My cycle-tour from Helsinki to Stochkolm in June-July 2008

“It was like being Peter Pan, flying around,” our book begins. In “Freewheeling: The Collected Stories” the author gives a clear nod and tip of the hat also to the picaresque works of Kerouac, Pirsig, Bellow, Cervantes, and Rabelais. Here are the adventures of two young vagabonds, Emery and Pike. “Pike had made a plan,” the story goes. “He was going to ride a bike south through Spain to Morocco, then east across North Africa to Italy. Emery proposes, “I’ll join you if you do it backwards” – from northern Italy south to Sicily and on to Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Spain. Going to Crete had come as an afterthought. They’d actually believed they would never see each other again.

The adventures of the two vagabonds on bikes, Pike and Emery, which had started in Italy, continue here as the two now enter North Africa on the ferry boat the Carducci. Careening gulls followed the boat in to the port of la Goulette, where Arab dock workers in turbans and brown cossacks robes, (woolen djellabas), loaded cargo boats with carpets, iron, fruits, and olives with the help of huge, hulking, grimy, twisted, rusted cranes. In contrast to the slow moving turbaned stevedores, the two port officials who greeted Pike and Emery where the boats unloading platform met Tunisias soil were nattily dressed, speedily and efficiently checking and stamping their passports. Then the two rolled out of La Goulette onto the Tunisian causeway over the Lake of Tunis where pink flamingos stood on high stilt legs in shallow waters. They went into the heart of the city, the souks of the medina. Souk or suuq was the Arab name for market. Medina was the Arab name for town. The Medina was a beguiling maze of winding, narrow lanes of shops and stalls souks displaying dazzling arrays of wares. There were weaver souks, and souks of rug-makers, potters, goldsmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths, tinsmiths, sandal makers, trinket sellers, and on and on. Old men in red felt hats called chechias were bent over sewing machines in the souk of the clothiers. In the Souk de la Laine were weavers; in the Souk des Orfurs were goldsmiths; and so on. It isnt long before the two encounter emptiness, vastness, and strange encounters, camping out in one or another lonely roadside field, the full moon beaming overhead in the night, outrageously luminous. It doesnt matter where we are, Pike whispers at one point, nervously, "so long as we dont wake up in the middle of the night, robbed of our papers and severed limb from limb." They put in long days of churning, arriving at dusk one day at a small straw-and-mud hut that the two of them barely fit inside. They left their bikes and gear outside, leaning on the hut, and threw in their sleeping bags. Exhausted, they turned in for the night. The dawn came up yellow, like melting butter smooth. The sun, an amber globe as it rose from the horizon, soon paled, ascending into the silver cloud cover. While the two sentient early risers gazed on this scene, they were shocked by the sudden appearance of a sneering, frowning, angry human face. Behind that face there then appeared an even more startling, accusing visage, peering down on them. The two youths wore gray and brown hooded djellabas. They began talking both at once, yelling at the intruders, Pike and Emery. Pike looked white as a sheet, pulling on his jeans. He pulled his jacket over him as he went out. He had his hands thrust deep in his coat pockets. Emery felt sure all was lost. Pike was arguing with them. Five minutes went by before Pike turned back into the hut to tell Emery what was happening. They want four dinar, Pike informed Emery, turning purple in the face. This is a hotel, they are telling me. We have stayed overnight in their hotel and now they request payment for their services. They just want blue jeans, Pike said, rolling his eyes. I told them we dont have any blue jeans. Pike and Emery paid their hotel bill with overalls. While Pike and Emery picked up the strewn litter of their remaining valuables and packed, the keepers tried on their new outfits. They were so happy with the overalls, they boldly invited Pike and Emery to stay longer at the hotel honored guests a second night. Smiling pleasantly, Pike declined, pushing off toward the road. Emery followed.

Alva and Gunnar Myrdal are the only couple ever awarded Nobel prizes as individuals: Gunnar won the prize in Economics in 1974, and Alva won the Peace Prize in 1982. This dual biography examines their work as architects of the modern welfare state and probes the connections between the public and private dimensions of their lives. Drawing on their extensive personal correspondence and diaries between their electrifying first meeting in 1919 and their protracted marital crisis in the early 1940s, this book presents the psychologist and the economist as they sought to combine love and work in an equal partnership. Alva and Gunnar simultaneously experimented with a new kind of intimate relationship and designed the social supports necessary for women both to bear and raise children and to contribute their talents and energies to society. Like all genuine revolutionaries, they struggled to free themselves from the burdens of their upbringings; to evaluate their own actions with what they called "unsparing honesty," and to test their policy recommendations in practice, measuring everything against the values they shared.

Who do you think is going to read this?" my friend asks, throwing up her hands: "It's your journals! Every little detail. Every lecherous fantasy, all your perversions, obsessions. Even dreams. Who gives a fuck? You're not a famous person so who cares? "I would have thought that my several long marriage-like relationships, twenty years in psychotherapy, careers in architecture, modern dance, fashion, filmmaking and decades of dedication to nutrition & exercise - would be foundation enough to give me a steady hand. That seems not to have happened. I remain frightened of life, of people; any interaction provokes anxiety. Yet, I remain longing to be in the world. And in many ways, physically, I am. But inside, I'm still inside. "Who cares?" my friend says. I care. I want out of my prison; out, to show myself in these journal-driven stories, where my fears and dysfunction are vivid and evident. However, I believe my writing expresses what we all feel subconsciously, then suppress, and is, therefore, interesting. www.meonme.com

Governors and the Progressive Movement is the first comprehensive overview of the Progressive movement’s unfolding at the state level, covering every state in existence at the time through the words and actions of state governors. It explores the personalities, ideas, and activities of this period’s governors, including lesser-known but important ones who deserve far more attention than they have previously been given. During this time of greedy corporations, political bosses, corrupt legislators, and conflict along racial, class, labor/management, urban/rural, and state/local lines, debates raged over the role of government and issues involving corporate power, racism, voting rights, and gender equality—issues that still characterize American politics. Author David R. Berman describes the different roles each governor played in the unfolding of reform around these concerns in their states. He details their diverse leadership qualities, governing styles, and accomplishments, as well as the sharp regional differences in their outlooks and performance, and finds that while they were often disposed toward reform, governors held differing views on issues—and how to resolve them. Governors and the Progressive Movement examines a time of major changes in US history using relatively rare and unexplored collections of letters, newspaper articles, and government records written by and for minority group members, labor activists, and those on both the far right and far left. By analyzing the governors of the era, Berman presents an interesting perspective on the birth and implementation of controversial reforms that have acted as cornerstones for many current political issues. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of US history, political science, public policy, and administration.