Of course Tobago is the poster feline for holiday companion adoption. She came home with me in her third birthday, December 23rd 2019 and has been filling our life with love and joy ever since.
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
Two By Susan Carol McCarthy
Two By Susan Carol McCarthy
True Fires (YA)
"'Well,'--DeLuth stretches a foot to admire the mirror-sharp
sheen on his boot-toe--'With all this nonsense coming out of the
Supreme Court, and you know better 'n I do the Governor'll close the
schools before he'll integrate, we got to keep an eye out for any sort
of left-wing foolishness. I told Clive I'd check this kid out myself,
that is,'--DeLuth pauses to make sure Cantrel realizes he's being
thrown a bone--'if it's all right with you.'"
Recall awhile back we looked at Susan Carole McCarthy's Lay That
Trumpet in Our Hands? In her True Fires we return to a Florida in
which the KKK is a strong community presence. A lot of people are up
in arms about the Supreme Court's decision that the nation must
integrate its schools.
Sheriff DeLuth is up for reelection to a third term. He's
nailed his first two terms by preying on people's prejudices and
fears. He won his first election with promises to put Black WWII
veterans "strutting their stuff up and down Main Street like they
owned the place" back in their place. The second time he promised to
keep Commumist labor organizers out. Now the Supreme Court has given
him a gift by cranking integration fears up to a fever pitch.
"You gotta have a first-class bogeyman, something that scares
the panties off your constituents. Real or imagined, it don't make a
whit of difference. S'long as it's you against the Terrifying It, and
you're their only hope for getting an ounce of sleep after the
election."
[A strategy politicians are still sadly winning with as
evidenced by the 2016 presidential election.]
Schools were segregated then. To be in a white school a child
had to prove white ancestry all the way back to and including great
grandparents. So when a constituent complains that two new children,
brother and sister, seem a little too dark DuLuth springs into action.
But when he pulls the children and their cousins out of school
not all the constituents are happy campers.
Lila Hightower, daughter of DuLuth's mentor and patron, is in
town for her father's funeral and the settling of his will. She's no
fan of DuLuth. When he pulls the children of her new tree man (citrus
industry) out of school she's ready to put her resources to work to
thwart him.
"...This is another of your preelection stunts, isn't it? Last
time, it was the Communist Labor Organizers I heard...And now, it's
desegregation, isn't it? Find some kids with curly hair and call out
the Sheriff to save our lily white souls..."
Ruth Cooper Barrows and her husband, Hugh, put out a local
newspaper. She writes a piece exposing rabble rouser Billy Hathaway
after he runs a race baiting rally to promote DuLuth's candidacy.
The local KKK starts getting ugly.
Meanwhile a young boy who has just lost his mother (cancer) and
North Carolina home (eminent domain) struggles to come of age in a
frightening, confusing, and blatantly unfair new world.
A Place We Knew Well
"Kennedy warned the Soviets that any nuclear missile launched
from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere would provoke
'a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.' Finally, he
called upon Khruschev personally to 'halt and eliminate this
clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace' and to
'move the world back from the abyss of destruction.'"
Part of 1962 was a terrifying time to be alive. That was during
the cold war with Russia. We kids practiced what to do in case of
nuclear warfare (duck under your desk and cover your head) the way
kids today practice active shooter drills. The world's two biggest
super powers were vying for dominance, both voicing willingness to
deploy a nuclear option despite the knowledge that this would result
in mutually assured destruction. The prayer clause "if I die before I
wake" took on a new grim significance. Susan Carol McCarthy
beautifully portrays the gestalt of the time in A Place We Knew Well.
Wes Avery seems to be living the dream. He runs a successful
gas station. He and his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Charlotte, have
moved on up to a nice lake side home. But, as an ex military man, he
sees signs of trouble from the outset. Living in Florida, he has a
first hand seat to view a terrible escalation. He goes to bed not
knowing if there will be a next morning.
Sarah had dreamed of a house full of children. Five
miscarriages followed by a hysterectomy have shattered her dream. Now
with the added tension she is gradually losing touch with reality.
Charlotte is experiencing the possibility of not living to
graduate high school as she is nominated to homecoming court and
invited to a dance by a very special young man. She doesn't know that
a new arrival in town could shatter her sense of self and family.
Wes is a basically decent human being who wants more than
anything else to keep his family safe and happy and sees his ability
to do so increasingly stolen by forces way beyond his control.
McCarthy draws paralells to 2001. And I believe this engaging
narrative is relevant to a pandemic world.
On a purrrsonal note, after Thanksgiving the rest of vaca was good.
The biggest news was Amber finishing her first novel and sending it to
me. Horror of course. She's been a big fan of the genre since she
saw The Shining as a 6-year-old. Well she wrote the scariest book
I've ever read. And I look forward to reviewing it in this blog after
it's published. Friday I cooked the turkey Eugene got from work and
all the trimmings. It came out very well. The store bought pie,
however, was nowhere as good as mine. I took the Christmas ornaments
out of the shed for whenever Eugene harvests a tree from his family's
wood lot. (Jules)
We want the tree!!! We want the tree!!! (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to the cats and dogs in the shelters.
If you do yourself the favor of adopting a furever friend your home
would be the best Christmas gift they could hope for.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
True Fires (YA)
"'Well,'--DeLuth stretches a foot to admire the mirror-sharp
sheen on his boot-toe--'With all this nonsense coming out of the
Supreme Court, and you know better 'n I do the Governor'll close the
schools before he'll integrate, we got to keep an eye out for any sort
of left-wing foolishness. I told Clive I'd check this kid out myself,
that is,'--DeLuth pauses to make sure Cantrel realizes he's being
thrown a bone--'if it's all right with you.'"
Recall awhile back we looked at Susan Carole McCarthy's Lay That
Trumpet in Our Hands? In her True Fires we return to a Florida in
which the KKK is a strong community presence. A lot of people are up
in arms about the Supreme Court's decision that the nation must
integrate its schools.
Sheriff DeLuth is up for reelection to a third term. He's
nailed his first two terms by preying on people's prejudices and
fears. He won his first election with promises to put Black WWII
veterans "strutting their stuff up and down Main Street like they
owned the place" back in their place. The second time he promised to
keep Commumist labor organizers out. Now the Supreme Court has given
him a gift by cranking integration fears up to a fever pitch.
"You gotta have a first-class bogeyman, something that scares
the panties off your constituents. Real or imagined, it don't make a
whit of difference. S'long as it's you against the Terrifying It, and
you're their only hope for getting an ounce of sleep after the
election."
[A strategy politicians are still sadly winning with as
evidenced by the 2016 presidential election.]
Schools were segregated then. To be in a white school a child
had to prove white ancestry all the way back to and including great
grandparents. So when a constituent complains that two new children,
brother and sister, seem a little too dark DuLuth springs into action.
But when he pulls the children and their cousins out of school
not all the constituents are happy campers.
Lila Hightower, daughter of DuLuth's mentor and patron, is in
town for her father's funeral and the settling of his will. She's no
fan of DuLuth. When he pulls the children of her new tree man (citrus
industry) out of school she's ready to put her resources to work to
thwart him.
"...This is another of your preelection stunts, isn't it? Last
time, it was the Communist Labor Organizers I heard...And now, it's
desegregation, isn't it? Find some kids with curly hair and call out
the Sheriff to save our lily white souls..."
Ruth Cooper Barrows and her husband, Hugh, put out a local
newspaper. She writes a piece exposing rabble rouser Billy Hathaway
after he runs a race baiting rally to promote DuLuth's candidacy.
The local KKK starts getting ugly.
Meanwhile a young boy who has just lost his mother (cancer) and
North Carolina home (eminent domain) struggles to come of age in a
frightening, confusing, and blatantly unfair new world.
A Place We Knew Well
"Kennedy warned the Soviets that any nuclear missile launched
from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere would provoke
'a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.' Finally, he
called upon Khruschev personally to 'halt and eliminate this
clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace' and to
'move the world back from the abyss of destruction.'"
Part of 1962 was a terrifying time to be alive. That was during
the cold war with Russia. We kids practiced what to do in case of
nuclear warfare (duck under your desk and cover your head) the way
kids today practice active shooter drills. The world's two biggest
super powers were vying for dominance, both voicing willingness to
deploy a nuclear option despite the knowledge that this would result
in mutually assured destruction. The prayer clause "if I die before I
wake" took on a new grim significance. Susan Carol McCarthy
beautifully portrays the gestalt of the time in A Place We Knew Well.
Wes Avery seems to be living the dream. He runs a successful
gas station. He and his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Charlotte, have
moved on up to a nice lake side home. But, as an ex military man, he
sees signs of trouble from the outset. Living in Florida, he has a
first hand seat to view a terrible escalation. He goes to bed not
knowing if there will be a next morning.
Sarah had dreamed of a house full of children. Five
miscarriages followed by a hysterectomy have shattered her dream. Now
with the added tension she is gradually losing touch with reality.
Charlotte is experiencing the possibility of not living to
graduate high school as she is nominated to homecoming court and
invited to a dance by a very special young man. She doesn't know that
a new arrival in town could shatter her sense of self and family.
Wes is a basically decent human being who wants more than
anything else to keep his family safe and happy and sees his ability
to do so increasingly stolen by forces way beyond his control.
McCarthy draws paralells to 2001. And I believe this engaging
narrative is relevant to a pandemic world.
On a purrrsonal note, after Thanksgiving the rest of vaca was good.
The biggest news was Amber finishing her first novel and sending it to
me. Horror of course. She's been a big fan of the genre since she
saw The Shining as a 6-year-old. Well she wrote the scariest book
I've ever read. And I look forward to reviewing it in this blog after
it's published. Friday I cooked the turkey Eugene got from work and
all the trimmings. It came out very well. The store bought pie,
however, was nowhere as good as mine. I took the Christmas ornaments
out of the shed for whenever Eugene harvests a tree from his family's
wood lot. (Jules)
We want the tree!!! We want the tree!!! (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to the cats and dogs in the shelters.
If you do yourself the favor of adopting a furever friend your home
would be the best Christmas gift they could hope for.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Sunday, November 28, 2021
A Pair Of Adult Mysteries
A Pair Of Adult Mysteries
Ghosts Of Harvard
"She knew she could be predisposed to mental illness, she knew
this terrible potential was in her blood. And yet she had come here
and risked itself, dared it to show itself. Now it had.
Her new question was--
Happy happy happy days are here again--
Would she survive?"
As a child and teen Cady had always been overshadowed by her
genius brother, Eric, especially in their parents' eyes. Then when he
began to show symptoms of the schizophrenia he'd be diagnosed with he
eclipsed her in another way--in his greater neediness. The family
became more fragile and conflict ridden.
Still at some level Cady adored Eric and was guilt and grief
stricken when he committed suicide. Against her mother's wishes she
enrolled at Harvard, the university he was attending when he took his
life. She wants to see what clues she and her parents might have
overlooked in his final year. Is it her fault for being unable to
save him?
Cady hasn't been at Harvard long before she behind to hear
voices from various parts of Harvard's history. Could they be true
ghosts or manifestations of a time continuum overlap? Could they be
stymptoms that, under the pressures of an elite institution, a
hereditary predisposition toward mental illness is manifesting itself...
...or could something more ominous be at play? Eric had been
deeply involved in the research of a professor who did highly
classified work for the government. Perhaps not all was kosher?
Cady is trying to find clues in a coded notebook Eric left
behind. Might she learn enough to put herself in danger?
Three Perfect Liars
"What had she done? It had seemed such a perfect solution. But
by now she could see it was by no means an end. It was only the
beginning. Now she could see that her actions could strip her of
everything that was truly important."
In the south of England a huge glass office building had been
the object of controversy since its proposal. People hadn't wanted an
eyesore constructed on their waterfront by people from away (London).
It had been built despite the protests only to be torched five years
later.
The professional firm housed in the building is rife with
intrigue. A woman, Laura, high on the administrative ladder, rumored
to be sleeping with her boss, returns to work from a maternity leave
to learn that her temporary replacement has been made permanent and
given her biggest account. Mia, the replacement, is befriending and
making herself indispensable to her coworkers, hoping nobody will
figure out her real motive for getting hired. The big boss' marriage
is a lot shakier than he imagines. His seemingly tranquil wife, Janie
feels betrayed by many of his decisions. She's also heard the rumors
about Laura.
Could one of them be the arsonist?
Of you enjoy suspenseful dramas of intrigue you'll really
appreciate Heidi Perks' Three Perfect Liars.
On a purrrsonal note, I forgot to tell you about my Thanksgiving. It
was much better than I expected. Eugene and I went to Winterport
where his mother and sister live. I read while Eugene was hunting. A
little before dinner Katie and Jacob arrived from Portland. We had
great food and great conversation. We were all so happy to be
together. (Jules)
I had myself some turkey too. Tastes like chicken. (Tobago)
A great big shout goes out to our families and the joy they bring into
our lives.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Ghosts Of Harvard
"She knew she could be predisposed to mental illness, she knew
this terrible potential was in her blood. And yet she had come here
and risked itself, dared it to show itself. Now it had.
Her new question was--
Happy happy happy days are here again--
Would she survive?"
As a child and teen Cady had always been overshadowed by her
genius brother, Eric, especially in their parents' eyes. Then when he
began to show symptoms of the schizophrenia he'd be diagnosed with he
eclipsed her in another way--in his greater neediness. The family
became more fragile and conflict ridden.
Still at some level Cady adored Eric and was guilt and grief
stricken when he committed suicide. Against her mother's wishes she
enrolled at Harvard, the university he was attending when he took his
life. She wants to see what clues she and her parents might have
overlooked in his final year. Is it her fault for being unable to
save him?
Cady hasn't been at Harvard long before she behind to hear
voices from various parts of Harvard's history. Could they be true
ghosts or manifestations of a time continuum overlap? Could they be
stymptoms that, under the pressures of an elite institution, a
hereditary predisposition toward mental illness is manifesting itself...
...or could something more ominous be at play? Eric had been
deeply involved in the research of a professor who did highly
classified work for the government. Perhaps not all was kosher?
Cady is trying to find clues in a coded notebook Eric left
behind. Might she learn enough to put herself in danger?
Three Perfect Liars
"What had she done? It had seemed such a perfect solution. But
by now she could see it was by no means an end. It was only the
beginning. Now she could see that her actions could strip her of
everything that was truly important."
In the south of England a huge glass office building had been
the object of controversy since its proposal. People hadn't wanted an
eyesore constructed on their waterfront by people from away (London).
It had been built despite the protests only to be torched five years
later.
The professional firm housed in the building is rife with
intrigue. A woman, Laura, high on the administrative ladder, rumored
to be sleeping with her boss, returns to work from a maternity leave
to learn that her temporary replacement has been made permanent and
given her biggest account. Mia, the replacement, is befriending and
making herself indispensable to her coworkers, hoping nobody will
figure out her real motive for getting hired. The big boss' marriage
is a lot shakier than he imagines. His seemingly tranquil wife, Janie
feels betrayed by many of his decisions. She's also heard the rumors
about Laura.
Could one of them be the arsonist?
Of you enjoy suspenseful dramas of intrigue you'll really
appreciate Heidi Perks' Three Perfect Liars.
On a purrrsonal note, I forgot to tell you about my Thanksgiving. It
was much better than I expected. Eugene and I went to Winterport
where his mother and sister live. I read while Eugene was hunting. A
little before dinner Katie and Jacob arrived from Portland. We had
great food and great conversation. We were all so happy to be
together. (Jules)
I had myself some turkey too. Tastes like chicken. (Tobago)
A great big shout goes out to our families and the joy they bring into
our lives.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Saturday, November 27, 2021
Body Positivity For Kids
Body Positivity For Kids
Picture book
Here in America achieving body positivity can be a real
challenge. Between media, advertisements, and overheard conversations
growing girls can learn early on to objectify their bodies, work on
attaining impossible standards, and self loathe if this is
impossible. I've seen girls as young as four gesture to perfectly
normal tummies and bottoms in attempts to explain why they need to go
on diets.
I believe this is partly because we are so nakedness aversive.
We're taught obsessively to cover our flesh. Many people have
nightmares about being seen minus clothes. It can be easy to think
that under the garments everyone else is more perfect--I'm the only
one so weird looking.
Kyo Maclear's The Big Bath House is a breath of fresh air. The
irresistible child narrator and her mom are visiting her Baachan (I
googled that. It's a familiar form of Grandmother.) in Japan. Soon
they are joined by aunties. Child and Baachan speak different
languages. But traditions create a beautiful bond between them.
One day child, mom, Baachan, aunts, and girl cousins go to a
bath house. There's hair and body washing followed by a plunge into
the big bath.
"You'll all dip your bodies,
your newly sprouting,
gangly bodies,
your saggy, shapely,
jiggly bodies,
your cozy, creased
ancient bodies.
Beautiful bodies."
Gracey Zhang's illustrations perfectly illuminate this
empowering message. No one scurries, eyes down, fearful of judging
gazes. The women carry themselves gracefully, owning their bodies as
beloved self vessels, not inadequate presentations. The children run
and play.
I think The Big Bath House is a must acquire for school and
public libraries and homes in which little girls are learning to love
or loathe their amazing, lovely bodies.
On a purrrsonal note, I hope someday in the post pandemic future to be
able to go to a bath house. I love the skin I'm in and would be happy
to walk around in it without the American pornography mindset
interfering. When I was pregnant I'd admire my great with childness
in a mirror, running my hand over my graceful baby bump curves. The
only reason I didn't have an artist paint me nude then was fear of my
children being embarrassed by such a portrait. (Jules).
As a cat, I know my body is beautiful. I will claw anyone who tries
to dress me. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to all who grasp the true beauty of the
human body.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Picture book
Here in America achieving body positivity can be a real
challenge. Between media, advertisements, and overheard conversations
growing girls can learn early on to objectify their bodies, work on
attaining impossible standards, and self loathe if this is
impossible. I've seen girls as young as four gesture to perfectly
normal tummies and bottoms in attempts to explain why they need to go
on diets.
I believe this is partly because we are so nakedness aversive.
We're taught obsessively to cover our flesh. Many people have
nightmares about being seen minus clothes. It can be easy to think
that under the garments everyone else is more perfect--I'm the only
one so weird looking.
Kyo Maclear's The Big Bath House is a breath of fresh air. The
irresistible child narrator and her mom are visiting her Baachan (I
googled that. It's a familiar form of Grandmother.) in Japan. Soon
they are joined by aunties. Child and Baachan speak different
languages. But traditions create a beautiful bond between them.
One day child, mom, Baachan, aunts, and girl cousins go to a
bath house. There's hair and body washing followed by a plunge into
the big bath.
"You'll all dip your bodies,
your newly sprouting,
gangly bodies,
your saggy, shapely,
jiggly bodies,
your cozy, creased
ancient bodies.
Beautiful bodies."
Gracey Zhang's illustrations perfectly illuminate this
empowering message. No one scurries, eyes down, fearful of judging
gazes. The women carry themselves gracefully, owning their bodies as
beloved self vessels, not inadequate presentations. The children run
and play.
I think The Big Bath House is a must acquire for school and
public libraries and homes in which little girls are learning to love
or loathe their amazing, lovely bodies.
On a purrrsonal note, I hope someday in the post pandemic future to be
able to go to a bath house. I love the skin I'm in and would be happy
to walk around in it without the American pornography mindset
interfering. When I was pregnant I'd admire my great with childness
in a mirror, running my hand over my graceful baby bump curves. The
only reason I didn't have an artist paint me nude then was fear of my
children being embarrassed by such a portrait. (Jules).
As a cat, I know my body is beautiful. I will claw anyone who tries
to dress me. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to all who grasp the true beauty of the
human body.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Friday, November 26, 2021
YA Adventures In The Occult (Oh, My!)
YA Adventures In The Occult (Oh, My!)
Are curses real? Is there such thing as witchcraft? Can
actions and words harm people decades or centuries into the future?
Two chilling YA novels set on different continents explore these
tantalizing questions.
A Lesson In Vengeance
"Godwin House was built in the early eighteenth century, the
first construction of Dalloway School. Within ten years of its
founding, it saw five violent deaths. Sometimes I still smell blood
on the air, as if Godwin's macabre history is buried in its uneven
foundations alongside Margery Lemont's bones."
Felecity Morrow, protagonist of Victoria Lee's A Lesson In
Vengeance, is returning to Dalloway School for a second attempt at her
senior year. She'd had to be hospitalized following the sudden,
tragic death of her girlfriend, a death she feels at least partially
responsible for. She's coming back to a place where not only are
there so many unresolved memories, but a number of her fellow students
are convinced of her guilt.
But her memories of Alex and how their relationship went
horrible wrong at the end aren't all that haunts Felicity. Her dorm,
Godwin House, was the scene of five macabre murders when the school
opened.
"The Dalloway Five.
Flora Grayfriar, who was murdered first by the girls she thought
were friends.
Tamsyn Penhaligon, hanged from a tree.
Beatrix Walker, her body broken on a stone floor.
Cordelia Darling, drowned.
And...Margery Lemont, buried alive."
In life the girls were suspected of being witches. Over the
centuries Dalloway girls have kept their memory alive through covert
rituals. Felicity believes Alex died because they had trapped Margery
in their time through a botched ritual. Perhaps she will be next.
A new Godwin House resident, Ellis Haley, is an already
published teen author. She's working on a novel about the Dalloway
Five. She calls herself a method writer which means she must
personally experience what she writes about...
...which is so not a good idea when macabre homicides are
involved.
If your literary taste runs to noir and psychic suspense you
will not want to miss out A Lesson In Vengeance.
All The Bad Apples
"...I'm giving you one last chance. If I get even a whiff of
this off you again, I'm sending you to one of those camps. Sort this
nonsense out once and for all. I won't have another bad apple in this
family..."
We've traveled overseas and back in time to Ireland nearly a
decade ago. Deena, protagonist of Moira Fowley-Doyle's All The Bad
Apples, has just turned seventeen. Her father, who abandoned his
children after the death of his wife, leaving her to be raised by her
seventeen-year-old sister and only visiting now and then, to prevent
them from disgracing the family name, has entered the house in time to
hear her tell Rachel that she's gay. He acts predictably.
Mandy, Rachel's bad apple twin, acts a lot less predictably to
the revelation. She's horrified when she learns about that encounter--
and not by their father's homophobia. It's the Rys family curse.
"It happens at the age of seventeen. Like some kind of fairy
tale. If you've lived a life on the straight and narrow, the curse
may never find you. But, if you're considered rotten by the rest of
the family, you're doomed."
Three banshees are involved. The first will scream. The second
will shed grey hairs on the threshhold of her home, the third will
scratch her in her sleep.
Mandy tells Deena to not let anyone else in the family know.
Meanwhile she will find a way to break the generations old curse.
Only Mandy disappears. Her car is discovered at the top of a
seaside cliff. A woman reports a suicide. Although no body is
discovered the family holds a funeral.
Then Deena discovers the first of a series of letters from the
deceased, each leading her to the next. She's sure at the end of her
quest she'll find a very much alive Mandy. Following the clues, aided
by an unlikely trio, she discovers the dark secrets of not only a
family, but a nation.
Fowley-Doyle says that her book was "in part, fueled by rage."
*Rage about the Catholic mother and baby homes to which pregnant girls
were sent to hide their disgrace. Some babies were adopted by rich
families but others were housed under negligent and abusive conditions
or died young, to be buried in mass graves, one of which contained 796
little corpses.
*Rage about the Catholic run laundries that exploited the girls after
they'd given birth and others who were considered bad apples.
And *Rage about Ireland's criminalization of abortion until well into
the 21st century. She sets the novel in 2012, the year a woman
needlessly died because she was denied the abortion that would have
saved her life.
Both reads are must reads not only for those curious about
witchcraft and curses, but for YA and adult femenists. They speak
volumes about the stigmatization of females.
On a personal note, if I lived in Ireland I would probably be dead.
Abortion was legalized there in 2018. In 1995 I was carrying a dead
(as verified by lack of heartbeat) fetus. Miscarriage failed to
terminate the pregnancy. When I had been bleeding more than forty
days and had chills and fever I had the abortion that saved me from
death or sterility. My beloved Adam was born healthy and strong in
1997.
A great big shout out goes out to those who work to expose the sins
(on the part of institutions, not the individuals they victimized) of
past and present and rectify things.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Are curses real? Is there such thing as witchcraft? Can
actions and words harm people decades or centuries into the future?
Two chilling YA novels set on different continents explore these
tantalizing questions.
A Lesson In Vengeance
"Godwin House was built in the early eighteenth century, the
first construction of Dalloway School. Within ten years of its
founding, it saw five violent deaths. Sometimes I still smell blood
on the air, as if Godwin's macabre history is buried in its uneven
foundations alongside Margery Lemont's bones."
Felecity Morrow, protagonist of Victoria Lee's A Lesson In
Vengeance, is returning to Dalloway School for a second attempt at her
senior year. She'd had to be hospitalized following the sudden,
tragic death of her girlfriend, a death she feels at least partially
responsible for. She's coming back to a place where not only are
there so many unresolved memories, but a number of her fellow students
are convinced of her guilt.
But her memories of Alex and how their relationship went
horrible wrong at the end aren't all that haunts Felicity. Her dorm,
Godwin House, was the scene of five macabre murders when the school
opened.
"The Dalloway Five.
Flora Grayfriar, who was murdered first by the girls she thought
were friends.
Tamsyn Penhaligon, hanged from a tree.
Beatrix Walker, her body broken on a stone floor.
Cordelia Darling, drowned.
And...Margery Lemont, buried alive."
In life the girls were suspected of being witches. Over the
centuries Dalloway girls have kept their memory alive through covert
rituals. Felicity believes Alex died because they had trapped Margery
in their time through a botched ritual. Perhaps she will be next.
A new Godwin House resident, Ellis Haley, is an already
published teen author. She's working on a novel about the Dalloway
Five. She calls herself a method writer which means she must
personally experience what she writes about...
...which is so not a good idea when macabre homicides are
involved.
If your literary taste runs to noir and psychic suspense you
will not want to miss out A Lesson In Vengeance.
All The Bad Apples
"...I'm giving you one last chance. If I get even a whiff of
this off you again, I'm sending you to one of those camps. Sort this
nonsense out once and for all. I won't have another bad apple in this
family..."
We've traveled overseas and back in time to Ireland nearly a
decade ago. Deena, protagonist of Moira Fowley-Doyle's All The Bad
Apples, has just turned seventeen. Her father, who abandoned his
children after the death of his wife, leaving her to be raised by her
seventeen-year-old sister and only visiting now and then, to prevent
them from disgracing the family name, has entered the house in time to
hear her tell Rachel that she's gay. He acts predictably.
Mandy, Rachel's bad apple twin, acts a lot less predictably to
the revelation. She's horrified when she learns about that encounter--
and not by their father's homophobia. It's the Rys family curse.
"It happens at the age of seventeen. Like some kind of fairy
tale. If you've lived a life on the straight and narrow, the curse
may never find you. But, if you're considered rotten by the rest of
the family, you're doomed."
Three banshees are involved. The first will scream. The second
will shed grey hairs on the threshhold of her home, the third will
scratch her in her sleep.
Mandy tells Deena to not let anyone else in the family know.
Meanwhile she will find a way to break the generations old curse.
Only Mandy disappears. Her car is discovered at the top of a
seaside cliff. A woman reports a suicide. Although no body is
discovered the family holds a funeral.
Then Deena discovers the first of a series of letters from the
deceased, each leading her to the next. She's sure at the end of her
quest she'll find a very much alive Mandy. Following the clues, aided
by an unlikely trio, she discovers the dark secrets of not only a
family, but a nation.
Fowley-Doyle says that her book was "in part, fueled by rage."
*Rage about the Catholic mother and baby homes to which pregnant girls
were sent to hide their disgrace. Some babies were adopted by rich
families but others were housed under negligent and abusive conditions
or died young, to be buried in mass graves, one of which contained 796
little corpses.
*Rage about the Catholic run laundries that exploited the girls after
they'd given birth and others who were considered bad apples.
And *Rage about Ireland's criminalization of abortion until well into
the 21st century. She sets the novel in 2012, the year a woman
needlessly died because she was denied the abortion that would have
saved her life.
Both reads are must reads not only for those curious about
witchcraft and curses, but for YA and adult femenists. They speak
volumes about the stigmatization of females.
On a personal note, if I lived in Ireland I would probably be dead.
Abortion was legalized there in 2018. In 1995 I was carrying a dead
(as verified by lack of heartbeat) fetus. Miscarriage failed to
terminate the pregnancy. When I had been bleeding more than forty
days and had chills and fever I had the abortion that saved me from
death or sterility. My beloved Adam was born healthy and strong in
1997.
A great big shout out goes out to those who work to expose the sins
(on the part of institutions, not the individuals they victimized) of
past and present and rectify things.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
This is my other Book Store critter. I got her in the Great Before. 2018 to be exact. I got a $25 Book Store gift card at the yankee swap at my program's Christmas party. Joey cat was alive and well. I knew I'd see all my children on Christmas. Those were the days!!!
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone
YA Historic Fiction From The Not So Distant Past
YA Historic Fiction From The Not So Distant Past
The following two novels have four things in common. They
happened in the very recent past. In fact the first was within my
lifetime. They tackle sensitive issues in a straightforward way. The
protagonists are portrayed as complex, relatable but not perfect
individuals. The issues have still not be resolved in the twenty-
first century.
Bad Girls Never Say Die
Evie, protagonist of Jennifer Mathieu's Bad Girls Never Say Die,
identifies and is seen by many people as a bad girl. She hangs with
three friends who consider themselves "tuff", cuts most of her high
school classes, and smokes and drinks. The only good girl alternative
she has access to is the one preached by her mother: marry a good man,
one who will stay around (unlike her dad) and provide for her and
their children. Only big sister Cheryl is desperately lonely and sad
in her not-so-happily-ever-after shotgun wedding situation. Shouldn't
there be more to life?
Diane is a fallen angel, a good girl gone bad in the eyes of her
wealthy, image conscious family. Awhile back she'd done something
that embarassed her parents and shocked her classmates. After
spending some time in exile she's come home only to be shunted aside
to her black sheep of the family alcoholic aunt who lives on the
proverbial wrong side of the tracks. In other words, she's in Evie's
neighborhood.
One night at the drive in movie theater Evie has to use the
bathroom. A rich scion of a rich and powerful family attempts to rape
her. Diane tries to scare him off with a switchblade and ends up
killing him.
Johnny, brother of Connie, the leader of Evie's gang, is
arrested, beaten up by the police, and jailed for the murder. It
looks like he'll be spending a lot of time, maybe even the rest of his
life in prison. The cops think it's a slam dunk--the killing of a
rich boy with a future and rich parents by a no good wrong side of the
tracks hoodlum. An open and shut case...
...unless a small group of teens can prove it isn't.
The book introduces teen readers to the sexism and classism
rampant in 1964. Girls are considered good or bad depending on actual
or perceived sexual behavior. The would be rapist considers himself
entitled to help himself to poor girls. Through much of the book Evie
sees the almost rape as her fault. The police unquestioningly take
the word of the rich and famous over that of the poor and neglected.
Today not enough has changed in either regard. Males still feel
entitled to sexually harass and create hostile environments for
females--everything from microaggressions to out and out aggravated
rape. If a girl accuses an alpha boy--say the quarterback of the
college or high school football team or a swimming star--of rape too
often he is seen as the victim of her malicious accusations and she is
the one who is blamed and shamed.
And in towns with visibly low income sections--say trailer
parks--there can be a lot of class based social segregation. And
authorities can be much more likely to believe the well off and
influential than the just getting by and powerless.
Out Of Darkness
"For the next three days, alone or in numbers, families mourn
their children and their neighbors' children. There are so many
funerals that the pews in the churches have no time to cool. Voices
grow thin and hoarse from singing. Throats tighten. Consolation
falters. Silence settles, and in silence they bear coffins. More
than grief, more than anger, there is a need. Someone to blame.
Someone to make pay."
East Texas in 1937 was a place where robes and hoods hung in
many white people's closets. The non white residents of places like
New London weren't exactly welcome. Signs on businesses excluded
them. Color lines were religiously enforced with dire consequences
for crossing them.
But we all know that even in the most forbidding of
circumstances lines will be crossed.
Naomi and younger siblings, Cari and Beto, have just arrived
from San Antonio. They'd been living with their grandparents since
their mother's death after birthing the twins. Now, nagged into
compliance by the pastor who converted him, Henry, the father of the
twins but not Naomi, has taken the children to live with him. Naomi
is lonely, overworked, and frightened. Before his baptism Henry had
not treated her as a stepfather should. What will happen if he
backslides? Will she be able to escape without abandoning the twins?
Wash is the son of two Tuskagee educated parents. The family
saves every spare cent so he and little sister, Peggy, can follow in
their footsteps. He knows that getting close to Naomi and her
siblings is downright dangerous.
But sometimes the heart overrides the head. Wash knows how
desperately the little family needs him.
Things come to a head when there is an explosion at the white
children's school. People are desperate to blame and punish. It's
known that Wash resents the unfair resource allocation between the
white and Black schools. In fact he's said in public that it would
take an explosion to wake up the school board.
Author Ashley Hope Perez grew up close to the site of the real
school explosion that is still considered the worst in United States
history.
"In researching this novel, I was struck by the many ways in
which whole swaths of lived experiences have been largely excluded
from historical accounts, in part because certain communities were not
deemed worthy of note in newspapers and other sources deemed
authoritative and reliable. These silences need to be amended. I
hope my fiction gives readers an appetite for stories lived in the
margins of spotlighted scenes."
Similarities to today are legion. Schools are more segregated
(and nowhere near equal) than ever before. We're still reading white
washed history and news that privileges some sources over others.
Although individual racism is not as overt as in the KKK heyday it's
still very much alive. Systemic racism is thriving. And we are
nowhere near the liberty and justice for all society that the pedge of
allegiance brags about.
On a purrrsonal note: Yesterday I aced my annual wellness check up.
According to my nurse practitioner I am in purrrfect health. Strong
heart and lungs, BP of 126/85, no lumps or weird looking cells... All
this despite the history of heart disease on both sides of my family.
Studying for that high stakes exam really paid off. Then today I got
myself a reward for good grades, nailing my internship, doing super at
work, and being in purrrfect health: a bear I'd been admiring at the
UMaine Book Store. I wanted to buy something there to show my
appreciation for something super they're doing in the real holiday
spirit. (Jules)
My Jules is in purrrfect health. YASSS!!! (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to the UMaine Book Store. They are
giving customers an awesome incentive to bring them food for the Black
Bear Exchange. If you bring in food you'll get a coupon worth 30% off
any item. They're gathering a lot of food that will help so many
people. Food insecurity is a major problem on college and university
campuses and one in every five food insecure students is a parent.
Yay, Book Store people! Way to show the holiday spirit!!! We love
you!!!
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
The following two novels have four things in common. They
happened in the very recent past. In fact the first was within my
lifetime. They tackle sensitive issues in a straightforward way. The
protagonists are portrayed as complex, relatable but not perfect
individuals. The issues have still not be resolved in the twenty-
first century.
Bad Girls Never Say Die
Evie, protagonist of Jennifer Mathieu's Bad Girls Never Say Die,
identifies and is seen by many people as a bad girl. She hangs with
three friends who consider themselves "tuff", cuts most of her high
school classes, and smokes and drinks. The only good girl alternative
she has access to is the one preached by her mother: marry a good man,
one who will stay around (unlike her dad) and provide for her and
their children. Only big sister Cheryl is desperately lonely and sad
in her not-so-happily-ever-after shotgun wedding situation. Shouldn't
there be more to life?
Diane is a fallen angel, a good girl gone bad in the eyes of her
wealthy, image conscious family. Awhile back she'd done something
that embarassed her parents and shocked her classmates. After
spending some time in exile she's come home only to be shunted aside
to her black sheep of the family alcoholic aunt who lives on the
proverbial wrong side of the tracks. In other words, she's in Evie's
neighborhood.
One night at the drive in movie theater Evie has to use the
bathroom. A rich scion of a rich and powerful family attempts to rape
her. Diane tries to scare him off with a switchblade and ends up
killing him.
Johnny, brother of Connie, the leader of Evie's gang, is
arrested, beaten up by the police, and jailed for the murder. It
looks like he'll be spending a lot of time, maybe even the rest of his
life in prison. The cops think it's a slam dunk--the killing of a
rich boy with a future and rich parents by a no good wrong side of the
tracks hoodlum. An open and shut case...
...unless a small group of teens can prove it isn't.
The book introduces teen readers to the sexism and classism
rampant in 1964. Girls are considered good or bad depending on actual
or perceived sexual behavior. The would be rapist considers himself
entitled to help himself to poor girls. Through much of the book Evie
sees the almost rape as her fault. The police unquestioningly take
the word of the rich and famous over that of the poor and neglected.
Today not enough has changed in either regard. Males still feel
entitled to sexually harass and create hostile environments for
females--everything from microaggressions to out and out aggravated
rape. If a girl accuses an alpha boy--say the quarterback of the
college or high school football team or a swimming star--of rape too
often he is seen as the victim of her malicious accusations and she is
the one who is blamed and shamed.
And in towns with visibly low income sections--say trailer
parks--there can be a lot of class based social segregation. And
authorities can be much more likely to believe the well off and
influential than the just getting by and powerless.
Out Of Darkness
"For the next three days, alone or in numbers, families mourn
their children and their neighbors' children. There are so many
funerals that the pews in the churches have no time to cool. Voices
grow thin and hoarse from singing. Throats tighten. Consolation
falters. Silence settles, and in silence they bear coffins. More
than grief, more than anger, there is a need. Someone to blame.
Someone to make pay."
East Texas in 1937 was a place where robes and hoods hung in
many white people's closets. The non white residents of places like
New London weren't exactly welcome. Signs on businesses excluded
them. Color lines were religiously enforced with dire consequences
for crossing them.
But we all know that even in the most forbidding of
circumstances lines will be crossed.
Naomi and younger siblings, Cari and Beto, have just arrived
from San Antonio. They'd been living with their grandparents since
their mother's death after birthing the twins. Now, nagged into
compliance by the pastor who converted him, Henry, the father of the
twins but not Naomi, has taken the children to live with him. Naomi
is lonely, overworked, and frightened. Before his baptism Henry had
not treated her as a stepfather should. What will happen if he
backslides? Will she be able to escape without abandoning the twins?
Wash is the son of two Tuskagee educated parents. The family
saves every spare cent so he and little sister, Peggy, can follow in
their footsteps. He knows that getting close to Naomi and her
siblings is downright dangerous.
But sometimes the heart overrides the head. Wash knows how
desperately the little family needs him.
Things come to a head when there is an explosion at the white
children's school. People are desperate to blame and punish. It's
known that Wash resents the unfair resource allocation between the
white and Black schools. In fact he's said in public that it would
take an explosion to wake up the school board.
Author Ashley Hope Perez grew up close to the site of the real
school explosion that is still considered the worst in United States
history.
"In researching this novel, I was struck by the many ways in
which whole swaths of lived experiences have been largely excluded
from historical accounts, in part because certain communities were not
deemed worthy of note in newspapers and other sources deemed
authoritative and reliable. These silences need to be amended. I
hope my fiction gives readers an appetite for stories lived in the
margins of spotlighted scenes."
Similarities to today are legion. Schools are more segregated
(and nowhere near equal) than ever before. We're still reading white
washed history and news that privileges some sources over others.
Although individual racism is not as overt as in the KKK heyday it's
still very much alive. Systemic racism is thriving. And we are
nowhere near the liberty and justice for all society that the pedge of
allegiance brags about.
On a purrrsonal note: Yesterday I aced my annual wellness check up.
According to my nurse practitioner I am in purrrfect health. Strong
heart and lungs, BP of 126/85, no lumps or weird looking cells... All
this despite the history of heart disease on both sides of my family.
Studying for that high stakes exam really paid off. Then today I got
myself a reward for good grades, nailing my internship, doing super at
work, and being in purrrfect health: a bear I'd been admiring at the
UMaine Book Store. I wanted to buy something there to show my
appreciation for something super they're doing in the real holiday
spirit. (Jules)
My Jules is in purrrfect health. YASSS!!! (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to the UMaine Book Store. They are
giving customers an awesome incentive to bring them food for the Black
Bear Exchange. If you bring in food you'll get a coupon worth 30% off
any item. They're gathering a lot of food that will help so many
people. Food insecurity is a major problem on college and university
campuses and one in every five food insecure students is a parent.
Yay, Book Store people! Way to show the holiday spirit!!! We love
you!!!
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Monday, November 22, 2021
Two Adult Chillers
Two Adult Chillers
The Burning Girls
"The bed was stained with blood and bodily fluids. Restraints
had been tied to each bedpost, but they hung loose. In the middle of
the matress a large leather case lay open. Sturdy straps held the
contents in place: a heavy crucifix, a Bible, holy water, muslin
cloths."
If you like your chillers imbued with the supernatural you'll
love C. J. Tudor's The Burning Girls.
Chapel Croft is not just any old village. Residents are still
fixated on an event that happened in the religious wars five centuries
earlier. A group of Protestants, including two young girls, was
betrayed and burned to death. The alpha family in town claims direct
descent from the martyrs. Every year villagers burn twig dolls to
commemorate the massacre.
When Jack Brooks becomes vicar of the town's chapel she quickly
learns that it isn't just any assignment. She's replacing a man who
committed suicide. As she explores the chapel her daughter, Flo,
meets up with a child covered in blood. An anonymous donor leaves her
an exorcism kit, its knife coated in dried blood. An attached note
says, "But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and
hidden that will not be known."
What does that all mean? Could it have anything to do with the
long ago massacre and/or a thirty-year-old case involving the
disappearance of two local girls, best friends?
Flo begins to see girls on fire. It's believed that if anyone
sees the burning girls evil is about to take place. Sure enough some
gruesome secrets are about to reveal themselves.
The villagers may not be the only people harboring disturbing
secrets. Perhaps their new vicar has something to hide.
So if your reading taste runs to occult horror, especially if
you're a Stephen King fan, you owe it to yourself to check out The
Burning Girls.
Girl A
"You don't know me, but you'll have seen my face. In the
earlier pictures, they bludgeoned our features with pixels, right down
to our waists; even our hair was too distinctive to disclose. But the
story and its protectors grew weary, and in the darker corners of the
Internet we became easy to find..."
Ever so often a horrifying news story about a family will break
out. Usually no one will have caught on to parenting aberations until
the children, if not deceased, are abused, neglected, and often living
in depths of squalor to which we wouldn't consign our cats and dogs.
These stories fascinate people to a degree most other news
genres don't. They're click bait. Ratings conscious media entities
pursue survivors relentlessly, eager for any scrap of insider
information with which to gain an edge over the competition.
The survivors continue to grow up in a world still thirsty for
and feeling entitled to gruesome details and unwilling for them to
move on, to become more than the worst thing that ever happened to
them. Memories complicate developmental tasks and relationships.
That's the story behind Abigail Dean's Girl A.
Lex, Girl A, has been trying valiently to put the past behind
her. She was the one who had been able to escape her family's house
of horrors and connect with help. She and her siblings had been
chained to their beds and starved. She had seen the little sister
with whom she shared a bed growing frailer. The children, after
hospital treatment, were adopted into different families. Their
father had committed suicide when he had realized that his secrets
were about to be revealed. Their mother had been sent to prison.
Now Lex has been summoned to the prison following her mother's
death. She has been named executor of her will. The estate consists
of twenty thousand pounds and the house she and her siblings grew up
in. They all have to agree on how the assets will be used. It will
be quite the challenge. The family is quite spread out
geographically. Their needs and wants differ greatly.
In a text that segues smoothly between past and present, Dean
presents readers with a vivid, poignant portrayal of a family of
survivors striving to move beyond media victim portrayals. There are
quite a few surprises. Once you get caught up in the narrative you'll
find it hard, if not impossible, to set it aside.
On a purrrsonal note, between homework and doing my post verdict three
book review (not to mention dishes, cooking, laundry etc.) it was
mostly a work weekend. But I did get a few breaks. Saturday night
Eugene and I watched Home Alone. That's an annual holiday tradition.
Sunday morning I baked a funny looking (but delicious) apple pie.
Sunday afternoon I had several unexpected hours when it was sunny and
warm enough for outside reading. I took out a YA novel, totally
unrelated to the review I was working on. (Jules)
I loved that sunshine. Today is rainy and blah. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to you, our readers, with best wishes
for a safe and happy Thanksgiving wherever you intend to spend it.
Please don't let up on COVID precautions, especially if you're in a
place with lax rules and/or high infection rates.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
The Burning Girls
"The bed was stained with blood and bodily fluids. Restraints
had been tied to each bedpost, but they hung loose. In the middle of
the matress a large leather case lay open. Sturdy straps held the
contents in place: a heavy crucifix, a Bible, holy water, muslin
cloths."
If you like your chillers imbued with the supernatural you'll
love C. J. Tudor's The Burning Girls.
Chapel Croft is not just any old village. Residents are still
fixated on an event that happened in the religious wars five centuries
earlier. A group of Protestants, including two young girls, was
betrayed and burned to death. The alpha family in town claims direct
descent from the martyrs. Every year villagers burn twig dolls to
commemorate the massacre.
When Jack Brooks becomes vicar of the town's chapel she quickly
learns that it isn't just any assignment. She's replacing a man who
committed suicide. As she explores the chapel her daughter, Flo,
meets up with a child covered in blood. An anonymous donor leaves her
an exorcism kit, its knife coated in dried blood. An attached note
says, "But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and
hidden that will not be known."
What does that all mean? Could it have anything to do with the
long ago massacre and/or a thirty-year-old case involving the
disappearance of two local girls, best friends?
Flo begins to see girls on fire. It's believed that if anyone
sees the burning girls evil is about to take place. Sure enough some
gruesome secrets are about to reveal themselves.
The villagers may not be the only people harboring disturbing
secrets. Perhaps their new vicar has something to hide.
So if your reading taste runs to occult horror, especially if
you're a Stephen King fan, you owe it to yourself to check out The
Burning Girls.
Girl A
"You don't know me, but you'll have seen my face. In the
earlier pictures, they bludgeoned our features with pixels, right down
to our waists; even our hair was too distinctive to disclose. But the
story and its protectors grew weary, and in the darker corners of the
Internet we became easy to find..."
Ever so often a horrifying news story about a family will break
out. Usually no one will have caught on to parenting aberations until
the children, if not deceased, are abused, neglected, and often living
in depths of squalor to which we wouldn't consign our cats and dogs.
These stories fascinate people to a degree most other news
genres don't. They're click bait. Ratings conscious media entities
pursue survivors relentlessly, eager for any scrap of insider
information with which to gain an edge over the competition.
The survivors continue to grow up in a world still thirsty for
and feeling entitled to gruesome details and unwilling for them to
move on, to become more than the worst thing that ever happened to
them. Memories complicate developmental tasks and relationships.
That's the story behind Abigail Dean's Girl A.
Lex, Girl A, has been trying valiently to put the past behind
her. She was the one who had been able to escape her family's house
of horrors and connect with help. She and her siblings had been
chained to their beds and starved. She had seen the little sister
with whom she shared a bed growing frailer. The children, after
hospital treatment, were adopted into different families. Their
father had committed suicide when he had realized that his secrets
were about to be revealed. Their mother had been sent to prison.
Now Lex has been summoned to the prison following her mother's
death. She has been named executor of her will. The estate consists
of twenty thousand pounds and the house she and her siblings grew up
in. They all have to agree on how the assets will be used. It will
be quite the challenge. The family is quite spread out
geographically. Their needs and wants differ greatly.
In a text that segues smoothly between past and present, Dean
presents readers with a vivid, poignant portrayal of a family of
survivors striving to move beyond media victim portrayals. There are
quite a few surprises. Once you get caught up in the narrative you'll
find it hard, if not impossible, to set it aside.
On a purrrsonal note, between homework and doing my post verdict three
book review (not to mention dishes, cooking, laundry etc.) it was
mostly a work weekend. But I did get a few breaks. Saturday night
Eugene and I watched Home Alone. That's an annual holiday tradition.
Sunday morning I baked a funny looking (but delicious) apple pie.
Sunday afternoon I had several unexpected hours when it was sunny and
warm enough for outside reading. I took out a YA novel, totally
unrelated to the review I was working on. (Jules)
I loved that sunshine. Today is rainy and blah. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to you, our readers, with best wishes
for a safe and happy Thanksgiving wherever you intend to spend it.
Please don't let up on COVID precautions, especially if you're in a
place with lax rules and/or high infection rates.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Sunday, November 21, 2021
An Antiracist Trinity
An Antiracist Trinity
Adult nonfiction
Friday I was serving up supper. The television was on local
news. Only they cut away to announce a national story--the acquittal
on all charges of Kyle Rittenhouse. Video showed a teen who had
crossed state lines to participate in a counter demonstration cradling
an assault rifle confidently and eagerly scanning the crowd, looking
quite pleased to have an opportunity to use his weapon. This was not
someone fearing for his life. Although he was a civilian, he was
given the kind of qualified immunity normally reserved for police
officers. It was said by at least one person he was acting in lieu of
police in their role. Hello. An untrained seventeen-year-old? There
was so much wrong with the verdict.
Rittenhouse is white. If a Black teen had committed the acts
Rittenhouse had you know he wouldn't have been set free. He would
have been beaten and arrested, if not shot on the spot. He would have
been dubbed a thug, not a hero by the right wing.
By some quite fortuitous coincidence I had recently browsed the
Fogler Library (UMaine) popular books section and snagged three books
all related to state sanctioned racial violence. I decided to review
them together to explicate some of the back story behind why the
verdict was not only possible, but sadly predictable.
Ida B. the Queen
For much of my life Ida B. Wells has been one of my big time
sheroes. She spoke about lynching at a time when it was accepted. I
don't understand the mentality behind it. Many people considered it
family friendly entertainment to see people hung, shot, or burned to
death and mutilated. They brought the kids and spectated the way we
might watch a football game, even bringing picnic lunches. They
collected scraps of victims' clothes and actual body parts as prized
souvenirs.
Wells saw the truth and made it her purpose to bring this sordid
truth to light in order to get the practice made illegal. (BTW we
still haven't made a law to do that). People in power didn't listen.
And by her extensive documenting of and publishing about the atrocity
she put herself in very real peril of death at the hands of a racist
mob...
...like sadly today protestors trying to attest to the simple
truth of Black lives mattering put themselves in danger of being shot
in cold blood by vigilantes and police officers armed with military
grade weapons.
A new book about her life, Ida B. the Queen by Michelle Duster,
is the most illuminating work on her life I've ever seen. Published
in 2021, it isn't just a retelling of the same information.
First of all, it goes into detail about the heartbreaks she
experienced that helped shape the radical activist she became. At
sixteen, an age when girls often ponder prom, summer vacation, and
college or other plans for the future, she lost both parents and her
youngest brother to a yellow fever epidemic and instantly became
responsible for nurturing and financially providing for her five
younger siblings. The three men whose lynchings kindled the fire in
her were personal friends, the Black owners of the People's Grocery
who were tortured, murdered, and mutilated for the "crime" of
competing with the white-owned store that had previously held a
monopoly. Can you imagine the anguish behind these words:
"The City of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor
standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the
white man or become his rival...There is therefore only one thing left
that we can do; save our money and leave a town which will neither
protest our lives or property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts,
but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white
persons."
Secondly, it shows us all the ways in which Wells' work and
legacy carry into the current century--connecting her with people like
Colin Kaepernick, Maxine Waters, Bree Newsome, and the founders of
Black Lives Matter.
(The Rittenhouse verdict illustrates the terrible necessity of
all their work.)
And then there are all the wonderful pictures.
If you want to take a fresh look at a woman whose Black life
mattered immensely, put Ida B. the Queen on your reading list.
A Peculiar Indifference
"In the United States today, a young black man has fifteen times
the chance of dying from violence as his white counterpart. Violence
takes more years of life from black men than cancer, stroke, and
diabetes combined. It strikes even black women more often than white
men and contributes significantly to persistently lower overall life
expectancy and higher infant mortality among black Americans. These
disparities contribute to sharply divergent overall patterns of life
and deaths between whites and blacks in the United States..."
Elliott Currie took the title of his book, A Peculiar
Indifference, from a statement by W.E.B. Du Bois. Speaking at the end
of the 19th century, he lamented that there were "few other cases in
the history of civilized peoples where human suffering has been viewed
with such indifference" (as that of America's Blacks). He believes
that this peculiar indifference is still in evidence among whites
today. True we join in protest waves in the wake of an especially
egregious police shooting of am unarmed Black. But when it comes to
the pervasive violence that tragically permeates Black communities we
are asleep at the wheel. Generations of us have made decisions that
have created great wealth gaps between white and black communities
that impact every aspect of life including degree of violence and
relative mortality. "...That wealth gives us both the means and the
responsibility to reverse the consequences of those decisions. Our
failure to do so--our peculiar indifference--is not only socially
destructive and economically wasteful but a profound moral default."
It's hard to get beyond the first chapter, Dimensions. A number
of statistical measures are used to show the great life/death
disparities between whites and Blacks. In addition to street violence
other more intimate, hidden sources are illuminated. A little known
measure called the years of potential life lost is especially
telling. It's calculated by subtracting age at death from a potential
sixty-five. Blacks lose exponentially more of those years than whites.
A sizeable chunk of the book is devoted to explanations of the
overabundance of violence in Black Communities by pioneering and more
recent researchers. Both groups came up with some strikingly similar
conclusions. Higher levels of violence in Black communities result
not from innate or cultural dispositions (which a lot of whites even
today sadly believe) but as response to the systemic racism and
blatant injustices and inequities perpetuated by the white
institutions and the inability to achieve meaningful change.
For me the most heartbreaking chapter is the one on the impact
of pervasive violence in Black communities on even their youngest
members. Children know of and even witness the violent deaths of
family members and friends. They are robbed not only of people close
to them, but also of the ability to believe in any kind of future for
themselves. Five years to many seems like an impossible to imagine
distant future.
The final chapter consists of remedies that are far more
comprehensive and interrelated than today's bandaid solutions usually
tried and abandoned when they don't work--their failures allowing
whites to victim blame and lapse back into a state of peculiar
indifference. They will not be easy to implement. But we have not
only the resources, but the moral imperative to do so.
A Peculiar Indifference is a good read for learning the scope of
the problem and the steps necessary for solving it.
America On Fire
"Black rebellion clearly has a future; it also has a long history.
That Black people might rise up in violence has been a widespread fear
among white Americans for centuries...Here was the foundational logic
of American policing: maintaining the social order through the
surveillance and social control of people of color."
In her comprehensive and insightful America On Fire: The Untold
History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960's law
professor Elizabeth Hinton decisively shatters some of our nation's
beloved myths.
Well, things used to be bad. But the Civil Rights Era fixed all
that. We've been making all this racial progress since then. We've
even elected a Black president. So aren't we like post racial now?
Not quite. The inequity and racism embedded systemically in our
way of life are still very much alive and destroying Black
individuals, families, and communities.
Rioters were/are thugs. They start waves of misguided,
irrational, and/or pathological mass crime.
Hinton asserts that what has been typically called riots can be
more accurately described as rebellions by people with plenty to be
angry about. Also individual riots were triggered by acts of violence
on the part of the police and followed by state violence against
protesters and a clamping down on the Black community by a police
force with new military grade weapons and almost unlimited powers.
But you had to do that to restore law and order and keep
everyone safe. Right?
Wrong! Those involved in the rebellions often had very
legitimate demands (decent housing, jobs with degnity, education
comparable with that available to whites, an end to mass
incarceration...) and the willingness to collaborate to achieve them.
Hinton has massive amounts of evidence to back her assertions,
over three hundred pages of it. She analyzes rebellions and their
causes and aftermaths from the 1960s when President Johnson's War on
Crime encouraged police to become increasingly intrusive and heavy
handed in Black communities to the mess we're in today. If you're
anything like me it will make you mighty angry.
But at the very end there is a flicker of hope.
"...Some lawmakers are listening again, and the challenge of the
twenty-first century is to actually bring about change. As Michael's
comments imply, America will continue to see the fires of rebellion--
perhaps by a new, more diverse generation of protesters--until the
forces of inequality are finally abolished and the nation no longer
empowers police officers to manage the material consequences of
conditions that are beyond their control."
I fervently hope that I live to see that.
On a personal note, Thanks to Kyle Rittenhouse two men are dead and a
third paralyzed from the waist down for the "crime" of protesting
racism and police brutality. He was acquitted of all charges. Even
though he was not in any kind of danger he convinced a jury that
(while wielding an assault rifle) he had reason to fear for his life.
That's become a magic get out of jail free card for police and white
supremacists.
In the meantime unarmed Black men, women, and even children in
police encounters are shot if they even move and their killers
exonerated by the magic card.
And we still aren't doing nearly enough to change the
impoverished conditions under which so many Blacks are condemned to
live and die.
I was so angry after seeing the verdict I had to do something.
Reading and reviewing these three books was what I could think of.
They and other fine volumes in our libraries can help us understand
why in America the Rittenhouse verdict was possible and what's needed
to transform our nation into a place where liberty and justice for all
is more than an empty phrase.
A great big shout out goes out to all who rebel against racism and
police brutality.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Adult nonfiction
Friday I was serving up supper. The television was on local
news. Only they cut away to announce a national story--the acquittal
on all charges of Kyle Rittenhouse. Video showed a teen who had
crossed state lines to participate in a counter demonstration cradling
an assault rifle confidently and eagerly scanning the crowd, looking
quite pleased to have an opportunity to use his weapon. This was not
someone fearing for his life. Although he was a civilian, he was
given the kind of qualified immunity normally reserved for police
officers. It was said by at least one person he was acting in lieu of
police in their role. Hello. An untrained seventeen-year-old? There
was so much wrong with the verdict.
Rittenhouse is white. If a Black teen had committed the acts
Rittenhouse had you know he wouldn't have been set free. He would
have been beaten and arrested, if not shot on the spot. He would have
been dubbed a thug, not a hero by the right wing.
By some quite fortuitous coincidence I had recently browsed the
Fogler Library (UMaine) popular books section and snagged three books
all related to state sanctioned racial violence. I decided to review
them together to explicate some of the back story behind why the
verdict was not only possible, but sadly predictable.
Ida B. the Queen
For much of my life Ida B. Wells has been one of my big time
sheroes. She spoke about lynching at a time when it was accepted. I
don't understand the mentality behind it. Many people considered it
family friendly entertainment to see people hung, shot, or burned to
death and mutilated. They brought the kids and spectated the way we
might watch a football game, even bringing picnic lunches. They
collected scraps of victims' clothes and actual body parts as prized
souvenirs.
Wells saw the truth and made it her purpose to bring this sordid
truth to light in order to get the practice made illegal. (BTW we
still haven't made a law to do that). People in power didn't listen.
And by her extensive documenting of and publishing about the atrocity
she put herself in very real peril of death at the hands of a racist
mob...
...like sadly today protestors trying to attest to the simple
truth of Black lives mattering put themselves in danger of being shot
in cold blood by vigilantes and police officers armed with military
grade weapons.
A new book about her life, Ida B. the Queen by Michelle Duster,
is the most illuminating work on her life I've ever seen. Published
in 2021, it isn't just a retelling of the same information.
First of all, it goes into detail about the heartbreaks she
experienced that helped shape the radical activist she became. At
sixteen, an age when girls often ponder prom, summer vacation, and
college or other plans for the future, she lost both parents and her
youngest brother to a yellow fever epidemic and instantly became
responsible for nurturing and financially providing for her five
younger siblings. The three men whose lynchings kindled the fire in
her were personal friends, the Black owners of the People's Grocery
who were tortured, murdered, and mutilated for the "crime" of
competing with the white-owned store that had previously held a
monopoly. Can you imagine the anguish behind these words:
"The City of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor
standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the
white man or become his rival...There is therefore only one thing left
that we can do; save our money and leave a town which will neither
protest our lives or property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts,
but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white
persons."
Secondly, it shows us all the ways in which Wells' work and
legacy carry into the current century--connecting her with people like
Colin Kaepernick, Maxine Waters, Bree Newsome, and the founders of
Black Lives Matter.
(The Rittenhouse verdict illustrates the terrible necessity of
all their work.)
And then there are all the wonderful pictures.
If you want to take a fresh look at a woman whose Black life
mattered immensely, put Ida B. the Queen on your reading list.
A Peculiar Indifference
"In the United States today, a young black man has fifteen times
the chance of dying from violence as his white counterpart. Violence
takes more years of life from black men than cancer, stroke, and
diabetes combined. It strikes even black women more often than white
men and contributes significantly to persistently lower overall life
expectancy and higher infant mortality among black Americans. These
disparities contribute to sharply divergent overall patterns of life
and deaths between whites and blacks in the United States..."
Elliott Currie took the title of his book, A Peculiar
Indifference, from a statement by W.E.B. Du Bois. Speaking at the end
of the 19th century, he lamented that there were "few other cases in
the history of civilized peoples where human suffering has been viewed
with such indifference" (as that of America's Blacks). He believes
that this peculiar indifference is still in evidence among whites
today. True we join in protest waves in the wake of an especially
egregious police shooting of am unarmed Black. But when it comes to
the pervasive violence that tragically permeates Black communities we
are asleep at the wheel. Generations of us have made decisions that
have created great wealth gaps between white and black communities
that impact every aspect of life including degree of violence and
relative mortality. "...That wealth gives us both the means and the
responsibility to reverse the consequences of those decisions. Our
failure to do so--our peculiar indifference--is not only socially
destructive and economically wasteful but a profound moral default."
It's hard to get beyond the first chapter, Dimensions. A number
of statistical measures are used to show the great life/death
disparities between whites and Blacks. In addition to street violence
other more intimate, hidden sources are illuminated. A little known
measure called the years of potential life lost is especially
telling. It's calculated by subtracting age at death from a potential
sixty-five. Blacks lose exponentially more of those years than whites.
A sizeable chunk of the book is devoted to explanations of the
overabundance of violence in Black Communities by pioneering and more
recent researchers. Both groups came up with some strikingly similar
conclusions. Higher levels of violence in Black communities result
not from innate or cultural dispositions (which a lot of whites even
today sadly believe) but as response to the systemic racism and
blatant injustices and inequities perpetuated by the white
institutions and the inability to achieve meaningful change.
For me the most heartbreaking chapter is the one on the impact
of pervasive violence in Black communities on even their youngest
members. Children know of and even witness the violent deaths of
family members and friends. They are robbed not only of people close
to them, but also of the ability to believe in any kind of future for
themselves. Five years to many seems like an impossible to imagine
distant future.
The final chapter consists of remedies that are far more
comprehensive and interrelated than today's bandaid solutions usually
tried and abandoned when they don't work--their failures allowing
whites to victim blame and lapse back into a state of peculiar
indifference. They will not be easy to implement. But we have not
only the resources, but the moral imperative to do so.
A Peculiar Indifference is a good read for learning the scope of
the problem and the steps necessary for solving it.
America On Fire
"Black rebellion clearly has a future; it also has a long history.
That Black people might rise up in violence has been a widespread fear
among white Americans for centuries...Here was the foundational logic
of American policing: maintaining the social order through the
surveillance and social control of people of color."
In her comprehensive and insightful America On Fire: The Untold
History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960's law
professor Elizabeth Hinton decisively shatters some of our nation's
beloved myths.
Well, things used to be bad. But the Civil Rights Era fixed all
that. We've been making all this racial progress since then. We've
even elected a Black president. So aren't we like post racial now?
Not quite. The inequity and racism embedded systemically in our
way of life are still very much alive and destroying Black
individuals, families, and communities.
Rioters were/are thugs. They start waves of misguided,
irrational, and/or pathological mass crime.
Hinton asserts that what has been typically called riots can be
more accurately described as rebellions by people with plenty to be
angry about. Also individual riots were triggered by acts of violence
on the part of the police and followed by state violence against
protesters and a clamping down on the Black community by a police
force with new military grade weapons and almost unlimited powers.
But you had to do that to restore law and order and keep
everyone safe. Right?
Wrong! Those involved in the rebellions often had very
legitimate demands (decent housing, jobs with degnity, education
comparable with that available to whites, an end to mass
incarceration...) and the willingness to collaborate to achieve them.
Hinton has massive amounts of evidence to back her assertions,
over three hundred pages of it. She analyzes rebellions and their
causes and aftermaths from the 1960s when President Johnson's War on
Crime encouraged police to become increasingly intrusive and heavy
handed in Black communities to the mess we're in today. If you're
anything like me it will make you mighty angry.
But at the very end there is a flicker of hope.
"...Some lawmakers are listening again, and the challenge of the
twenty-first century is to actually bring about change. As Michael's
comments imply, America will continue to see the fires of rebellion--
perhaps by a new, more diverse generation of protesters--until the
forces of inequality are finally abolished and the nation no longer
empowers police officers to manage the material consequences of
conditions that are beyond their control."
I fervently hope that I live to see that.
On a personal note, Thanks to Kyle Rittenhouse two men are dead and a
third paralyzed from the waist down for the "crime" of protesting
racism and police brutality. He was acquitted of all charges. Even
though he was not in any kind of danger he convinced a jury that
(while wielding an assault rifle) he had reason to fear for his life.
That's become a magic get out of jail free card for police and white
supremacists.
In the meantime unarmed Black men, women, and even children in
police encounters are shot if they even move and their killers
exonerated by the magic card.
And we still aren't doing nearly enough to change the
impoverished conditions under which so many Blacks are condemned to
live and die.
I was so angry after seeing the verdict I had to do something.
Reading and reviewing these three books was what I could think of.
They and other fine volumes in our libraries can help us understand
why in America the Rittenhouse verdict was possible and what's needed
to transform our nation into a place where liberty and justice for all
is more than an empty phrase.
A great big shout out goes out to all who rebel against racism and
police brutality.
Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
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Friday, November 19, 2021
Thursday, November 18, 2021
Halfway Normal
Halfway Normal
Everything I Know About You
Juvenile fiction
"The second I stepped into the room, somebody screamed.
I turned to look behind me--for a rock star, or a grizzley bear,
or the Loch Ness Monster. But no one was following.
The scream was for me."
When Norah, narrator of Barbara Dee's Halfway Normal, starts
seventh grade, it's the first time she's been in school in two years
after battling cancer. Academics won't be a challenge. She's been
tutored. In fact she's being bumped up to eighth grade in math and
science.
That's a good thing. In other facets of her life she faces
challenges galore.
Some of Norah's classmates treat her like a survival miracle.
Others think she's milking her survivor status to get special
privileges. They all seem to see her as The Girl Who, forgetting all
other aspects of her personality.
Norah's guidance counselor hovers, trying to get her to take it
easy. She can take the elevator instead of climbing stairs. She's
also pushing her to participate in an Overcoming Challenges program by
sharing her story with the whole school. But she uses euphamisms for
cancer, seemingly unable to say the word.
Nora's parents have a whole list of rules, many involving
distancing from her potentially germy peers. And she must rest much
of the time. She can't participate in the popular after school
programs or hang out with friends on weekends.
There's a really cute guy in Norah's math class who seems to
like her. If only she can keep him from learning her secret!
Everything I know about You
"Immediately people started buzzing. ASSIGNING roommates? No,
wait. We're supposed to be with our FRIENDS in the hotel! That's the
whole point of this trip, to have fun! They aren't doing this right.
IT ISN'T FAIR."
Tally, narrator of Barbara Dee's Everything I Know About You and
her classmates are really excited about the traditional seventh grade
field trip: four days and three nights in Washington DC. Then the
teachers in charge throw water on their good time plans. In order to
promote class unity they will be assigning hotel roommates.
Tally gets her absolute last roommate choice, her nemesis, Ava,
a school spirit rah rah, slave to fashion, seemingly perfect girl,
always judging her peers and being sneaky mean to those who don't live
up to her standards. She and her best friends, Sonnet and Spider,
come up with a plan to make the sleeping arrangements bearable.
They'll spy on their roommates and learn their secrets.
At first they're innocuous: baby shampoo, a stuffed animal.
Then Tally notices troubling things about Ava. She hardly eats a
thing. She's always exercising and writing numbers in a cryptic
notebook. She's emaciated.
"Under her cami, Ava's ribs stuck out. When she did a sit up,
you could see every bone in her spine. Her bones looked like twigs..."
Tally is worried, especially when she figures out what the
notebook numbers mean. She tries to talk to Ava who takes a very
unflattering picture of her and threatens to post it on social media
if she says a word to the adults.
This book is a very personal one for Dee. When she had an
eating disorder in college people didn't talk about them. Her journey
to health was mostly a matter of luck. She's glad that there's now a
wide range of treatments. "Kids need to know that caring
professionals are out there and that full recovery is possible."
On a purrrsonal note, today was Eugene's Uncle Phil's funeral. Some
family members shared memories that really moved everyone to both
tears and laughter. But this minister dude presiding seemed to think
that because Phil was a born again Christian all his friends and
family members were. He was saying stuff like we can all see Phil in
Jesus' arms. I can't. Apart from his physical body I have no clue
where Phil is. I was thinking WTF, Dude? We aren't all in the club.
It's this Christian supremacy thing to assume that everyone is on
board with their theology. Of course this dialogue all happened in my
critical thinking brain. I didn't want to hurt people who were
grieving and vulnerable. (Jules)
Before the funeral she made a Goodwill run to get a sincere sympathy
card for her mother-in-law. While she was there anyway she looked to
see if there was a cat shirt and found an awesome one. Then she got
ice cream at Hannaford. Only there wasn't enough room in the
freezer. Oops! So we had to eat it for lunch. We can't let ice
cream go to waste! (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to ministers see the validity of other
faiths and the deity questioning or nonbelieving options.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Everything I Know About You
Juvenile fiction
"The second I stepped into the room, somebody screamed.
I turned to look behind me--for a rock star, or a grizzley bear,
or the Loch Ness Monster. But no one was following.
The scream was for me."
When Norah, narrator of Barbara Dee's Halfway Normal, starts
seventh grade, it's the first time she's been in school in two years
after battling cancer. Academics won't be a challenge. She's been
tutored. In fact she's being bumped up to eighth grade in math and
science.
That's a good thing. In other facets of her life she faces
challenges galore.
Some of Norah's classmates treat her like a survival miracle.
Others think she's milking her survivor status to get special
privileges. They all seem to see her as The Girl Who, forgetting all
other aspects of her personality.
Norah's guidance counselor hovers, trying to get her to take it
easy. She can take the elevator instead of climbing stairs. She's
also pushing her to participate in an Overcoming Challenges program by
sharing her story with the whole school. But she uses euphamisms for
cancer, seemingly unable to say the word.
Nora's parents have a whole list of rules, many involving
distancing from her potentially germy peers. And she must rest much
of the time. She can't participate in the popular after school
programs or hang out with friends on weekends.
There's a really cute guy in Norah's math class who seems to
like her. If only she can keep him from learning her secret!
Everything I know about You
"Immediately people started buzzing. ASSIGNING roommates? No,
wait. We're supposed to be with our FRIENDS in the hotel! That's the
whole point of this trip, to have fun! They aren't doing this right.
IT ISN'T FAIR."
Tally, narrator of Barbara Dee's Everything I Know About You and
her classmates are really excited about the traditional seventh grade
field trip: four days and three nights in Washington DC. Then the
teachers in charge throw water on their good time plans. In order to
promote class unity they will be assigning hotel roommates.
Tally gets her absolute last roommate choice, her nemesis, Ava,
a school spirit rah rah, slave to fashion, seemingly perfect girl,
always judging her peers and being sneaky mean to those who don't live
up to her standards. She and her best friends, Sonnet and Spider,
come up with a plan to make the sleeping arrangements bearable.
They'll spy on their roommates and learn their secrets.
At first they're innocuous: baby shampoo, a stuffed animal.
Then Tally notices troubling things about Ava. She hardly eats a
thing. She's always exercising and writing numbers in a cryptic
notebook. She's emaciated.
"Under her cami, Ava's ribs stuck out. When she did a sit up,
you could see every bone in her spine. Her bones looked like twigs..."
Tally is worried, especially when she figures out what the
notebook numbers mean. She tries to talk to Ava who takes a very
unflattering picture of her and threatens to post it on social media
if she says a word to the adults.
This book is a very personal one for Dee. When she had an
eating disorder in college people didn't talk about them. Her journey
to health was mostly a matter of luck. She's glad that there's now a
wide range of treatments. "Kids need to know that caring
professionals are out there and that full recovery is possible."
On a purrrsonal note, today was Eugene's Uncle Phil's funeral. Some
family members shared memories that really moved everyone to both
tears and laughter. But this minister dude presiding seemed to think
that because Phil was a born again Christian all his friends and
family members were. He was saying stuff like we can all see Phil in
Jesus' arms. I can't. Apart from his physical body I have no clue
where Phil is. I was thinking WTF, Dude? We aren't all in the club.
It's this Christian supremacy thing to assume that everyone is on
board with their theology. Of course this dialogue all happened in my
critical thinking brain. I didn't want to hurt people who were
grieving and vulnerable. (Jules)
Before the funeral she made a Goodwill run to get a sincere sympathy
card for her mother-in-law. While she was there anyway she looked to
see if there was a cat shirt and found an awesome one. Then she got
ice cream at Hannaford. Only there wasn't enough room in the
freezer. Oops! So we had to eat it for lunch. We can't let ice
cream go to waste! (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to ministers see the validity of other
faiths and the deity questioning or nonbelieving options.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
They Call Me Guero
They Call Me Guero
The Truth About Twinkie Pie
Juvenile fiction
Guero, 12, narrator of David Bowles' They Call Me Guero, is
growing up in a border town. He speaks Spanish and English and feels
at home on both sides of the border. He loves his family, the
traditions passed down on both sides, and his close knit community.
He does not like the checkpoints they must constantly pass through.
Guero is one of a group of derds (diverse nerds). They're into
comics, books, and gaming. They call themselves The Bookworm Squad.
Much of their time they hang out together and try their best to avoid
bullies. Guero seems to have caught a cute girl's eye.
Although many of Guero's experiences are similar to those of
most readers, there are several points at which he alludes to darker
issues. He offers to tutor a new boy from Honduras and learns that he
and his family had to flee through Mexico, riding precariously on top
of la Bestia (a train). A wheel cut his brother's leg off.
Then there's the trip to a playoff game when his sister's team
makes the cut. When they pull ahead fans of the other team begin
behaving very badly.
"'Go back wetbacks! Build that wall!'
Adults and teens begin to call.
A sea of white faces, twisted in rage
Like all the brown bodies are there to invade."
With its very relatable protagonist They Call Me Guero is a
great way of introducing younger readers to the complexities of life
at our nation's southern border.
"...We don't talk about it to anyone. But if we did, I guess
most people would be wondering what millionaires living on the North
Shore of Long Island are doing in a one-bedroom apartment above the
salon where Didi cuts hair. Going about life like we're still in that
trailer park back in South Carolina."
Gigi, protagonist of Kat Yeh's The Truth About Twinkie Pie, lost
her mother as a baby when their trailer burned down. All she and her
big sister/guardian, Didi, have of hers is her beloved recipe book.
After Didi won a lot of money in a cooking contest the sisters moved
to New York. Didi desperately wants Gigi to have the opportunities
for a good education and a career she had to forgo, dropping out of
school to parent her sibling. Every cent possible must go toward that.
For the most part Gigi finds her new middle school fine. She
has friends. A really cute boy seems to like her. The only fly in
the ointment is Mace, a mean girl classmate who never passes up an
opportunity to insult her.
So can you imagine how Gigi feels when Didi and Mace bond over a
haircut? Didi has always pushed Gigi to excel, never letting her hang
around her workplace or get close. Now she's hanging out with and
mentoring her rich, snobby nemesis. Talk about no fair!
What makes this fine coming of age narrative even better is the
recipes interspersed with the chapters. Of course I had to try some
out. Mmm, mmm good, especially the twinkie pie!
On a purrrsonal note, my weekend was good for a pandemic. It was
mostly homework, housework, writing reviews for my blog, cooking...
But I got an unexpected treat when Saturday afternoon was unexpectedly
warm and sunny enough for me to read outside. (Jules)
I wish I could go outside. My hoomans say outside is too dangerous.
So why do they go out? (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to you, dear readers, with hopes that
you had a safe and happy weekend!
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
The Truth About Twinkie Pie
Juvenile fiction
Guero, 12, narrator of David Bowles' They Call Me Guero, is
growing up in a border town. He speaks Spanish and English and feels
at home on both sides of the border. He loves his family, the
traditions passed down on both sides, and his close knit community.
He does not like the checkpoints they must constantly pass through.
Guero is one of a group of derds (diverse nerds). They're into
comics, books, and gaming. They call themselves The Bookworm Squad.
Much of their time they hang out together and try their best to avoid
bullies. Guero seems to have caught a cute girl's eye.
Although many of Guero's experiences are similar to those of
most readers, there are several points at which he alludes to darker
issues. He offers to tutor a new boy from Honduras and learns that he
and his family had to flee through Mexico, riding precariously on top
of la Bestia (a train). A wheel cut his brother's leg off.
Then there's the trip to a playoff game when his sister's team
makes the cut. When they pull ahead fans of the other team begin
behaving very badly.
"'Go back wetbacks! Build that wall!'
Adults and teens begin to call.
A sea of white faces, twisted in rage
Like all the brown bodies are there to invade."
With its very relatable protagonist They Call Me Guero is a
great way of introducing younger readers to the complexities of life
at our nation's southern border.
"...We don't talk about it to anyone. But if we did, I guess
most people would be wondering what millionaires living on the North
Shore of Long Island are doing in a one-bedroom apartment above the
salon where Didi cuts hair. Going about life like we're still in that
trailer park back in South Carolina."
Gigi, protagonist of Kat Yeh's The Truth About Twinkie Pie, lost
her mother as a baby when their trailer burned down. All she and her
big sister/guardian, Didi, have of hers is her beloved recipe book.
After Didi won a lot of money in a cooking contest the sisters moved
to New York. Didi desperately wants Gigi to have the opportunities
for a good education and a career she had to forgo, dropping out of
school to parent her sibling. Every cent possible must go toward that.
For the most part Gigi finds her new middle school fine. She
has friends. A really cute boy seems to like her. The only fly in
the ointment is Mace, a mean girl classmate who never passes up an
opportunity to insult her.
So can you imagine how Gigi feels when Didi and Mace bond over a
haircut? Didi has always pushed Gigi to excel, never letting her hang
around her workplace or get close. Now she's hanging out with and
mentoring her rich, snobby nemesis. Talk about no fair!
What makes this fine coming of age narrative even better is the
recipes interspersed with the chapters. Of course I had to try some
out. Mmm, mmm good, especially the twinkie pie!
On a purrrsonal note, my weekend was good for a pandemic. It was
mostly homework, housework, writing reviews for my blog, cooking...
But I got an unexpected treat when Saturday afternoon was unexpectedly
warm and sunny enough for me to read outside. (Jules)
I wish I could go outside. My hoomans say outside is too dangerous.
So why do they go out? (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to you, dear readers, with hopes that
you had a safe and happy weekend!
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Friday, November 12, 2021
Say No More
Say No More
He Started It
Adult thrillers
"'Did you see that silver Cadillac? What he did?' Jane Ryland powered
down the car window to get a better look. 'He plowed right into that
delivery van. Pull closer, can you?'"
When television reporter Jane Ryland becomes witness to what
seems to be a routine hit and run it quickly becomes anything but.
The DA wants her to answer some questions. And there are the cryptic
warning messages to "Say no more."
"And next to the pool, the unmistakable juxtaposition he'd seen
again and again over the past ten years on street corners, in blood
soaked living rooms, in a rain-sodden suburban woodland, even once,
years ago, on a klieg-lighted high school football field. A dark
shape on the ground, motionless, still, as of waiting for answers the
victim would never hear. The attending shape of the medical examiner
crouched over the body, ministerial, intent."
Homicide detective Jake Brogan (Jane's fiancée BTW) has been call
ed to the scene of a drowning that may or may not contain sinister
elements. The deceased, Avery Morgan, was a guest lecturer at a small
college (Adams Bay). Her upscale neighbors aren't forthcoming with
clues. Even the woman who called the police seems to be hiding
something.
"Was calling the police my first mistake?...But what she'd seen in
Avery's yard was so disturbing. How could she not report it?"
Willow Galt has ample reason for reticence. It has nothing to
do with Avery's fate. She and husband Tom have moved clear across the
country and assumed new identities. Her call to the police may very
well blow their cover.
It became surprisingly easy to keep to herself. Friends faded
away, most of them. She ordered food from the delivery place, got
books online, and sent assignments via email."
Isabel Russo is an Adams Bay student and victim of a traumatic
incident. When she reported it to her dean he did nothing to help
her. In fact he bullied her into remaining silent. She now is afraid
to leave her apartment.
"Just like he's handled yammering students complaining about
their unfair and life-ruining Cs. Or about the roommate who was too
dumb or stoned or noisy or quiet or rich or poor or whatever. These
were college kids, for God's sake. They had to learn that life wasn't
fair. Unless the parents were ready to join the endowment list. Then
lives could be made a little more fair."
And if scandal aversive parents want to give him gifts for his
part in making troublesome incidents go away Adams Bay College Dean of
Students, Edward Tarrant, isn't going to say no. These "gifts" aren't
all he's keeping on the down low. Exactly what was his relationship
with the deceased?
Hank Philippi Ryan, author of Say No More, spins these
narratives into a complex and intriguing web, one mystery lovers will
take delight in untangling. Can you figure the intersecting plots out
by the end of the book?
"We've been on this road trip before. Twenty years ago it was
Grandpa's trip for us, the grandkids, and it was because our parents
hadn't been getting along. Lots of yelling, lots of slammed doors,
and too many silent meals. Dad slept on the couch and pretended he
didn't. And Mom pretended not to be mad..."
Pretending and yelling are merely the mildest vices of the clan
portrayed by Samantha Downing in He Started It. Family relationships
consist of constantly shifting alliances. Avarice is rampant. Before
the last page every one of the ten commandments will be broken.
Take the Grampie and the kids cross country trek. The patriarch
is more Stephen King minor villain than loving ancestor. The
attractions they visit aren't exactly child friendly. There's a car
following the group for at least part of the trip. Chances are good
that, although it's allegedly for their benefit, Mom and Dad have not
signed off on the trip.
Now Grandpa's dead. But he's dictating a bizarre sequel. The
now grown kids are now heirs to his sizeable estate. But they won't
get a cent unless they reinact the road trip and scatter his ashes at
the end.
So the siblings, reunited for the first time in ages, along with
two spouses, are reenacting a nightmare. A truck is probably trailing
them. A couple of times their vehicle is sabotaged.
But the biggest danger for family members may not be one they
can shut out. They're not very good at sharing. At least one may
want the whole enchilada.
If you're a hard core thriller affecianado you'll want to get
your hands on He Started It.
On a purrrsonal note, it's a grey day. At least the rain won't start
until afternoon if my smartphone is accurate. Work was really light
yesterday. There were very few students. Probably with a day of no
classes those who could went to do something fun with friends. I envy
them. It's been so long!
The news that I'll be able to stay with Wells next semester and do the
work part of my internship in the summer has brought great joy to my
coworkers, management, and the students we serve. They need me,
especially where we're so COVID short staffed and I'm a dilligent
worker and morale booster. (Jules)
Well who can blame them? I need her. Hey, guess who's home!!! (Tobago)
Yep, Eugene. He's been at camp a few nights. I'm glad he showed up
before I went off to work. I don't hear from him while he's at camp
because there's no cell reception out in the boonies. (Jules)
A great big shout out goes out to Eugene.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
He Started It
Adult thrillers
"'Did you see that silver Cadillac? What he did?' Jane Ryland powered
down the car window to get a better look. 'He plowed right into that
delivery van. Pull closer, can you?'"
When television reporter Jane Ryland becomes witness to what
seems to be a routine hit and run it quickly becomes anything but.
The DA wants her to answer some questions. And there are the cryptic
warning messages to "Say no more."
"And next to the pool, the unmistakable juxtaposition he'd seen
again and again over the past ten years on street corners, in blood
soaked living rooms, in a rain-sodden suburban woodland, even once,
years ago, on a klieg-lighted high school football field. A dark
shape on the ground, motionless, still, as of waiting for answers the
victim would never hear. The attending shape of the medical examiner
crouched over the body, ministerial, intent."
Homicide detective Jake Brogan (Jane's fiancée BTW) has been call
ed to the scene of a drowning that may or may not contain sinister
elements. The deceased, Avery Morgan, was a guest lecturer at a small
college (Adams Bay). Her upscale neighbors aren't forthcoming with
clues. Even the woman who called the police seems to be hiding
something.
"Was calling the police my first mistake?...But what she'd seen in
Avery's yard was so disturbing. How could she not report it?"
Willow Galt has ample reason for reticence. It has nothing to
do with Avery's fate. She and husband Tom have moved clear across the
country and assumed new identities. Her call to the police may very
well blow their cover.
It became surprisingly easy to keep to herself. Friends faded
away, most of them. She ordered food from the delivery place, got
books online, and sent assignments via email."
Isabel Russo is an Adams Bay student and victim of a traumatic
incident. When she reported it to her dean he did nothing to help
her. In fact he bullied her into remaining silent. She now is afraid
to leave her apartment.
"Just like he's handled yammering students complaining about
their unfair and life-ruining Cs. Or about the roommate who was too
dumb or stoned or noisy or quiet or rich or poor or whatever. These
were college kids, for God's sake. They had to learn that life wasn't
fair. Unless the parents were ready to join the endowment list. Then
lives could be made a little more fair."
And if scandal aversive parents want to give him gifts for his
part in making troublesome incidents go away Adams Bay College Dean of
Students, Edward Tarrant, isn't going to say no. These "gifts" aren't
all he's keeping on the down low. Exactly what was his relationship
with the deceased?
Hank Philippi Ryan, author of Say No More, spins these
narratives into a complex and intriguing web, one mystery lovers will
take delight in untangling. Can you figure the intersecting plots out
by the end of the book?
"We've been on this road trip before. Twenty years ago it was
Grandpa's trip for us, the grandkids, and it was because our parents
hadn't been getting along. Lots of yelling, lots of slammed doors,
and too many silent meals. Dad slept on the couch and pretended he
didn't. And Mom pretended not to be mad..."
Pretending and yelling are merely the mildest vices of the clan
portrayed by Samantha Downing in He Started It. Family relationships
consist of constantly shifting alliances. Avarice is rampant. Before
the last page every one of the ten commandments will be broken.
Take the Grampie and the kids cross country trek. The patriarch
is more Stephen King minor villain than loving ancestor. The
attractions they visit aren't exactly child friendly. There's a car
following the group for at least part of the trip. Chances are good
that, although it's allegedly for their benefit, Mom and Dad have not
signed off on the trip.
Now Grandpa's dead. But he's dictating a bizarre sequel. The
now grown kids are now heirs to his sizeable estate. But they won't
get a cent unless they reinact the road trip and scatter his ashes at
the end.
So the siblings, reunited for the first time in ages, along with
two spouses, are reenacting a nightmare. A truck is probably trailing
them. A couple of times their vehicle is sabotaged.
But the biggest danger for family members may not be one they
can shut out. They're not very good at sharing. At least one may
want the whole enchilada.
If you're a hard core thriller affecianado you'll want to get
your hands on He Started It.
On a purrrsonal note, it's a grey day. At least the rain won't start
until afternoon if my smartphone is accurate. Work was really light
yesterday. There were very few students. Probably with a day of no
classes those who could went to do something fun with friends. I envy
them. It's been so long!
The news that I'll be able to stay with Wells next semester and do the
work part of my internship in the summer has brought great joy to my
coworkers, management, and the students we serve. They need me,
especially where we're so COVID short staffed and I'm a dilligent
worker and morale booster. (Jules)
Well who can blame them? I need her. Hey, guess who's home!!! (Tobago)
Yep, Eugene. He's been at camp a few nights. I'm glad he showed up
before I went off to work. I don't hear from him while he's at camp
because there's no cell reception out in the boonies. (Jules)
A great big shout out goes out to Eugene.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway
Sent from my iPod
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