Books 1 and 2 - first ones for 2014!
1. No More Mopes, by Chief David Oliver. Brimfield, Ohio is a tiny township near the city of Kent, with a population of around 10,400 (it's about 20 minutes or so from where I live). When Oliver, the township's police chief, decided to start a Facebook page for the police department, he expected to get a few hundred likes. Instead of a few hundred likes, the Brimfield Police Department's Facebook page now has more likes than any other police department in the nation, save New York City. I just peeked at their Facebook page, and the page has nearly 137,000 likes, from people in every state and several countries. This book is a compilation of some of the chief's favorite Facebook posts.
If you follow the police department's page, you can see why it is so popular- Chief Oliver is very no-holds barred, very honest and often very, very funny. He has a way of telling stories about the various "mopes" (police slang for a crook or ne'er-do-well) and his officers' responses. I've never had the pleasure of meeting him but several of my colleagues at the newspaper have, and they have assured me that my impressions I get of him on Facebook - as someone who is outspoken, boisterous, and very open and honest- are on target. There are some serious posts - like his thoughts on the triple homicide that took place not all that long ago, and September 11. But most of the columns are wry observations about the criminal element. He does stress- both in his book and his page- that people can reform. He's open about his own past, where he describes himself as being without character (although not a criminal) until he met "Mrs. Chief." Sales from this book, by the way, benefit the department's charitable activities, such as Shop With A Cop and help for juvenile victims of sexual abuse.
2. Sybil Exposed, by Debbie Nathan. I remember reading the famous book, Sybil, by Flora Schreiber in my late teens or early 20s. Indeed, I read it twice, fascinated and horrified by the case of a woman who split into 16 different personalities due to the horrible abuse inflicted on her by her mother. It was gripping, appalling, had a happy, healing ending... and was mostly fiction, according to Nathan and her research. What really happened is just as interesting, and Nathan does a good job relating how and why this could have happened, why the story was so easily swallowed and the lasting impact on society even today.
First, you have Sybil (really Shirley Mason), a highly sensitive, creative individual who loved to draw fantasy pictures and write fiction- both things that her extremely conservative parents and neighborhood forbade her to do. She was a very anxious girl and woman who craved attention and a creative release. However, her mother, while she may have suffered from depression- more on that later- she was NOT the monster Sybil portrayed her to be. There's no evidence to back up any of the allegations- indeed, there were stories that have been refuted. For example, the story about how Mattie threw Shirley into a grain bin which nearly suffocated her? Complete fabrication- there was no grain bin as described in the book on the property, and never had been, according to Nathan. Indeed, Flora herself had serious doubts early on in writing the book when she visited Shirley's town - she noticed the lack of the grain bin. And that whole story about the sex orgy in the woods? Problematic since there are no woods where Shirley grew up- just prairie flatland.
Next you have Connie Wilbur, Shirley's long-time (VERY long time) psychiatrist. Connie was a woman who wanted to be a doctor and scientist in an era when women typically did not go into those fields (her parents discouraged her from those pursuits, and you get the impression they encouraged college mostly in hopes of Connie getting her Mrs. degree). Pursue science, and later medicine, she did, but she was dealt two significant setbacks. The first was early in her career, when an athlete's foot creme she created burned the soles of her patients' feet. The second, when she entered psychiatry happened after World War II ended. She was employed at a hospital, and considered a great doctor, especially with "female hysterics." A short movie was even made about her treatments and success. But once the men who had been employed there came home, Connie got a pink slip.
So basically, you had two women who craved recognition, and when they found each other, they wound up feeding off each other's need for attention. Connie's methods of treatment, if they would have been fully known then, would have raised eyebrows at the time and certainly would have meant the loss of her license today. But this was a time when mental health was just being explored as a potentially treatable condition, and a lot of things simply weren't known or understood. For example, Connie used large doses of Pentothal, then called "truth serum," to get at Shirley's repressed memories. Now, we know that Pentothal is more likely to bring out hallucinations than truth. Then, anything said under the drug was considered gospel, for the most part. It's easy to see, understanding the culture, why Sybil's outrageous stories could have been considered true, for back then (perhaps even now), if something were found deficient, the mother was always to blame. Depression? Blame the mother. Anxiety? Blame the mother. Asthma? You guessed it (and no, that is not a joke).
So it's likely that Shirley and Connie at least half-believed the stories about the multiple personalities. In a way they probably felt they had to, because both had so much riding on those stories being true- Shirley, to keep Connie close by, and Connie, for the professional recognition and respect she desperately wanted.
Currently reading: Cleopatra: The Search for the Queen of Egypt, by Zahi Hawass and Franck Goddio, and Blimp Pilot Terrorizes Akron and Other Hot Air, by Bob Dyer.
If you follow the police department's page, you can see why it is so popular- Chief Oliver is very no-holds barred, very honest and often very, very funny. He has a way of telling stories about the various "mopes" (police slang for a crook or ne'er-do-well) and his officers' responses. I've never had the pleasure of meeting him but several of my colleagues at the newspaper have, and they have assured me that my impressions I get of him on Facebook - as someone who is outspoken, boisterous, and very open and honest- are on target. There are some serious posts - like his thoughts on the triple homicide that took place not all that long ago, and September 11. But most of the columns are wry observations about the criminal element. He does stress- both in his book and his page- that people can reform. He's open about his own past, where he describes himself as being without character (although not a criminal) until he met "Mrs. Chief." Sales from this book, by the way, benefit the department's charitable activities, such as Shop With A Cop and help for juvenile victims of sexual abuse.
2. Sybil Exposed, by Debbie Nathan. I remember reading the famous book, Sybil, by Flora Schreiber in my late teens or early 20s. Indeed, I read it twice, fascinated and horrified by the case of a woman who split into 16 different personalities due to the horrible abuse inflicted on her by her mother. It was gripping, appalling, had a happy, healing ending... and was mostly fiction, according to Nathan and her research. What really happened is just as interesting, and Nathan does a good job relating how and why this could have happened, why the story was so easily swallowed and the lasting impact on society even today.
First, you have Sybil (really Shirley Mason), a highly sensitive, creative individual who loved to draw fantasy pictures and write fiction- both things that her extremely conservative parents and neighborhood forbade her to do. She was a very anxious girl and woman who craved attention and a creative release. However, her mother, while she may have suffered from depression- more on that later- she was NOT the monster Sybil portrayed her to be. There's no evidence to back up any of the allegations- indeed, there were stories that have been refuted. For example, the story about how Mattie threw Shirley into a grain bin which nearly suffocated her? Complete fabrication- there was no grain bin as described in the book on the property, and never had been, according to Nathan. Indeed, Flora herself had serious doubts early on in writing the book when she visited Shirley's town - she noticed the lack of the grain bin. And that whole story about the sex orgy in the woods? Problematic since there are no woods where Shirley grew up- just prairie flatland.
Next you have Connie Wilbur, Shirley's long-time (VERY long time) psychiatrist. Connie was a woman who wanted to be a doctor and scientist in an era when women typically did not go into those fields (her parents discouraged her from those pursuits, and you get the impression they encouraged college mostly in hopes of Connie getting her Mrs. degree). Pursue science, and later medicine, she did, but she was dealt two significant setbacks. The first was early in her career, when an athlete's foot creme she created burned the soles of her patients' feet. The second, when she entered psychiatry happened after World War II ended. She was employed at a hospital, and considered a great doctor, especially with "female hysterics." A short movie was even made about her treatments and success. But once the men who had been employed there came home, Connie got a pink slip.
So basically, you had two women who craved recognition, and when they found each other, they wound up feeding off each other's need for attention. Connie's methods of treatment, if they would have been fully known then, would have raised eyebrows at the time and certainly would have meant the loss of her license today. But this was a time when mental health was just being explored as a potentially treatable condition, and a lot of things simply weren't known or understood. For example, Connie used large doses of Pentothal, then called "truth serum," to get at Shirley's repressed memories. Now, we know that Pentothal is more likely to bring out hallucinations than truth. Then, anything said under the drug was considered gospel, for the most part. It's easy to see, understanding the culture, why Sybil's outrageous stories could have been considered true, for back then (perhaps even now), if something were found deficient, the mother was always to blame. Depression? Blame the mother. Anxiety? Blame the mother. Asthma? You guessed it (and no, that is not a joke).
So it's likely that Shirley and Connie at least half-believed the stories about the multiple personalities. In a way they probably felt they had to, because both had so much riding on those stories being true- Shirley, to keep Connie close by, and Connie, for the professional recognition and respect she desperately wanted.
Currently reading: Cleopatra: The Search for the Queen of Egypt, by Zahi Hawass and Franck Goddio, and Blimp Pilot Terrorizes Akron and Other Hot Air, by Bob Dyer.