Why Brains Need Friends (adult nonfiction)

     The summer of '22 I was doing my first (of 3) graduate school internship. It was with the UMaine Upward Bound summer residential program for rising high school students. That summer was the first time the program was in person since the pandemic. When, teaching the students how to conduct research, we got a personality test result we didn't expect. The extrovert/introvert percentage had totally flipped with introverts vastly outnumbering extroverts. 

     Ben Rein, PhD, author of Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection, wouldn't have been surprised. Rein, a neuroscientist who doesn't like using big words when little ones will suffice, has been tracking how converging trends like lingering pandemic effects, rising popularity of distance work, and people communicating on line rather than in person are effecting people's well-being. He's seeing more red flags than you'd find at an ice fishing derby.

     Rein contends that people are wired for togetherness. Way back in the day our ancestors faced considerable perils without the resources we have now. It would take a village to deal with let's say an apex predator red in tooth and claw. Being excluded from the tribe would have been a death sentence. 

     Of course things are a lot different today. We don't have to grab our spears to fight off a saber tooth tiger. But isolation and loneliness are still very dangerous. In fact, when quantified as factors leading to disease, disability, and early death, they outweigh even biggies like smoking. 

     Rein gives us the whys. He takes readers on a tour of the most fascinating organ in the human body, the beautiful brain, to show the science behind brains really needing friends. He uses accessible language, not a whole lot of jargon. He gives plenty of suggestions for ways to get more social connections. 

     If you have a feline friend or a canine companion you'll be glad to know that our fur babies count.

    Basically I'd recommend Why Brains Need Friends to everyone with a human brain. 

On a personal note, on the quiz Rein provides I get the highest possible score for extroversion. I have a huge social support system ranging from my wonderful family and friends to a large portion of the UMaine community. This was really working in my favor when I was hospitalized with a stroke in '23. Rein tells us that stroke survivors who receive the strongest social support show the greatest recovery. I'd say being back in grad school less than 4 months later, performing in a drag show 6 months later, and graduating 🎓 with my masters degree the next year is a damn great recovery. 

A great big shout out goes out to everyone in my beautiful, loving social support network. 

Jules Hathaway 

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Studio view 3

This is the 3rd view of my studio. Note the book rack converted into a Beanie Baby habitat and my little year round Christmas tree. It's to keep Christmas joy in my heart ❤️ 💙 💜 💖 💗 💘 all year round. 

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#2 the studio

This view of the studio focuses on 2 bureaus. Amber crafted the butterflies. Eugene gave me the little music box (lower left) on our second date in May 1987). I've been collecting the Dreamsicles for almost 30 years from yard sales and thrift shops. 

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Everything Else in The Universe (juvenile historical fiction)

     Tracy Holczer's Everywhere in The Universe is a slightly older (2018) book that definitely deserves shelf space in today's libraries and book stores. Although historical fiction (set in the Vietnam war era), it also holds a timely warning for the direction America is going in today.

     Lucy (12) is reserved, stoic, polite--definitely taking after her mother's English line ("They were Chin-Up women. They were Stiff-Upper-Lip women. They knew how to handle themselves.") than her father's boisterous Italian clan.

     Lucy's life has changed drastically since her surgeon father was drafted to the war in Vietnam. She's not only had to live with the very real possibility that he could be seriously injured or even die, but move at a very developmentally challenging time--seventh grade. She's lived through a very lonely school year, missing her friends and failing to bond with her new classmates. 

     Lucy's father loses an arm and returns damaged in unseen as well as noticeable ways and facing the daunting task of discovering a new vocation while mourning his losses. He rebuffs her attempts to help him with the activities of daily living. She can't understand why he seems so distant and rejecting. 

     Lucy makes a new friend, Milo, who is staying staying with his grandmother for the summer. They discover a buried soldier's helmet, purple heart, and family pictures. Trying to return it to its owner, they learn startling truths about people's perceptions of the war and those fighting it.

     Now for the timely warning part. Vietnam was a war of aggression, one we had no justification for embarking on. It took a terrible here and abroad. Our military committed atrocities on civilians. Military families suffered from fear for

 their loved ones, many just out of high school, seeing just how much peril they were in with the newish media of television bringing the war into suburban living rooms. Many combatants came back in body bags or seriously damaged physically and/or psychologically. And can you imagine what it was like for 18-year-olds drawing low draft numbers to realize that the only to avoid being plunged into a hell on Earth was to leave family, friends, and country, not knowing if they could ever return?

     Now President Trump is plunging us into a war of aggression in Iran without Congressional approval. A war in violation of international laws. We bombed a school for seven to Twelve-year-old girls which is morally indefensible. He is calling for troops on the ground and talking about reinstating the draft.

     Saturday, March 28, there will be No Kings rallies in thousands of locations across America. Hopefully if enough of us attend Congress will pay attention and do something to change the terrible path our nation is on. 

On a purrrsonal note, I've been protesting since the war was in Vietnam. I'll be out there Saturday. As long as I'm drawing breath I'll be taking it to the streets. Being old guard for social justice. 

A great big shout out goes out to the organizers of the rallies and all who will show up and speak up.

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Studio

This is the first picture of my spring cleaned studio. The ❄️ flake makes multicolored light patterns. The 🐈 😻 in the painting is precious Joey, my beloved companion of 16 years.

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A leaf

This is a picture I took this morning on campus. I managed to photograph it without shadows. I think it's really striking. 

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Hallowed Deadly Seeds (adult chiller)

     "How was she supposed to stop stressing? She was under house arrest in a murderous cult town with guards monitoring her residence around the clock. Leaving would have been challenging enough before the whipping, but now it seemed impossible. On top of that, the townsfolk had dragged Andy off to torture him, and who knew how badly he was injured?"

     Are you a true chiller affecianado? Can you deal with the hard core stuff like a murderous cult town? If you are and haven't yet read Amber Hathaway's Little White Flowers, this is a perfect time to do so. You see, the second book in the Little White Flowers trilogy, Hallowed Deadly Seeds, is about to drop in June. 

     Yes, Amber is inviting you back through the dark, tangled Maine forest whose nocturnal predatory beasts should be the least of your worries. Back to the town that sanity has forgotten where generations have lived (and died) by a cruel false theology that makes Cotton Mathers' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God look tame in comparison, where every summer innocent children are slaughtered in a ceremony to appease their deity, where when misfortunes occur people attribute them to witchcraft, and where lovely flowers carry horrific messages. 

     In Little White Flowers siblings Alice and Andy, University of Maine undergraduates, have been sent by their parents to Evanston after their grandmother's death to prep an ancestral home for sale. Their concerns were physical labor, boredom, and spotty wifi--nothing major. 

     They quickly learned that they weren't in Penobscot County anymore. Forget wifi--the denizens didn't have land lines!

     With the exception of Riley, a young man who became quite smitten with Alice, the townsfolk didn't really take to the siblings. They saw too many red flags. Alice and Andy were strangers, didn't dress like Victorians, and were not fans of patriarchy. When they learned too many of the town's secrets Alice barely escaped death by claiming (falsely) to be pregnant with Riley's baby. 

     As Hallowed Deadly Seeds begins Alice and Andy are alive but far from out of the woods. To legitimize the pregnancy it has been decreed that Riley and Alice marry. The townsfolk are taking no chances. Armed guards stationed around their house to thwart any escape attempts. Talk about a shotgun wedding!

     There's a problem. Andy is running out of Suboxone, a medicine that the town doctor certainly won't have. 

     And when the wife of a prominent citizen becomes unexplainably deathly ill the wedding is put off another week with the guard duty extended. 

     In addition to illnesses the town is undergoing mysterious tribulations. Fires destroy two of the town's most important buildings. There are two theories. Either God is punishing the townsfolk for their sins or witches are working their evil. Some men have decided to take matters into their own alcohol fueled hands. To escape Alice, Andy, and Riley will have to avoid not only the official law enforcers, but the self appointed witch hunters...

     ...if it's at all possible. 

     Hallowed Deadly Seeds builds seamlessly on the foundation laid in Little White Flowers. The characters and settings become so familiar that you'll feel like you are with Alice, Andy, and Riley in their house with armed sentries stationed outside, in the church at the bizarre wedding rehearsal, and by their side in their frantic dash for freedom. 

     An insight I was struck with while writing this review was how believably Amber describes a cult mentality. I was never in a cult. But my sister was in and out of them. After surviving spinal meningitis Harriet was visibly different. Neurotypical people (adults as well as kids, were very cruel. The Fundamentalist/cultist congregations were the only ones that not only accepted but cherished and valued her, where she felt that she belonged and mattered. 

     In some getting slain in the spirit was so common nurses were at all services and speaking in tongues considered essential for salvation. Some were Rapture centered, focused on preparing to be worthy of being swooped up to heaven rather being left on a doomed Earth. 

     When Mom, her great aunt Bland, and Harriet moved to rural North Carolina I spent the summer there with them helping them settle in. In her new church women wore long sleeved floor length dresses in the summer heat, gender roles were ultra conservative, and parents were ultra vigilant in shielding their children from "herecies" like evolution. I'm pretty sure that they home schooled. 

     Just one more disturbing cult story. A woman was pregnant with a long awaited child when her fetus was diagnosed with a tragic genetic defect. It would die by eighteen months and in its time on earth never know a moment of consciousness. If she terminated the pregnancy the church (her family) would kick her out.

     And those were cults embedded in the larger world. Can you imagine those isolated from society for generations? Actually you don't have to. Let Amber take you there.

On a purrrsonal note, the view from my windows is dismal. After melting away the snow ❄️ has returned. Everything is coated in white. Eugene is out there plowing. 

A great big shout out goes out to my favorite chiller author (Amber of course), the libraries and book stores that carry her work, and her quickly growing reader community. 

Jules Hathaway 

     

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