It is a strange sight to a Seattle native to see a half empty Starbuck's next to a packed Dunkin Donuts. People in Massachusetts seem to have quite a different taste in coffee from this town. I have watched the documentary on Howard Zinn a few times, and in it he, too, visits DD and states how he likes their coffee. This is about the only area where I slightly disagree with this great hero and inspiration of mine. He has always believed in the constitutional right to express one's thoughts. He was fired from a black college forty years ago, because he was trying to teach his students what rights they had. The school didn't want to rock the apple cart. So, Mr. Zinn ended up in Boston and became one of the key figures in the anti-war movement, even visiting North Vietnam during the war. His book 'People's History of the United States' is brilliant and most thought-provoking and should be made mandatory reading in all high schools and colleges.A very different book, Mozart in the Jungle, was reviewed recently in the New York Times. In it a free-lance oboist tells about her way to the top (or the bottom, as the reviewer put it), by having sex with the right people. We all have witnessed this take place, time after time. Only recently has more attention been paid to this. Didn't the head of a large aircraft manufacturing company have to resign when his affair became public? The Armed Forces have occasionally been very strict with this as well. So, I'm not going to rush to get a copy of this book. I probably could write a much juicier one, but won't at this time waste my efforts on such trash.
In the meantime, if you're not acquainted with Howard Zinn's work, head for the bookstore or the library.
