It’s always pleasant to read a genuine, down-to-earth, creative person’s life story. In this case, it’s Willie Nelson, the famous country, blue, jazz, (or other labels) singer and composer.

– Willie Nelson is one creative soul. How does he do it? At his age of 82, he has cranked up more than 68 albums.
– “To all the girls he loved before.” Willie did have lots of women in his life. There seemed to be a pattern for the famous singer.
– He used his creativity in tackling the IRS tax problem by facing the IRS head-on without declaring bankruptcy against his friends’ best advises. He sold albums to pay off his debts.
– Willie Nelson shows that you don’t have be branded as a country music singer or a pop star as long as you master something (music) that you’re passionate about and keep doing it, evolving it with creativity. A great lesson for all.
– His love for pot, marijuana, as the best “medicine” to take edges off with little downside under stress as cigarettes killed both of his parents and alcohol has too much side effect for. He even campaign for its legalization.
– Singing covers for some of the old songs went against the pundits’ advises and proved them wrong.
– Before his musical success, he had to sell encyclopedias which he didn’t feel good about despite his success as a salesman. He tried selling vacuum cleaners instead to ease his conscience.
– Willie moved around to try different markets like Texas, Tennessee, Colorado, Oregon and Los Angeles. He’s very gutsy and willing to try different things – this is the key to success. Keep moving and keep reinventing.
– Despite his success, Willie never forget his root; he had a home in Abbot, Texas, where he was born and raised.
– I got to familiarize some of his songs – some are popular and some are not.
– He mentioned a lot about his friends like Waylon Jenning, Jimmy Carter, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and a few others.
– Like a good country music. Willie Nelson tells a good, long story of his life in this book. It’s a good read for those who admire his work, music and his good character.

Dr. Judy Melinek described her experience as a medical examiner performing autopsy on nearly 300 bodies in New York. She shared some personal experience as a daughter to a psychiatrist father, who committed suicide when she was only 13 years old. You can learn from her a few ways how a person dies and what happens afterward. Of course, you get to learn the forensic science on how to determine how a person dies and how to attribute to the root cause. As a person who’s always curious about deaths (one of my favorite HBO TV series is “Six Feet Under”), it’s a very fascinating read if you’re interested in that sort of things.
– The main reason Dr. Melinek decided to switch from being a surgeon to a forensic pathologist or medical examiner was to leave the 130-hr work week, which may result in hurting her patients. She couldn’t do it any more.
– “Decomps” or decomposition of human bodies when a person dies – the blow up of skin due to bacteria, the maggots, and etc., challenges a medical examiner in finding the cause of death.
– Dr. Melinek examined many suicide cases. Having experienced her father’s suicide, it gets very personal for her but she was willing to talk about it and confronting it, which is in a way therapeutic for her. I agreed that the committing suicide is a coward act but I sympathize without those suffering through depression and the family members who had to see the self destruction of their loved one.
– She distinguished the differences among the causes of death: “undetermined,” “homicide,” “accident,” “therapeutic altercation” and “natural cause.” The responsibility lies with the examiner in determining the cause correctly.
– A medical examiner doesn’t get to follow through the cases that came to their tables. When ruled as “homicide,” a detective must investigate. The frustrating one is one that she couldn’t find the cause – “undetermined.”
– Strange cases like headless man washed out on a river bank who turned out be a handicap with a serious gambling habit. Nonhuman parts like animal penis showed up for ID. There was a body without much blood – retracted back to the bone?! A bullet got flushed into the circulatory system and ended up far away from the entry point. An alcoholic woman fell off the stair and died – killed by her estranged husband? A hot-watered burned baby? A strange TRALI case, anti-body reaction to blood transfusion, was mistaken to be a drug junkie case.

– Working through the disaster of the World Trade Center collapses during September 11, 2001, Melinek had the first-hand knowledge of that human tragedy and the experience working through identifying the body parts for the living who remains. The gruesome scenes that she describes make a deep impression on me – the charred, decomposed body parts that they had to identify for almost 1,400 people out of the nearly 3,000 casualties. What a sad, sad tragedy! In addition, they had to contend with the threat of anthrax, the subsequent crash of AA 587 in Queens, NY within 2 months of the 911 and other rumors that made their work more difficult.
– I like this last quote of hers, “To confront death every day (she did more than 2,000 since), to see it for yourself, you have to love the living.” How true!