I started listening to "Future Crimes" by Goodman. Twenty years ago, he was a member of the LAPD and happened to know a little about computers. That gave him an edge and launched him into a career fighting cybercrime, which is on the rise, worldwide. The book was interesting enough that I started reading it on my Kindle Oasis, which goes by faster and probably with better concentration than listening while I drive around town. The problem comes when I try to return to the narration after reading a chapter or two.
Amazon has something called Whispersync that is supposed to keep track of where I am in an audiobook from Audible.com and keep in the same place in my Kindle reading. It is supposed to work the other way, too, and take me to the Kindle spot where I left off listening. The trouble is that I listen on an Apple iPod and Whispersync has no way of knowing what I am doing or where I am. Since I like the "Future Crimes" book, I thought I would switch to just reading it and proceed to another audio book in the car.
Next up was "Make Trouble", the story of the current president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards by the woman herself. She is the daughter of Anne Richards, Texas housewife and mother, somewhat liberal and radical by Texas standards. Anne ran for and became governor of Texas.
Cecile loved political excitement and organizing campaigns even in high school and college. She liked such work so much that she dropped out of Brown University after a couple of years and took a job as a union organizer in Washington, DC and in Texas.
I have never been very politically active and I would never have been interested in dropping out of college to organize for labor or political campaigns. Cecile thought it was thrilling and loved the work. While she was at college and just afterwards, her mother, the future governor of Texas, got deeper into alcoholism. Meanwhile Cecile's parents divorced. Her mother, who had never been in politics, got into the swing of her governor's campaign, dropped drinking and with her family and enthusiastic followers, won the election.
You may know that Planned Parenthood has had many vigorous and in some cases, underhanded, dishonest and illegal attacks on it in recent years. Cecile Richards has had a political and labor organizing career that certainly is a model of drive, energy and patience while leading an organization for ten years that has helped women get better medical care, including, but far from limited to, birth control.
