Martin Kemp's expertise shines a light onto the true life of one of my heroes, Leonardo da Vinci

 Leonardo – Martin Kemp (2004)

  

            If there is a single human being that exemplifies my definition of an artist it is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, the greatest of the “Big 3” of Renaissance art.  The other two being Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, otherwise known as Raphael and Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. The omnipresence of Leonardo in our collective human consciousness is unrivalled by any other artist.  From his amazing engineering genius, his deep inquisitiveness about the natural world around us, and his unceasing desire to expand the wisdom of humanity, he drew forth art so timeless as to feel inevitable. His two most famous works, the Last Supper fresco and the small oil painting on poplar universally loved as the Mona Lisa, are the two most recognizable pieces of art the world over, with Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco and his massive statue of David coming in a very close second.  I studied Art and Art History and considered myself well-versed on Leonardo, his life, and his achievements, but nothing could have prepared me for the journey taken with this wonderful book by Martin Kemp.

            I should have been prepared, seeing as how Martin Kemp, the Emeritus Professor of Art History at Oxford University, is the world’s most-renowned scholar and expert on Leonardo Da Vinci, his works, and his life story.  As an art lover, I felt Mr. Kemp’s awe and admiration for the old master on every page.  I share this with him.  Mr. Kemp’s prose is detailed, informative, and full of original ideas.  While there exist many biographies of Leonardo, this concise volume focuses on how we, modern human beings, can truly understand him, and the world he adored, analyzed, and portrayed in his writing and art.  A superlative individual such as Leonardo suffers from the cult of personality that arises around such august personages.  Stories turn into myths and myths turn into legends.  The world accepts the legend as truth, until everyone forgets the true facts.  Martin Kemp has created a magnificent resource for anyone seeking to learn the actual details of Leonardo’s life, patronages, and art-making processes. 

            One of the intriguing details in the story of Leonardo’s life is the tale of his death, and what became of the art he left behind in his studio.  Leonardo, like all great artists and craftsmen of the time, ran a studio of painters and sculptors who helped him prepare materials, prime surfaces, and finish “unimportant” details of paintings so the master could focus on the main subjects portrayed within.  One of these men, a rascally character named Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno who painted under the name “Andrea Salai,” apprenticed under Leonardo and held an unsavory reputation, even though he was one of the main apprentices given the responsibility of running Leonardo’s workshop.  Upon the master’s death, Salai took it upon himself to swipe a good number of completed paintings from the studio, keeping them hidden in his home until his untimely death by bow and arrow.  It was in the accounting of Salai’s belongings that a list of the purloined Leonardo’s was found.  This included the famous Giaconda painting currently hanging in the Louvre.  King Francis I of France purchased the lot soon after, which is why the Mona Lisa is a treasured piece of art in France and not Italy.  If it wasn’t for a shady apprentice, the world may never have heard of the Mona Lisa! 

This book is full of details that flesh out the true life of Leonardo, while also explaining exactly why the grandiose and superlative legends arose about the great man.  Martin Kemp includes dozens of color plates showing beautiful reproductions of the master’s art, along with many black and white drawings exploring the ways in which Leonardo used the act of drawing itself as a form of thinking about, and inquiry into, the natural world around us.  He prized sight above all other senses, and the act of focused looking as the main source of inspiration for any visual artist.  In this he influenced everyone that followed, even if only in rebelling against this idea.  In Leonardo’s assessment, visual art is more valuable than any poem, song, or theatrical art.  These types of art require time to pass for the audience to fully grasp the intent and beauty within.  Visual art, such as sculpture, paintings, and drawings, slams the viewer with everything all at once.  It takes very little time for communication to happen through the eye.  The horror of war illustrated in Picasso’s Guernica, or the viciousness of the old gods as portrayed by Goya in his Saturn Devouring His Son slam into us without any need for exposition.  Truth, beauty, and wisdom are transmitted without the need for sloppy words.  Perhaps it is this quality that touches us centuries later as we admire and explore Leonardo’s art.  I know that he touched my life in unimaginable ways.  I hope many people read Martin Kemp’s book and grow in their love and admiration for the great master.

(This wonderful book can be purchased from Oxford University Press here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/leonardo-9780199583355?cc=us&lang=en& )

It appears that humanity has always ridden the Mindway in search of wisdom, insight, and community

 

The Routledge Companion to Ecstatic Experience in the Ancient World – Diana Stein, Sarah Kielt Costello, Karen Polinger Foster, Editors (2022)

 

            While I treasure and adore all books, it is books such as this one that thrill me the most because of the amazing amount of information included within.  Having read books on shamanism, ancient humans, and myth creation recently, I was thrilled when this book appeared in my hands while browsing the stacks.  The editors of this work, Diana Stein, Sarah Kielt Costello, and Karen Polinger Foster have provided the world with a magnificent resource exploring a seldom-analyzed part of our collective human past, that being the use and exploitation of what the writers term “Altered States of Consciousness,” ASC for short.  For far too long archeologists and anthropologists saw ancient man through our own modern “enlightenment” principles, ignoring all “subjective” experience such as trance, spirit possession, hallucinations, etc., in favor of empirically verifiable data.  This created a vast chasm of ignorance regarding the spiritual and mental lives of our ancestors.  It is the aim of this work to rectify that and to help guide the exploration of our distant human past towards a better understanding of the role ecstatic experiences had in the shaping of our species.  It is an impressive achievement.

            Formatted much like a textbook, each section presents a case for the omnipresence and importance of ecstatic experience in understanding the cultures of our ancient past.  The first section of three chapters, titled “Setting the Stage,” explores the history of ASC dismissal by biased researchers and explorers of our past, providing a firm foundation upon which to expand the explorations each writer takes in turn, and showing how universal these ecstatic experiences were.  These chapters also expand on what used to be the definition of “ecstasy” to include all types of societal, spiritual, and shamanic altered states of consciousness.  The third chapter of the first section aims to provide empirical models to define ritual practices and ecstatic experiences, from ancient man to today’s modern world.  It helps place these studies, and ASC’s themselves, within the greater study of humanity and its development, something which mainstream archeology and anthropology has dismissed for centuries.

            The second section seeks to elucidate the evidence we have for the various types of psychoactive compounds, plants, and substances used by our ancestors to achieve ASC states.  Evidence from archeological digs, mass-spectrometry, and other modern tools is given to show the wide variety of ingestible, smokable, or otherwise applied natural materials used in ecstatic rituals.  The full gamut of intoxicants is analyzed, from botanical specimens and residue found within sealed jars, to the early use of fermentation to create drinkable alcohol, to the various mind-altering plants used by the Babylonians, Hittites and early Egyptians, all recorded in their language and art.  To emphasize the communal use of these substances, the final chapter of section 2 discusses a type of ceramic container found throughout ancient sites.  The Ring-Kernoi is a device consisting of a ceramic tube, shaped into a donut, with four to five adorned containers attached to the ring.  Looking at these artifacts through the lens of ASC experience, the author describes their use in ritual communion.  Each adorned section contained wither a different psychoactive compound, whether opium, cannabis, mandrake, etc., meant to be smoked in sequence and passed around, or they contained different liquid substances which, when mixed up in the Ring-Kernoi, created an intoxicating brew capable of easing the passage into ecstasy.  For our ancestors, the divine, experienced through ecstatic states, was a communal activity, a very important way to define their culture and self-identity as individual groups. 

            The third section of this awesome book goes into detail exploring the numinous world of ecstatic experiences, as described by ancient humans in their own words.  Starting with a dive into the most ancient archeological sites we have found, such as Çatalhöyük, and the discovery of a communal imbibing of alcohol, whether plain or adulterated with other psychotropic substances, which took place in massive megalithic spaces, many of them underground or only accessible through narrow openings.  These are the first evidence for the types of communal, spiritual experiences out of which the human need for religious communion arose.  Delving into ancient rituals for the goddess Ishtar, the writings concerning the dead from Egypt, and the ASC’s described by the ancient residents of Crete and the Minoan civilization that followed, helps us grasp the constant flow of ideas and wisdom that propelled our humanity forward.  From these ancient civilizations we then move onto ritual experience in ancient Greece, and the various cults and oracles which took advantage of ASC’s to promote their ideology.  Ecstatic experiences were a critical part of many cults, including those of the healer Asclepius, and the gods Apollo and Dionysius. As with all roads, the section ends with an analysis of the ecstatic funeral processions recorded from ancient Rome.  These chapters help bridge the gap between our assumed knowledge of the ancients towards a more factual and historical basis, drawing from the many written records we have of Greece, Rome and their neighbors at the time.

            The final section of this great work focuses on the evidence we have from our collective past pointing to, or describing, the experiences of the “Ecstatic” mind.  This section builds on all the previous ones and shares great insights into such topics as spirit possession and prophetic ecstasy as described in Mesopotamian texts, the psychedelic art from the Aegean, and the progression from personal or communal ecstatic experience to that of rigorous, sacerdotally-dictated ASC’s utilized by the very powerful in all societies to control the masses (think of a modern Catholic service, with its rituals, chants, music, incense, and repetition, intended to draw the congregation together into a shared experience).  The insights found in these final chapters help us understand the evolution and propagation of personal ecstatic experiences into the collective religions we see all around us in our “modern” world.

            This book is a masterpiece of research and science.  I hope to see it used as a foundational text, allowing younger researchers to continue down the same path of exploration, and guiding the elders in these fields towards new ideas and possibilities for scholarship.  When we as a culture disdain “unsavory” aspects of our past, dismissing wholesale anything to do with mysticism, or our long-standing use of chemicals, fauna, trance, song, or rhythms to achieve altered states of consciousness, we negate aspects of ourselves that help us understand each other.  It creates divisiveness where these old rituals and experiences sought to create inclusivity.  It is such a shame that our modern world sees everything we do as the pinnacle of human achievement, all the while forgetting that for most of our human existence we have all had the capability of communing with the divine, of understanding ourselves and our place in the world around us, and of accepting that reality is far greater than the basic facts we all choose to agree upon.  This book is a great step in the right direction, and worthwhile reading for anyone interested in humanity’s psychological and spiritual development.

(This great resource can be purchased here: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Ecstatic-Experience-in-the-Ancient-World/Stein-KieltCostello-PolingerFoster/p/book/9781032108483 )

Donald E. Brown shows us the universal truths of humanity, and the countless errors of anthropology

Human Universals – Donald E. Brown (1991)

In the course of reading a book, titled The Routledge Companion  to Ecstatic Experience in the Ancient World, I saw a footnote referencing a different book titled Human Universals.  I made the request through the Inter-Library Loan Program (ILL) and the book made its way to me.  In less than 160 pages, the author Donald E. Brown presents the many mis-steps, fallacies, and outright obfuscation entered into by anthropologists over the decades since the scientific field of anthropology began.  Specifically, Mr. Brown explains the many ways anthropologists sought to either prove or disprove the idea that certain traits, desires, and thoughts are universally found in all human societies and cultures.

To the everyday layperson, it would appear that there are many aspects of our lives that are universal to all humans, but much of the anthropological research in our collective past began with the assumption that the human mind is a blank slate at birth, and that all culture and society is created or instilled in a human after their birth by those around them.  This drew from psychological ideas which, wholly accepted one hundred years ago, are no longer seen as valid due to the countless years of neurological, genetic, and psychological research that we humans have endeavored upon.  Donald E. Brown spends several chapters discussing exactly how these old assumptions were put to the test, and how they were deemed erroneous.

It is one of the many aspects of anthropology that I found irritating while studying at university, and which I currently find frustrating in many of the “soft sciences.”  The Scientific Method relies on experimentation, rigorous data gathering, and the willingness for the researcher to admit their initial ideas are wrong when faced with evidence to the contrary.  The so-called “soft” sciences, anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc., tend to begin with purely abstract assumptions, and then to seek evidence of these assumptions in the world around us.  Anyone who has studied the ease with which a human being can be deluded or misled by their own strongly-held ideas, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, can understand why Donald E. Brown spends so much time explaining the many fallacies and errors involved in the study of human universals.

There are basic elements of human life and culture that are obviously universal.  We are all born, and we all die.  We must all eat other living things for nourishment (plants are ALIVE, people!), and we must all imbibe water to survive. These, and many others, are universals of the physical, of the traits we all share as humans.  It is easy for anyone to accept these are universal to all human societies.  Apart from these basic things, there are universals that are more abstract.  For example, all humans dream, therefore all human cultures assign some sort of meaning to dreams.  For the most part, every single culture of the world has a taboo on incest.  Even in places like pharaonic Egypt, or in Medieval Europe, where the very top of the society would often marry their siblings, this was not done for sexual or reproductive reasons.  Marrying your sister meant that she would not marry someone from another family, which meant your family’s personal power and wealth would not be diluted.  This was the main reason rulers of Egypt and Europe married siblings.  It helped consolidate power, something the “elites” are always deeply concerned about.  And, yes, the populace found it as gross as we do today.

There are so many other human universals to be studied that it enrages me how ignorant and stuck to their assumptions anthropologists and other such scientists have been, stating with certainty that very few human universals exist.  Sticking to a flawed idea, in the face of overwhelming evidence, is the quickest way to ensure worthless science.  One of the interesting universals that has been found regards poetry.  Every single culture on Earth has had poetry of some sort, but the universality goes deeper than that.  Nearly every culture’s poetry consists of lines lasting three seconds in time.  This may seem arbitrary and weird, but for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, humanity carried its history and stories in our minds and transmitted them orally.  The three second line structure facilitates memorization, for the repetition creates a temporal framework in the mind, allowing for epic poems to be recited and recalled.  Recall how Aristotle railed against teaching people to write because he felt it would dilute their minds and weaken their memorization skills.  (He may have been right. Ha!)

Another human universal is the need for a spiritual connection with the world around us.  This does not mean organized religion, a specific trait of advanced cultures that seek to dominate the collective spiritual thought of the people through dogma and coercion, but instead refers to the inner individual need to attain closeness with Mother Nature, a divinity, or just the soul of the universe.  Even the simplest tribal societies had deep spiritual thoughts, and means by which to enhance and appreciate these experiences.

            Anthropology in the Western world spent way too many decades navel gazing and attempting to study every part of the Earth strictly through the lens of white, European, monotheistic cultures.  They did a great disservice to humanity in doing so, bringing about such stupidity that whole nations used their flawed “science” to justify genocide, imperialism, and the extermination of “undesirable” cultures.  The cost of this stupidity is still being paid.  Genetically, the difference between any two humans, no matter how remote or different they may seem, is miniscule.  It is literally 0.1%.  99.9% of your DNA is exactly the same as Napoleon, Bette Davis, or the ancient poet Rumi.  We are more alike as Homo Sapiens Sapiens than we all care to admit, and until we all choose to see ourselves this way, we will continue to breed hate, animosity, and jingoism in our people.  Donald E. Brown wrote this work in the early 1990’s, and I hope that it leads to a better understanding of the issues and limits inherent in the field of anthropology, especially when it comes to the biases and mental limitations of those doing the research.  While this was a difficult book to read, both due to the subject matter and my rage at anthropologist’s stupidity, I found it inspiring and educational.  I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the technical aspects of studying humanity, and the many properties and traits we all share universally.

(This book can be read here - https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/1991-brown-humanuniversals.pdf )

Bum Phillips' Autobiography feels like hanging with the great coach as he tells the story of his life

 

Bum Phillips: Coach, Cowboy, Christian – Bum Phillips, w/ Gabe Semenza (2010)

            In Texas, there are two legendary professional football coaches.  One is Tom Landry, a favorite of mine, who was a long-time coach of the Dallas Cowboys (who are NOT a favorite of mine. Boooooo!).  The other, and my own personal favorite NFL coach ever, is Bum Phillips, who coached professionally with the Houston Oilers and the New Orleans Saints and helped create the phenomenon known worldwide as the Luv Ya Blue era of Houston sports.  A true Texan original through and through, in word, deed, and spirit, Bum Phillips brought an energy and mindset to professional football coaching that went directly against the hard-ass, in-your-face, overly-demanding, workaholic, military-asshole “ideal” for football coaches.  In all my years as a fanatic of Bum Phillips, both as a coach and as an awesome human being, I have yet to hear, see, or read of anyone anywhere who has any type of negative comment about the man, including former opponents!  This is a rarity in the world.  My lovely wife knows of my deep admiration for coach Phillips, and surprised me with this book (a signed copy too!).  What a great gift for a football loving book nerd such as myself!

            I normally approach biographies and autobiographies with trepidation, having been burned before by self-aggrandizing, superfluous, and wildly rote works co-authored with ghost writers.  I was very excited about this book, however, because the co-writer aiding Mr. Phillips, Gabe Semenza, is someone who knew Coach Phillips for years.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear Bum Phillips’ voice in my head as I read this book.  Much like Coach Vince Lombardi, another legend of professional football, Bum Phillips’ voice lives on in my head, so when I read this book, I distinctly hear it in Coach Phillips Texan drawl.  Because of this, reading this book was an immense pleasure.  I immediately lost myself in the pages as I heard Bum’s voice inside my head while I read.  Gabe Semenza did a great job putting this book together, not covering up Coach Phillips’ voice, and allowing his natural cadence to exist on the page and propel the story of his life.

            The byline of this work states that Bum Phillips was a coach, a cowboy, and a christian.  Besides family itself, these are the three pillars upon which Coach Phillips built his life.  Coaching came natural to Bum Phillips, and he rose through the ranks of high school, Jr. College, Universities, and professional teams due to his love of the game itself, his ability to learn and apply wisdom gained while working for legendary college football coaches, and his own particular philosophy about how to lead men.  This personal belief stemmed from his experiences as a Marine in the second world war.  The verbally abusive drill sergeants taught Bum that their way was not the correct way to teach and train a grown man.  Yelling insults, demeaning a human being, essentially abusing them until they act as you want, these things seemed patently ridiculous to Bum Philips, and he swore that, if he ever got the chance to lead men, he would do it differently.  To paraphrase Coach Phillips, if you have to yell and cuss at someone to make them learn they will NOT learn.  They will just appease you until you shut up.  It was this core value that, through his professional life, made Bum Phillips stand out and be appreciated by those who worked for him.  He truly cared and loved about his “kids” as he called them.  He treated each one individually, as a human being, and achieved great things because of it, not the least of them being that nearly every single human that ever worked for or was coached by Bum Phillips feel they gained a father-figure, not just a coach.

            One great example of how Bum fostered a family atmosphere around the Houston Oilers was his policy for Saturdays.  Most NFL games are held on Sunday, and Saturday is usually treated as a dress-rehearsal of sorts.  Bum’s mindset was that, after working hard Tuesday through Friday, installing the gameplan for the upcoming Sunday, there was not much that could be changed or added on Saturday without messing everything up.  He treated these men like men, not like overgrown children.  Respect was given AND earned.  On Saturdays, Bum would tell the team, coaches, and staff to bring in their significant others and family to the Saturday practices.  For those players too young to have families, he encouraged they bring their pets!  The team would do a quick, pad-less run-through of the gameplan, then the rest of the day was spent listening to live music (famous country & western stars would come hang out and jam with the players!), playing dominoes, cards, and goofing around, and feasting on Texas barbeque or delicious Mexican or Tex-Mex food that Bum would have catered in.  The footage of these times seems ridiculous in its looseness and carefree nature.  No other team had such conviviality ingrained into their very essence.  This made the Oilers a family, and the City of Houston immediately understood it, loved it, and latched onto it as their defining trait.  Once Bum Phillips drafted the legendary Earl Campbell from the University of Texas, everything coalesced into the collective dream/fantasy we all know as the Luv Ya Blue era in Houston.

            Coach Philips takes us through his life, his efforts to learn more about football, and the endless job-hopping that is required of a sports coach in Texas.  He details his travels as he sought to always find work in the state of Texas.  He was either a head or an assistant coach at so many places, from West Texas State (Now UTEP), to high schools in Nacogdoches, all the way to an assistant coaching position with my alma mater, the University of Houston, where he was fortunate to coach his own son Wade Phillps, himself eventually becoming a respected and Super Bowl winning NFL defensive and head coach.  He discusses how his work life superseded his family life, and even though his children seem to understand and to accept who their father was, it still manages to draw a lot of regret and pain in Coach Phillips.  He understood the conflict that exists when the passion within you helps you succeed at your chosen profession to the detriment of your family life, and time spent with the very people you are working hard to provide for. 

In the mid-1980’s, Coach Bum Phillips retired from coaching and went back to the original love of his life, ranching and raising cattle.  Houston grew so fast and so big that what used to be a quaint ranch outside the city limits was quickly encroached by civilization.  Bum and his wife found a beautiful ranch property in South Texas and that is where he chose to spend the remaining decades of his life, with his friends, family, and animals.  It was around this time that a fateful phone call from an old Oilers player, Mike Barber, drew coach Phillips to a greater relationship with his spirituality.  Bum Phillips, along with many men of his generation, was a good man who sought to only do good in the world, and who wished no ill on anyone for anything.  However, he was not a “religious” man.  Coach Phillips lived a christian life, a true christian life, and did so because he felt it was right, not because of any religious or dogmatic requirements.  Everything changed when Mike Barber invited him to join him on one of his prison ministry visits.  Mike Barber had ministered to the incarcerated for a long time, and he knew that hearing from someone as respected and loved as Coach Bum Phillips could help start the healing for inmates.  Coach Phillips joined Mike as he visited the maximum security prison in Beeville Texas.  It set the course for the remainder of his life.  Until his dying day, Bum Phillips joined Mike Barber’s ministry and visited countless small and large correctional facilities. 

Coach Phillips truly lived a life of service.  All coaches are teachers, and the very best coaches become family.  Bum Phillips wanted to live life the right way, and through his example he shaped not only countless high school, college, and professional athletes, but also the very essence of Houston Texas, a city much misunderstood by the nation at large.  The City of Houston took on Bum’s persona, and it has never left.  This is still a humongous melting pot, and through good times and bad, the citizens of Houston try to treat each other like human beings.  This state of mind was reinforced by our beloved sports coaches, all of them more concerned with fostering family as a way to win than with winning itself, whether it be Bum Phillips with the legendary Houston Oilers, Rudy Tomjanovich with our beloved Houston Rockets, or DeMeco Ryans with our latest craze, the Houston Texans.  Bum Phillips did more good in the world in his 90-something years trodding the Earth than most people can imagine doing, and his method was human love and honesty.  There is no greater tribute to a man than to say, without any hyperbole, that he was universally loved, admired, and respected.  Sadly, it may seem that there are not many of those men left in our world, but we are out here, seeking to help those we can, support those we can, and attempting to foster brotherhood and community rather than rancor or divisiveness.  There are few true saints in our world, and I am very fortunate to have shared this life with Bum Phillips.  We all are.

(This wonderful book can be purchased used and new here: https://www.abebooks.com/9781935909026/Bum-Phillips-Coach-Cowboy-Christian-1935909029/plp )

Michael B. Kassel takes us back to WKRP In Cincinnati

 

America’s Favorite Radio Station: WKRP In Cincinnati – Michael B. Kassel (1993)

            There are two photographs I keep deep within my wallet.  One is a color photo of my wife Elizabeth when she was a little kid, another is a black and white image of Dr. Johnny Fever at his DJ booth.  Is this significant because these are the two guiding pillars of my life?  No.  Like a talisman, my wife’s photo reminds me of the totality of her, of how she is and always was much more than the person I got to know, of how she carries her inner child with her in all things, and of how fortunate I am that she chose to share her life with me.  Also acting as a talisman, Dr. Johnny Fever’s photo reminds me of my own youth, my love of music, my life-long admiration of anti-establishment figures, and most of all, of WKRP in Cincinnati, one of my favorite television shows ever.

            Because of my admiration for WKRP in Cincinnati, I always seek out any and all information about the show, its creators, writers, and actors.  This has been difficult since the show aired its first-run episodes between 1978 and 1982.  I arrived in the USA in December of 1981, so I missed all the initial screenings.  I discovered WKRP, along with my family, in syndication.  I found the show so funny, the characters so individual and weird, and the topics discussed so alien from the standard 30 minute situation comedies that flood the television landscape, that it soon became one of my favorites, even though I could not have been more than 9-10 years old.  In just four seasons and 90 total shows, WKRP’s creators crafted a television show so fresh, insightful and hilarious that its memory lives on in countless fans such as myself.  Employment at a library affords me access to all the books, so when I searched for and found this specific volume, I freaked.

            Author Michael B. Kassel states it beautifully in his preface, “WKRP in Cincinnati is an example of a program crafted by amazing individuals who were able to transcend the confines of their medium.” Quality stands out among the banal standard fare and desperate copycat shows that flood our television airwaves.  It definitely does so for WKRP.  Starting with the head man, Hugh Wilson, WKRP gathered up a company of people dedicated to creating clever, genuine, honestly funny entertainment mined from Hugh’s experience with working at small market radio stations.  Populated by characters drawn from real life, with all the complexities, beauties, and horrors that come with it, the show was always treated as the bastard son of the MTM (Mary Tyler Moore) production company, leaving the dullard CBS executives to almost ruin WKRP by switching the airtime of the show at least 9 times in 4 seasons.  Ridiculous.  It is a testament to the quality of WKRP that, while suffering such stupid treatment from know-nothing executives, it delivered 90 episodes of comedy gold.

            Michael B. Kassel understands that these characters, and the actors portraying them, are the reason fans tune in.  Because of this Hugh Wilson and the writers all took great care in the initial writing stages, assuring that any new story or joke stayed true to who these fully 3-dimensional people were, without ever relying on the cheap, easy type of formulaic jokes that TV sitcoms continue to foist upon an audience the TV execs consider to be dumber than B-grade dog food. (They only ever care about the commercials).  Kassel mentions how one writer began keeping a WKRP “bible,” detailing any new facts we learned about the characters on WKRP, allowing for easy and efficient continuity from show to show and season to season.  This was a new concept for television sitcoms, something done regularly now, 45 years later.

            Kassel’s best writing comes when he describes the people and the situations that found the amazing cast members hired and working for WKRP.  While I knew many of these stories through my own fandom, my mind exploded at the wealth of new information and details.  One of the tidbits which I understood innately as a child, but which I did not fully grasp until I re-watched WKRP as an adult, was the countless sly and subtle references that Howard Hesseman snuck in concerning his character, Dr. Johnny Fever, and the seemingly constant ingestion of psychedelics and other mood intoxicants, especially of the sticky icky green variety.  As a child the specific details eluded me, but I grokked it all through some sort of superfreak osmosis, and I loved it so much.  I initially also fell in love with both the incredibly vivacious, sexy, smart, and unflappable Loni Anderson, portraying Jennifer Marlowe, the highest paid member of the WKRP staff (a receptionist!), and the effortlessly beautiful, kind, and sweet Jan Smithers, who played the part of Bailey Quarters.  They did not act like the other “women” on TV shows.  They seemed like real people.  Everyone on WKRP did.

            I am now in my early fifties, and it has been nearly 25 years since WKRP aired in regular syndication.  As a TV-watching latch-key kid, I carry a lot of television in my mind, but nothing casts a shadow over my consciousness quite like WKRP in Cincinnati does.  I know all the jokes, all the beats, and I still laugh like a manic child.  I know all the stories, and the heavy shit dealt with in many episodes, and I still get choked up watching these characters navigate through their collective lives.  I still dream of working someplace like WKRP, with a kind and caring boss like Mr. Carlson, someone who truly invests himself in the people around him, or with a supervisor like Andy Travis, an honestly good human being who sees the value in relationships apart from the bottom-line.  I aspire to work with people as cool and complex as Johnny Fever or Venus Flytrap, the nighttime DJ, and with characters as funny and outlandish as Les Nessman or Herb Tarlek. Hell, I wanted to join a work softball team with a cool dude like Bucky Dornster, the station’s engineer who never took no shit from anyone and was a Union man!  Several years ago, I did indeed achieve a life-long dream of being a radio DJ just like Dr. Johnny Fever!  I did a Saturday oldies show called SONIC LIFE on 96.1 FM, Sugar Land TX, from 10am – 1 pm (links to those playlists here).  I played music from the 1950s’ to the 1990’s and always tried to teach the kids about Bo Diddley, because I always remember Johnny Fever crying out to Andy Travis, after being threatened with losing his job, “But who will teach the children about Bo Diddley?”  Hilarious!

            While this is a fairly small book, it took me on a well-needed trip down memory lane.  The second half of this book lists an episode guide, which I found very interesting as well.  Michael B. Kassel did a wonderful job on this book, a true labor of love, and a very real gift to those of us who feel that WKRP may be the very best situation comedy ever.  I put it just a half-notch above Cheers and Seinfeld, but that may be a purely personal matter.  All I know is that I cannot recall my dad, mom, brother, and I ever, EVER, laughing together as hard as we did when we watched WKRP’s “Turkeys Away” episode.  That memory of shared laughter stays with me even after I have forgotten the sound of my father’s voice, but I can remember his face when he laughed.  Great works of art contain the whole of existence within them, and WKRP does so for me.  I highly recommend this to any WKRP fanatic!

            I leave you with the immortal first-episode monologue by Howard Hesseman, as Dr. Johnny Fever switches his radio station’s music in mid-broadcast from “beautiful music” to Rock and Roll!      

“All right, Cincinnati, it is time for this town to get *down*!

Now, you got Johnny... Dr.  Johnny Fever, and I am burnin' up in here! Whoo! Whoo! We all in critical condition, babies, but you can tell me where it hurts, because I got the healing prescription here from the big 'KRP musical medicine cabinet. Now I am talking about your fifty thousand watt intensive care unit, babies! So just sit right down, relax, open your ears real wide and say, "Give it to me straight, Doctor, I can take it!"

            …I almost forgot, fellow babies: "booger!"

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.abebooks.com/9780879725853/Americas-Favorite-Radio-Station-WKRP-0879725850/plp )

Nana Visitor and the Women of Star Trek Take Us on a Beautiful Journey

Star Trek: Open a Channel, A Woman’s Trek – Nana Visitor (2024)

 

            I waited for this book for a while.  Initially, I heard that Nana Visitor, the actor who played the part of Kira Nerys on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, intended to write a book about her experiences on the show.  I caught updates from the publishing industry detailing her efforts to get the book made, and how it grew from a personal account into an exploration of what it means to be a woman in Star Trek, from the OG days of the 1960’s to the most current iterations of the franchise.  Hearing about Visitor’s interviews with many of the women from Star Trek increased my desire to read this book.  Thank Mario for the wonderful Inter-Library Loan program, since it allowed me to get this book sent to me from the University of Oklahoma.  I was ecstatic when I received it and instantly devoured it.

            Long-time readers of RXTT’s Book Journey will likely know I am a huge Star Trek fan, especially my single favorite television show of all time, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9).  Nana Visitor is one of the leads on DS9, with her character, Major Kira Nerys, serving as the second-in-command of a large, unwieldy, and chaotic space station. It is through her character that we learn about the horrors suffered by the people of Bajor and how outsiders perceive the United Federation of Planets.  Her character is integral from beginning to end.

            The character of Kira Nerys, alongside that of Captain Benjamin Lafayette Sisko, is critical to understanding the central themes of DS9.  The first theme, and the most prominent throughout the series run, deals with how trauma affects us, how we deal with it, and how we manage to move on and continue living afterwards.  This is evident in Kira, a former freedom fighter/terrorist (depends on who you ask), forced to reckon with a lifetime of degraded living under totalitarian rule and how it affects her and her people during the “peace” that follows.  It, like all trauma, touches every single aspect of her life and being.  The same is true for Capt. Sisko, who we meet just after his wife is killed in a huge space battle, forcing him and his son Jake to escape with their lives.  The repercussions of this loss shape Sisko throughout the series, much like the Cardassian occupation shaped every aspect of Kira Nerys’ character.  It was a groundbreaking role for Visitor, whose career previously found her in steady work playing the girlfriend, the ex-girlfriend, the wife, the bothered secretary, etc., all roles with very little emotional or intellectual heft.

            In an effort to understand the dynamics of being a woman in the world of Star Trek, Nana Visitor explores the original creation of Star Trek, and the ways which the otherwise progressive show existed in a world where casual misogyny, the “casting couch” mentality, and abusive producers still ran the show.  To frame this story, Visitor discusses the person besides Gene Roddenberry most responsible for the very existence of Star Trek, comedy superstar Lucille Ball.  It was her DesiLu studios, which she ran alone after the illness of her husband, that green-lit Star Trek, and it was her efforts to keep it on the air that Visitor explores.  For each series, Visitor devotes a few chapters to exploring the lives and work of the individual actresses, including the most important woman on the original show, Nichelle Nichols.  Nichelle was not only a representational force for African-American women, but for all women.  In a world where women were still expected to serve in very limited and traditional roles, seeing a woman of color serve as the fourth in command of a starship was huge.

            Visitor pulls no punches and allows her subjects the bluntness they need  to describe the uncomfortable and terrifying situations these women endured just to be considered for a television show.  Every single one of them has had to deal with lecherous producers, men forcing themselves on them, sexist writing, overly-familiar co-stars, etc.  Some, with help from their loved ones, navigated these treacherous waters without too much horror, but most did not.  From the endless critiques of your appearance to the implication that if you do not do what is asked of you without questions you would be replaced by another “pretty face,” Hollywood has long been a bastion for asshole men and a trap for many a young woman.  After years of insultingly simplistic roles, the role of Kira Nerys helped Nana Visitor create a very real, very flawed, very human character, a character whose lines and actions do not rely on her femininity to succeed, something which she is rightfully very proud of.

            Visitor not only speaks to the various actresses from Trek, but she also re-watched a lot of the older and current shows.  In doing so she witnessed how, even in an era of feminism and women’s sovereignty, like the late 80’s and early 90’s, strong women characters were still mainly written as tropes.  For example, one of the characters, Keiko Ishikawa, married a minor Next Generation character, Miles O’Brien.  They both subsequently appeared on DS9.  While the character or Keiko was written as a deeply intelligent and forthright botanist, she was rarely, if ever, shown on TNG doing botany.  Instead, she was forced to act out endless “worried wife” or “angry wife” tropes.

On TNG, the Doctor was portrayed by the super-talented Gates McFadden, but whereas the original series’ Doctor McCoy was given license to behave as any doctor does, Dr. Crusher’s character, while initially a groundbreaking representation for women, was often used solely as the "mother” or as a potential love interest of the Captain.  Even in the supposedly progressive shows, the standard misogyny and sexism applied.  This is especially evident in the character of Counselor Troi on Next Generation.  Initially serving as pure eye candy, it took years for the writers room to catch on to what makes the character of Deanna Troi so intriguing.  As detailed by Nana Visitor, once an actress is placed in one of the very few “boxes” allowed for them, it was nearly impossible to escape.  Once a “beauty” always a “beauty.”  Once seen as a plucky and sexless “friend,” it is always thus.  These simplistic tropes continue on television to this day.  Shit don’t change.

While all of this is extremely interesting to me, my favorite parts of this book are where Nana Visitor discusses her own life and career.  She is blunt and honest in describing the many transgressions she endured by either changing herself, altering her mannerisms, or just behaving in the way that male society seemed to expect.  Each time, a little part of her died within her, but she endured it as the costs of the life she chose.  It is impossible to see just how callous and predatory those around you are until you get some distance from it, both emotional and physical.  In one of the most moving and disturbing sections, Nana discusses how she was kidnapped and assaulted sometime between seasons 2 and 3 of DS9, how she forced herself to testify against her attackers even though she was warned that bad publicity would ruin her career, and how it took her over twenty years to come to grips with the events of that horrible night. It is a testament to her willpower and life-force that Nana Visitor rebuilt herself, something many of the women she spoke to have had to do, some more than once. 

It is also a testament to Nana Visitor that, in the decades following the airing of Deep Space Nine, she has become something of a den-mother, or a loving aunt, to many Star Trek fanatics.  This is something that mirrors the character Kira Nerys’ arc on the show.  At the end of DS9, we see Kira Nerys and Jake Sisko staring out of a window at the wormhole outside.  She is left in charge of the station, and life goes on. In the DS9 documentary, What You Leave Behind, the writers posit a future where Kira Nerys grows wiser and becomes a spiritual leader for the Bajoran people, Nana Visitor also grew wiser and became an emotional and spiritual leader for us Trek fanatics.  It is a beautiful thing and I sincerely hope that Nana grasps the amount of care and love people have for her, and for the character she brought to life.  Her care for us, as fans, is evident in this amazing book. 

There is nothing easy about being a woman in this world, which makes it all the more admirable that Nana, and all the women she interviews, created characters and stories which honestly and permanently affected the audience.  Countless women went into science because they saw Lt. Uhura kicking ass on the bridge of the Enterprise.  Countless women saw Dr. Crusher as a great example of how to be a success and a great mother, without sacrificing her ideals.  Countless women saw the strength, resiliency and leadership inherent in Kira Nerys and found a role model for survival.  Even more women saw Captain Janeway lead a crew into and out of the wilderness, and felt inspired by her confidence and capability.  Representation matters.  We believe what we see.  For all the faults a TV show like Star Trek can and does have, the merits are beyond measure.  In 1966, Star Trek showed us a post-cold-war world where Russians and Chinese shared in the adventure, where women served alongside men, where people of color were portrayed as Admirals!  It was and remains one of the finest bits of television out there, showing the world that our shared humanity is a far greater thing than our perceived differences.  Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.  IDIC is the prevailing theme of all Star Trek, and I am very glad that Nana Visitor took the time and effort to craft this great tribute to the women of Star Trek and the characters they brought to life.  It is a beautiful book.

(This book can be purchased here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Star-Trek-Open-a-Channel-A-Womans-Trek/Nana-Visitor/Star-Trek/9798886633016 )