Wordsworth

Navigating the Course:

A Man's Place in His Time

A memoir by David Fanshel

David Fanshel was born in New York City in 1923, third of four children of immigrant Russian Jewish parents. As a teenager in the midst of the Depression, David watched his father struggle to support his family as a fruit wholesaler. When tragedy struck in 1936, the support of a network of extended relatives saved the family from disaster, but could not spare them from the stresses of their circumstances, which had significant ramifications for the younger generation.

A freshman at the City College of New York when war was declared in December 1941, David enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps, and served three years active duty from 1943 until 1945. He was commissioned as a navigator and flew 39 missions with the 15th Air Force 450th Bomb Group, 722nd Squadron, in Manduria, Italy. His targets included Ploesti, Vienna, Munich, Budapest, Toulon, and Athens. The only Jewish member in an air crew of ten men, the shared experiences in meeting the demands of combat had a transforming influence upon him and helped to overcome a xenophobic view of “goyim” brought by his immigrant family from oppressive experiences in pogrom-ridden czarist Russia.

Softover, illustrated, 254 pages, $25.00
Valley Meadow Press
ISBN 978-0-9723269-6-4
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Resource Guide 2011
San Geronimo Valley Community Center

A Summer in the High Sierra

By Laurence Brauer

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A Summer in the High Sierra is Laurence Brauer's journal of a 38-day solo round trip of the timberline country from Yosemite to Kings Canyon, along with an Epilogue of a ten day trip one year later. Traveling outside cultural and religious doctrines, Brauer examines the assumptions of human societies and find that neither the rational deconstructions of science nor the leap of faith of religion contain the breadth and depth of nature's message. Seeing beyond our dualistic doctrines, he redefines our concepts of human nature, evolution, and spirituality.