one thing—a thing that could not quite be defined, a thing that was so in tune with the water and the earth and sky above that, as they rowed, effort was replaced by ecstasy. It was a rare thing, a sacred thing, a thing devoutly to be hoped for. And in the years since coming to Washington, George Pocock had quietly become its high priest.

As a group, the book club members were captivated by the George Pocock quotes at the beginning of each chapter. Some examples:

It is hard to make that boat go as fast as you want to. The enemy, of course, is resistance of the water, as you have to displace the amount of water equal to the weight of mean and equipment, but that very water is what supports you and that very enemy is your friend. So is life: the very problems you must overcome also support you and make you stronger in overcoming them.  — George Yeoman Pocock 

Therein lies the secret of successful crews: Their “swing,” that fourth dimension of rowing, which can only be appreciated by an oarsman who has rowed in a swinging crew, where the run is uncanny and the work of propelling the shell a delight.  — George Yeoman Pocock. 

Harmony, balance, and rhythm. They’re the three things that stay with you your whole life.  Without them civilization is out of whack. And that’s why an oarsman, when he goes out in life, he can fight it, he can handle life. That’s what he gets from rowing.  — George Yeoman Pocock

This nonfiction writing depended on limited resources, including interviews with Joe at about age 90 and his daughter, Judy, the daily logs of Coach Al Ulbrickson, a biography of Pocock, news accounts, and the scrapbooks and journals of various crew members. We were fascinated that Brown could get us caught up in the athletic success of long dead young men in a sport we don’t follow. The details of the Olympic race were thrilling and suspenseful, despite already knowing how it all ends.

Joe Rantz passed away in September of 2007. Roger Morris, Joe's first friend on the crew was the last man standing. He passed away in July of 2009.

And so they passed away, loved and remembered for all that they were - not just Olympic oarsmen but good men, one and all.

When Brown took a trip to Berlin in 2011 and stood watching some rowers on the water where the boys had won their Olympic gold he recounted his feelings:

I was swept by gratitude for their goodness and their grace, their humility and their honor, their simple civility and all the things they taught us before they flitted across the evening water and finally vanished into the night.

September meeting:

Book : Ruby by Cynthia Bond

Location: Ellen Bowes

Date: Thursday, September 10, 2015

Time: 6:30pm

Upcoming meetings:

October 8, 2015: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee at Annie Larkin's

November 12, 2015: Movie night to watch To Kill a Mockingbird at Jo Smith's

December 2015: Holiday gathering
January 2016: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
February 2016: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Books we've read so far:

January 2014 - Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
February 2014 - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
March 2014 - Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
April 2014 - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
May 2014 - The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
June 2014 - Breaking Free by Marilyn Sewell
July 2014 - The Orphan Train by Kristina Baker Kline
August 2014 - The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
September 2014 - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
October 2014 - The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
November 2014 - The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
December 2014 - No book.  Holiday gathering.
January 2015 - No book.  Watched The Book Thief
February 2015 - The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
March 2015 - Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
April 2015 - The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin
May 2015 - The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
June 2015 - The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
July 2015 - Still Alice by Lisa Genova
August 2015 - The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown