Out of the Fog: Tragedy on Nantucket by Cindy Lou Young

Book Review by Zinta Aistars

Paperback: 162 pages
Publisher: Black Lab Publishing LLC; 1st edition, 2008
Price: $14.95
ISBN-10: 097428159X
ISBN-13: 978-0974281599

"There is some good to all that is painful," writes the author, Cindy Lou Young, in conclusion to her remarkable story. She is one of but a few survivors of a plane crash that happened 50 years ago in Nantucket, when Northeast Airlines Flight 258 took off from LaGuardia Airport for the island of Nantucket on August 15, 1958. On board is then 18-month-old author of this book, Cindy, along with her young mother, Jackie. Baby Cindy survived, mother Jackie did not.

It has taken a long time for the author to be able to tell her story, and in telling it, perhaps to fully face it. Indeed, in her foreward she writes: "I think to let something go, you need to fully understand it." When a story is filled with so much upheaval, disaster, addiction (that of her grandparents, who raised her, and subsequently her own), and a striving to connect with her parents (mother, of course, deceased, but young father disappeared for much of her life), understanding life fully can take at least half a lifetime.

Cindy begins with a background that sets the scene for her own life. Her grandparents are both alcoholics - a grandmother, Annie, who comes from Holland, and a grandfather, Arnold or Arnie, who comes from Latvia. The two immigrants have bonded with little else in common, it seems, but the disorienting state of being immigrants and falling into drink to handle the difficulties of their lives. They have a daughter, Jackie. At age 16, Jackie meets a brash young man, 20, falls into a first flush of romance, and becomes pregnant. In spite of his family's protestations, the young lovers marry. The odds are against such youth and inexperience, however, and as most such young pairings go, theirs, too, quickly heads for divorce. They were contemplating divorce, or whether still to make a go of it, when the plane crash happened and cast its own deciding vote.

The first chapters of this slim book (I read it in one sitting of a little over a couple hours) are a retelling of the night of the crash. A few photos show parts of the debris and rescue workers. The story is gripping. A fog rolled in over Nantucket, as it so often does, and with flight regulations stating that a plane cannot land safely with less than half a mile of visibility, that range all too quickly disappeared into the thickening fog. Whether the final transmissions to the pilot were heard are not clear. They warned that visibility was in moments less than one-eighth of a mile, but perhaps by then it was too late. In tiny Nantucket, there wasn't even an air tower to talk the pilot in. The pilot missed the runway and ripped through pine trees, somersaulted and went up in flames.

A few survived, and at first, it seemed the young mother, Jackie, might be one of the survivors. When a rescue worker, climbing through the burning debris, heard her call from where she was trapped, she simply shouted to him, "Save the baby!" and asked nothing for herself. The baby was set under a pine tree, out of the range of danger, and very nearly forgotten in all that took place in the next hours, as rescue workers and community members worked frantically to save whomever was still living, and remove whomever was not. When Cindy was located again a bit later, her clothing had been singed off her, her charred teddy bear was gripped tightly in her hand, and she was covered with pine needles.

Later featured in various newspapers and Life magazine, the baby girl was too young to have any memory of the crash, and was termed a "miracle baby" as she had survived with only a scratch on her chin.

But this is hardly the end of the story. While news reporters go on to report other stories, and magazines feature other stories, lives can be affected deeply by such events, and Cindy's is no different. She is a child without a mother, and Jackie's parents, Annie and Arnie, quickly step in to parent her while dealing with the devastating blow of losing their own daughter. Alas, they are ill equipped. Both are steeped in their alcoholism. Losing their only child, Jackie, has made the angst of life only worsen. The next section of this story is about Cindy growing up in a home where addiction rules, albeit not without love.

Nor do most addictions come singly. Addictive behavior in one area often leads to other addictions, so for Annie, there is a struggle with alcoholism paired with obsessive-compulsive housecleaning, and for Arnie, bouts of alcoholism come with the cycles of manic-depression. Young Cindy responds as most do who are bound to addicts, initially blaming herself, trying to make things right and save those she loves:

"... if I could somehow be good enough, or say and do the right things, the problems with drinking would go away. The one thing that I have come to understand is that nobody has any control or responsibility for the actions of another. It took me a long time to learn and accept this ..."

Before she does fully learn this important lesson, however, Cindy herself adopts the behavior of her grandparents. As is often the case, addicts pass addictions on to the next generations. By age 10, she is already drinking and experimenting with drugs. She seems doomed to follow in this path of tragedy. Surely, the "miracle baby" has not survived only to continue the addictions that plague her family ...

Indeed, she is not. The final chapters of this book are about Cindy's coming out of her own fog. She tells of surviving a failed marriage as she finds she is time and again attracted to men with addictions, but later finding a new husband, although also an alcoholic, but this time a man who is willing to fight the battle alongside her. More, this is a conclusion of daughter finding her bearings, searching out her missing father, understanding various members of her family and community, and tracking down the stories of other survivors of the crash of Flight 258. Her recounting of crash survivor Lita Levine, a young artist who loses her hands, is a story in its own right.

Out of the Fog: Tragedy on Nantucket is by no means a literary book. If I can't give it two thumbs up, it is certainly not because it wasn't a gripping story. It really is hard to put down. But perhaps it should have been one of those books written "by Cindy as told to ..." and so written by a professional author who might have captured these dramatic scenes and storylines with even greater power and literary finesse, as they so richly deserve. As it is, one can only imagine what a blockbuster this story might have been, had it been given a more professional handling, delving even deeper into the various fascinating tangents here only touched upon. The editorial and grammatical mistakes (mostly missing and errant punctuation) were also a tad bothersome.

Nonetheless, my hat's off to Cindy Lou Young, now Houghton. She is, without argument, a quiet hero and still pulling off a miracle or two. As she shows in her own paths, life is to be lived, every moment appreciated, every loved one held dear, for one never knows when the next moment might be the last.

~Zinta Aistars for The Smoking Poet, Fall 2008

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Book Review by Zinta Aistars

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2007
Price: $15.99
ISBN-10: 0316010669
ISBN-13: 978-0316010665

Where does it all go, after you are done experiencing the experience, thinking the thought, feeling the feeling? Nothing is ever lost. The subconscious is like a vast warehouse, limitless, in fact, and as Malcolm Gladwell illustrates in Blink, we access all that is stored in that warehouse with every blinking and waking moment.

Usually, we call this instant access - gut instinct. Or, the inner voice of wisdom. Instinct, however, is nothing magical or mysterious. It is simply our accumulated and stored knowledge over a lifetime. If there was ever an argument for listening to those who have some serious and well-lived years under their belts, this is it. Blink illustrates with numerous and widely varied examples how life experience, the more the better, contributes to our ability to make quick, yet sound decisions. In fact, the quicker, the better.

Blink is about what the author calls "thin slicing." He defines this process as the moment of time in which we all make snap judgments. Two seconds, two minutes ... and we make an assessment of a situation or a person or a circumstance. The fascinating thing is - these snap judgments are, more often than not, precise ones. It is when we begin to over analyze and rationalize that we tend to go awry. The trick is to allow the accumulated wisdom rise up and do its magic, trust in it.

Then again ...

Gladwell never does make a concluding statement in his book, and perhaps it is up to the reader to decide (do it quickly?), but his many fascinating examples and his reports on various studies can lead one to think these snap judgments are the way to go - or, then again, thinker beware. For all the many situations in which that moment of initial wisdom is uncannily precise, there are other times that our deeply ingrained biases muck up the clarity of that process. Gladwell cites data to illustrate how stereotypes, for instance, persist - no matter how gallant our conscious efforts to overcome them. Telling yourself you don't really think what you think simply won't work. Only exposure to experiences, or positive visualizations, will change the false ideas and images our subconscious has absorbed over time. All of which is a strong argument for "garbage in, garbage out." That is, be careful of what entertainment you choose (e.g. pornographic images, violent movies or games, etc.), because no matter how hard your conscious mind tries to guide you toward decisions and behavior that is more appropriate, your subconscious will always, but always win out.

The idea of what you present to your eye is what you will later project out to the world is a convincing one, as the author finds himself unable to beat the test on stereotypes when he has to react quickly. Only exposure to more positive images over time can change his test results and dislodge his prejudices.

Gladwell discusses this phenomena of instant response-true response in a manner of ways. How patients respond to their doctors (we sue the physician who has a lousy bedside manner, even if more skilled, but remain loyal to the physician who spends as little as three extra minutes talking with us); how facial expressions, when viewed on slowed down video, will without fail, always reveal deceit (there are facial movements that arise from our subconscious that we cannot control, and no matter how quickly we think we have our facial mask in place, there is always that instant that our faces tell the truth); the intricacies of marketing and advertisement and why the obvious ad, even when based on feedback of focus groups, may not be the effective choice; how military decisions by experienced military leaders are successful, but fail miserably when they are constrained by strategic analysis; how micro-managing in workplaces can only lead to mediocrity while suppressing creativity and innovation; how speed dating may be most effective in finding potential lifelong connections (we read about research that can pick out successful, longterm relationships in observing as little as two minutes of interaction between a couple - and no, it isn't the couple that argues that breaks apart); how our societal subconscious biases for certain physical characteristics, such as height or gender, often mislead us to make dangerously faulty snap judgments (Gladwell observes that most of our leaders are tall and male, and that our corporate world pays tall men higher salaries, factoring dollars down to the inch, regardless of intelligence or ability). On and on, in one fascinating example and study after another, Gladwell intrigues with his findings.

And you know he's right. You know it ... in your gut. But if the author doesn't make any overall conclusion from all of this fascinating data, then the reader is left to her own wiles. Experience counts more than credentials. What we expose ourselves to on a regular basis molds who we are, how we view others, what choices we make and how we behave. Biases and prejudices are far stronger than our conscious will to overcome them; we must align our environment to align our subconscious. Our deepest self forgets nothing. All we have ever done and been and seen and observed leads to who we are today and tomorrow.

All of which gives one pause. But don't pause too long. It is that initial millisecond that may matter most of all.

Notes From Refuge by Lana Maht Wiggins

Book review by Zinta Aistars

Paperback: 88 pages
Publisher: Plain View Press (April 30, 2008)
Price: $14.95
ISBN-10: 1891386344
ISBN-13: 978-1891386343

"Poems aren't free and they sure don't come easy," writes the poet, Lana Maht Wiggins, in her poem, "Nine Days Before the Storm." As a poet and poetry editor myself, I can only sigh and agree, having paid many a high price in gold and flesh and heart pieces. Nothing worthwhile comes easy. Which brings me to the conclusion that if terrible storms and their heavy, overhanging clouds still have silver linings, Katrina, the now legendary killer storm of New Orleans, has produced not only silver, but words of gold in its aftermath from resident, Lana Maht Wiggins.

When I accepted several of Wiggins' poems for the Fall 2007 issue of The Smoking Poet, a literary ezine I manage, I had only a hint of this shimmering and stormy talent. Now, with whole collection in hand, Notes From Refuge, I see my instinct couldn't have been more precise. This collection is the sort that makes an editor want to run through the streets and shout a declaration: talent found! You must read this! And grab the innocent or not so innocent passersby, shove them into seated position in the very spot where they stand, and hold the book open before them. Must. Read. This.

Or not.

This is also the sort of collection that a woman holds greedily to bruised heart and seeps in silence, absorbing the moment of knowing herself understood. Not alone. Yet alone. Here echoes the voice of all women, here is mirrored the image of all women, weathered by whatever storm. The echo heard and reheard and reechoed causes the breath to stop, be held, so that nothing might disturb its perfection. And the next passing moment be forestalled so as not to break the sacred silence.

I experienced this, too, in reading Wiggin's work. Again.

One moment a cry to battle. Another moment a call to meditate. Wiggins' poetry is all things, all cries, takes all angles and never misses a turn. Her title poem, "Notes from Refuge," is a bare bone list of "things to do after disaster:"

Count cash

Call mother

Smoke cheap cigarettes

Contact FEMA

Stand in line

Drink free coffee

Mingle with refugees

Attend funerals

Eat free food

Contact FEMA

and on and on the list goes, hammering in the state of disciplined despair mingled with the state of hardened survival, the metronome of "Contact FEMA" sounded at a regular interval, unanswered.

Wiggins addresses with a glorious courage what too many fear to address. In "Detour of Destiny," she dares:

Being tap-wired into submission will make us

what we fear most and we will die as our own enemy.

They will censor me if I say there is no

democracy in oil rigs and other weapons -

if I say there is no democracy at all

except on parched documents in heavy glass.

...I long for long-lost purple mountain grit,

honesty among thieves, and gentlefolk side-by-side

defending honor and home.

The poet then takes on yet another battle cry, and this one in the tone of a feminism that holds both genders accountable. In "Things Mina Loy Couldn't Say," Wiggins takes her stand:

Get out of my way.

You and your nine inch identity

don't know who you're dealing with.

I've made grown men cry

by the edge of my tongue.

Then proceeds to take on the other half with the same dose of medicine:

Woman, you're a fool.

A mere fragment of a whole

cumulation of falsehoods...

You conserve your energy for desire

to be loved by that which does not.

...Your exchange of flesh

goes against laws of reciprocity.

You receive nothing

but a skin-sack of potential perpetuation.

Wiggins brings back Mina Loy and gives her more say in the prose poem, "The Other Side:"

So here it ends ... another opportunity to bridge the gap of a centuries old war. Mina Loy said it best ... we are to blame for our own subjugation ... it was the division between our sisters and our selves that kept us from reforming legislation, but even worse ... from revising the myths of the feminine as a lesser being ... wives, witches, or whores - those were the choices given to us and still we stand here today ... divided by petty temper tantrums and an unwillingness to forgive ...

Yet for all her fierceness, Wiggins is equally capable of capturing the most tender moments, of love, of union, of disunion, of separation, of aloneness, of madness, of grief. "Reflection of Fear" offers but one such example in sparse words, haiku-like, that singe to the bone of truth:

it's always nights

unwarped by sleep

that we try to remember

where the heart is hidden

how water holds

the body afloat

when to breathe

if it lets you fall ...

If we fall, then it is through a vortex of words that nail us to the wall, to the floor, to the ceiling, and demand our attention, our action, our hearts.

~ Zinta Aistars for The Smoking Poet, Fall 2008