Amoxil online here. Free delivery. Best price.

04 Oct, 2018

The Ravenmaster

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

The Ravenmaster: Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London by Christopher Skaife
on October 2, 2018
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Format: eBook
Source: Owned
Setting: England

The first behind-the-scenes account of life with the legendary ravens at the world’s eeriest monument

The ravens at the Tower of London are of mighty importance: rumor has it that if a raven from the Tower should ever leave, the city will fall.

The title of Ravenmaster, therefore, is a serious title indeed, and after decades of serving the Queen, Yeoman Warder Christopher Skaife took on the added responsibility of caring for the infamous ravens. In Ravenmaster, he lets us in on his life as he feeds his birds raw meat and biscuits soaked in blood, buys their food at Smithfield Market, and ensures that these unusual, misunderstood, and utterly brilliant corvids are healthy, happy, and ready to captivate the four million tourists who flock to the Tower every year.

A rewarding, intimate, and inspiring partnership has developed between the ravens and their charismatic and charming human, the Ravenmaster, who shares the folklore, history, and superstitions surrounding the ravens and the Tower. Shining a light on the behavior of the birds, their pecking order and social structure, and the tricks they play on us, Skaife shows who the Tower’s true guardians really are―and the result is a compelling and irreverent narrative that will surprise and enchant.

I’ve been following the author on Twitter for a while so I was familiar with his job and what it entails. Despite that, this is still a fascinating look at the care of the ravens at the Tower of London.

If you aren’t familiar with the story, there is a legend (which the author casts doubts on) that if the ravens leave the Tower of London, then England will fall. There are seven ravens who live in the Tower. They are free during the day to mingle with the tourists, steal food from the tourists, and observe the general hub bub. At night they have an enclosure to help protect them from the foxes who also live in the tower.

“In the past the Ravenmasters preferred to put the food out around the Tower, but the problem was that a seagull might take a nice juicy piece of ox liver, say, that was intended for a raven, have a little nibble on it and then casually drop it on a visitor from a great height.”

The ravens aren’t pets. They aren’t tame. They don’t work on your schedule. They don’t sit nicely on the bench when David Attenborough wants to film with them. They are prone to killing and eating pigeons (not always in that order) in front of the tourists. Most of the Ravenmaster’s time seems to be taken up with getting them where they are supposed to be and getting them out of places where they shouldn’t be.

“[m]ore than once I’ve seen a raven chasing the Tower’s many resident cats and dogs.”

Readers of this book will find out not only lots about ravens but about what it takes to be a Yeoman Warder. He discusses The Story – the official tour group talk that takes people about 6 months to learn perfectly before they can start to change it by adding in their own embellishments. The Story is standardized so any Yeoman Warder can step in and take over a tour if the original guide has to step away to help someone (like if they faint after watching ravens murder other birds.)

The book is written in short chapters in a very conversational style which makes it a very quick and entertaining read. I enjoyed this more since I have been to the Tower and could visualize most of the places that he is discussing. If you haven’t been there, looking at a map of the grounds would be helpful to understanding the story.

There are several stories of the deaths of some of the ravens from illness, accidents, and old age. They made me a little teary as did this last line of the acknowledgements about Munin, who hated him from day 1.

“A very special thank-you to Munin. During the publication of this book, sadly, Raven Munin passed away due to complications of old age. Her presence at the Tower will be greatly missed by her partner, Jubilee; by Team Raven; and by all staff at Historic Royal Palaces.”

02 Oct, 2018

We Fed an Island

/ posted in: Book Review, Foodies Read, Reading

We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time by José Andrés
on September 11th 2018
Pages: 288
Length: 10:35
Genres: Nonfiction
Published by Anthony Bourdain/Ecco
Format: Audiobook
Source: Library
Setting: Puerto Rico

FOREWORD BY LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA AND LUIS A. MIRANDA, JR.

The true story of how a group of chefs fed hundreds of thousands of hungry Americans after Hurricane Maria and touched the hearts of many more

Chef José Andrés arrived in Puerto Rico four days after Hurricane Maria ripped through the island. The economy was destroyed and for most people there was no clean water, no food, no power, no gas, and no way to communicate with the outside world.

Andrés addressed the humanitarian crisis the only way he knew how: by feeding people, one hot meal at a time. From serving sancocho with his friend José Enrique at Enrique’s ravaged restaurant in San Juan to eventually cooking 100,000 meals a day at more than a dozen kitchens across the island, Andrés and his team fed hundreds of thousands of people, including with massive paellas made to serve thousands of people alone.. At the same time, they also confronted a crisis with deep roots, as well as the broken and wasteful system that helps keep some of the biggest charities and NGOs in business.

Based on Andrés’s insider’s take as well as on meetings, messages, and conversations he had while in Puerto Rico, We Fed an Island movingly describes how a network of community kitchens activated real change and tells an extraordinary story of hope in the face of disasters both natural and man-made, offering suggestions for how to address a crisis like this in the future.

Beyond that, a portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated to the Chef Relief Network of World Central Kitchen for efforts in Puerto Rico and beyond.

Chef Jose Andres has developed his theories on food relief first by working with a homeless shelter who used restaurant left overs to feed people and then expanding their process after the earthquake in Haiti. The biggest test so far of his small non-profit came after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.

His ideas are simple:

Find a working commercial kitchen and chefs. He started in a friend’s restaurant in San Juan.
Source the ingredients locally to avoid delays and to let businesses in the supply chain start to rebuild. In Puerto Rico he used the normal suppliers that restaurants would use.
Make a few simple dishes that can be made in huge quantities. They started with a stew, pans of chicken and rice, and thousands of ham and cheese sandwiches.
Use local food trucks to deliver food to the hardest hit areas. Also partner with whatever group is going into areas and have them deliver food. Among his best delivery teams in Puerto Rico was Homeland Security.
Open other commercial kitchens in strategic areas around the disaster area and repeat. Throughout his time in Puerto Rico they used a convention center, school kitchens, culinary school kitchens, and a church.

One of his major complaints about the food situation in Puerto Rico was that the groups who normally handle this in disasters on the mainland decided that it was too hard to get food to the island so they didn’t. The Red Cross for example, didn’t bring in the Southern Baptists and their mobile kitchens to cook like they normally do so they didn’t have any food to deliver. (I had no idea the Southern Baptists have a whole relief cooking operation despite going to a Southern Baptist church for four years. Never heard of it.) Food and water distribution was not listed as a priority for most groups.

When food was getting distributed it was MREs. These are prepared military food packets and they can get you through a few days but you don’t want them long term. He was also angry that water was being given in bottles only. He campaigned for tanker trucks of water to be taken to towns and let people fill their own containers instead of adding all the plastic waste to the environment. That idea didn’t get taken up.

A lot of this book is about his fight with FEMA. He wanted a government contract to pay for his supplies. He had started ordering food and supplies on a handshake with the distributor with no idea how he was going to pay for it. At their peak they were spending over $50,000 a day on food. Government contracting is a slow business that is doubly hard in a disaster. He talks about contracts that were given to people who never delivered food. The husband was a government contract person (not with FEMA). He listened to some of this part and talked about the other side. After disasters, FEMA contractors are apparently reviewed and taken to task for working too quickly, for not getting bids even if there is only one supplier in the area, etc. Careers get ruined because people were trying to do the right or fastest thing in an emergency and now there is a lot of trouble trying to get anyone to do those jobs and those who remain aren’t likely to take risks. Things are just going to get worse.

This is a good review of what happened in the disaster from the point of view of an outsider to the government. His ideas are definitely worth listening to and I’m interested to see where his nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, goes from here.

17 Aug, 2018

The New Farm

/ posted in: Book Review, Foodies Read, Reading

The New Farm: Our Ten Years on the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution by Brent Preston
on May 2nd 2017
Pages: 336
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Published by Random House Canada
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Setting: Ontario Canada

The inspiring and sometimes hilarious story of a family that quit the rat race and left the city to live out their ideals on an organic farm, and ended up building a model for a new kind of agriculture. When Brent Preston, his wife, Gillian, and their two young children left Toronto ten years ago, they arrived on an empty plot of land with no machinery, no money and not much of a clue. Through a decade of grinding toil, they built a real organic farm, one that is profitable, sustainable, and their family's sole source of income. Along the way they earned the respect and loyalty of some of the best chefs in North America, and created a farm that is a leading light in the good food movement. Told with humour and heart in Preston's unflinchingly honest voice, The New Farm arrives at a time of unprecedented interest in food and farming, with readers keenly aware of the overwhelming environmental, social and moral costs of our industrial food system. The New Farm offers a vision for a hopeful future, a model of agriculture that brings people together around good food, promotes a healthier planet, and celebrates great food and good living."

A lot of the time when you read memoirs about people moving away from the city and starting a farm they stop the story after a few years. This book chronicles ten years of the ups and downs of a small organic farm.

What I found most interesting was the multiple times that they found that they needed to stray from small organic farm “orthodoxy” in order to have a viable and profitable business.

They tried growing a large number of crops but realized that most people don’t want the exotic stuff so now they grow mostly greens and cucumbers.
They abandoned farmers’ markets and CSAs to sell directly to restaurants
They tried using wannabe farmers as interns for farm labor but they were such bad workers that they ended up hiring Mexican workers instead.

I was interested in the difference between the experience of Mexican migrant farm workers on this farm in Canada versus what I was familiar with in the United States. In Canada there are worker programs so they are in the country legally and have workers’ rights. The guidelines seem reasonable and we should have programs like that too.

I also liked that this book did not shy away from the cruelty involved in animal agriculture. I found the section about their pigs and chickens hard to read. They have moved away from raising pigs in part because they had issues with it too.

There is a truism in farming that you have to go big to survive. They discuss the conflicts that they have had about this. At what point do you stop trying to grow so you don’t destroy yourself or your marriage? They are very honest about the toll that the last ten years have had on their relationships.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I think that this is a good book for anyone interested in what it really takes to have a small farm.

15 Aug, 2018

Have Dog, Will Travel

/ posted in: Reading

Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey with an Exceptional Labrador by Stephen Kuusisto
on March 13th 2018
Pages: 288
Length: 5:24
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Published by Simon Schuster
Format: Audiobook
Source: Library
Setting: New York

In a lyrical love letter to guide dogs everywhere, a blind poet shares his delightful story of how a guide dog changed his life and helped him discover a newfound appreciation for travel and independence.

At the age of thirty-eight, Stephen Kuusisto—who has managed his whole life without one—gets his first guide dog, a beautiful yellow labrador named Corky. Theirs is a partnership of movement, mutual self-interest, and wanderlust. Walking with Corky in Manhattan for the first time, Steve discovers he’s “living the chaos of joy—you’re in love with your surroundings, loving a barefoot mind, wild to go anyplace.”

Have Dog, Will Travel is the inside story of how a person establishes trust with a dog, how a guide dog is trained. Corky absolutely transforms Steve’s life and his way of being in the world. Profound and deeply moving, theirs is a spiritual journey, during which Steve discovers that joy with a guide dog is both a method and a state of mind. Guaranteed to make you laugh—and cry—this beautiful reflection on the highs, lows, and everyday details that make up life with a guide dog provides a profound exploration of Stephen’s lifelong struggle with disability, identity, and the midlife events that lead to self-acceptance.

The thing that I found absolutely amazing about this memoir is that the author was raised to not let anyone know that he was blind. How do you even do that? There is a very scary story about the time he rented a motor scooter and drove around the mountains in Santorini following the red blob that was his friend.

His mother was adamant that being blind meant that he was defective. He should never let anyone know. That meant memorizing the small towns he lived in. Reading by holding the paper up to his left eye. Living a life made difficult by a disability but almost impossible by a lie. Seriously, his mother needed a good whooping.

At 38 he was forced to make a change. He got his first guide dog. He was now open about his blindness. It changed his entire life.

This book is a tribute to the freedom found in living your true life and the way that is enhanced by his guide dog. The author is a poet and that is obvious in his lyrical writing style. He is a very philosophical person who deeply considers things that others may gloss over.

I appreciated the fact that he discussed the professionalism of real service dogs. He worries about the damage being done by people registering out of control pets as emotional support dogs just so they can take them anywhere. (One of my major pet peeves!) He explains that there still is resistance to and ignorance of guide dogs for the blind now. I wouldn’t have thought it would be so common.

I was a guide dog puppy raiser. (My puppy passed his temperment and training tests but failed his physical.) He talks a lot about the importance of puppy raisers and the trainers who work with the dogs. You find out how the process works.

For the dog lovers, this story starts in 1994. That means that the dog does die before the book was written. It is discussed but not dwelt on.

This is a wonderful book for dog lovers everywhere. All dogs can change your life but Corky the labrador revolutionized her person’s.

27 Jul, 2018

West of the Revolution

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 by Claudio Saunt
on July 6th 2015
Pages: 288
Genres: History, Nonfiction
Format: Audiobook
Source: Library
Setting: United States

In this unique history of 1776, Claudio Saunt looks beyond the familiar story of the thirteen colonies to explore the many other revolutions roiling the turbulent American continent. In that fateful year, the Spanish landed in San Francisco, the Russians pushed into Alaska to hunt valuable sea otters, and the Sioux discovered the Black Hills. Hailed by critics for challenging our conventional view of the birth of America, West of the Revolution “[coaxes] our vision away from the Atlantic seaboard” and “exposes a continent seething with peoples and purposes beyond Minutemen and Redcoats” (Wall Street Journal).

American history gets all excited about 1776 without ever considering that for most of the continent the fight with the English wasn’t the main news.

Alaska

The Russians were running the fur trade. I was interested in the description of the final destination for these furs in the trade capitals of central Mongolia. They moved all the way from Alaska to present day northern California.

California

The Spanish got all excited about the Russians being on the northern California coast. They were convinced that there was a river running from the interior of the continent to the Pacific because based on European geography there should be. If the Russians had the coast and could find where the river emptied then they could go upstream and control the interior. The Spanish didn’t want that so they set out to explore everything and claim it for Spain.

Badlands

I was super skeptical of the claim that the Lakota “discovered” the Badlands in 1776. First of all, they have origin legends that involve the Badlands. Second, how did no one trip across this large area previously? Turns out there was skullduggery afoot. The Lakota moved west and pushed the people living in the Badlands out in 1776. They later claimed to have “discovered and settled” the area because “discovered and settled” was working well as an excuse for land grabs by white people. Good try. I respect the legal ploy but unfortunately white people are only too comfortable with double standards.

This section also covers other tribes in the middle of the continent. It gives background on the Osage tribe and their dealings with multiple European powers. That is great background to Killers of the Flower Moon.

I had never heard of the extensive trade between natives of Florida and people in Cuba either.

This book covers a lot in the short period of time. Because of that it felt like it was hitting highlights of some areas of history that aren’t talked about much, but if you wanted to know a lot about something specific, you’d need to find another book. It leaves a lot of loose ends where you don’t know what happened next.

I listened to the audiobook of this and I wasn’t a fan. The narrator was pretty monotone. This is a book heavy with dates and names and I would mentally drift off as the narrator droned on.

Use this book as an introduction to this time in history but don’t expect it to tell you the whole story.

08 Jun, 2018

Never Stop Walking

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

Never Stop Walking: A Memoir of Finding Home Across the World by Christina Rickardsson, Tara F. Chace
on June 1, 2018
Pages: 249
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Format: eBook
Source: Owned
Setting: Brazil, Sweden

Christiana Mara Coelho was born into extreme poverty in Brazil. After spending the first seven years of her life with her loving mother in the forest caves outside São Paulo and then on the city streets, where they begged for food, she and her younger brother were suddenly put up for adoption. When one door closed on the only life Christiana had ever known and on the woman who protected her with all her heart, a new one opened.

As Christina Rickardsson, she’s raised by caring adoptive parents in Sweden, far from the despairing favelas of her childhood. Accomplished and outwardly “normal,” Christina is also filled with rage over what she’s lost and having to adapt to a new reality while struggling with the traumas of her youth. When her world falls apart again as an adult, Christina returns to Brazil to finally confront her past and unlock the truth of what really happened to Christiana Mara Coelho.

This is a heartbreaking story of a child living in extreme poverty on the streets in Brazil. The things that happen to her are horrific including witnessing the murder of her best friend by the police, seeing numerous rapes, and killing another child in a fight over food.

Because this all happened as a child she didn’t clearly know or remember the reasons why they lived like they did. All she knew was that her mother loved her and her little brother but that there were also times when she wasn’t around. The children were taken to an orphanage where they were eventually not allowed to have contact with their mother and then were adopted by a couple from Sweden. Nothing that was going on was explained to her.

As an adult she decides to go back to Brazil to try to find her mother and to find out what really happened to make sense of her childhood memories.

She examines the disconnect she feels about being grateful for her good life in Sweden that wouldn’t have happened if she wasn’t forcibly taken from her mother but also being angry about being separated from the person who loved her.

The book is very simply written or translated. That makes it a very stark read. It is very sad but I think it is necessary to know what is going on in the poorest parts of society. Once again in reading this book I was struck by how often male sexual violence towards women and children is considered to be an everyday thing. I hate knowing that there are women who have to submit to being raped because they are told that it is her or her child. Books like this just make me want to have a moratorium on men for a while.

09 May, 2018

Find Me Unafraid

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading Find Me Unafraid

Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum by Kennedy Odede, Jessica Posner
on October 2015
Pages: 272
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Setting: Kenya

his is the story of two young people from completely different worlds: Kennedy Odede from Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, and Jessica Posner from Denver, Colorado. Kennedy foraged for food, lived on the street, and taught himself to read with old newspapers. When an American volunteer gave him the work of Mandela, Garvey, and King, teenaged Kennedy decided he was going to change his life and his community. He bought a soccer ball and started a youth empowerment group he called Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO). Then in 2007, Wesleyan undergraduate Jessica Posner spent a semester abroad in Kenya working with SHOFCO. Breaking all convention, she decided to live in Kibera with Kennedy, and they fell in love.Their connection persisted, and Jessica helped Kennedy to escape political violence and fulfill his lifelong dream of an education, at Wesleyan University.
The alchemy of their remarkable union has drawn the support of community members and celebrities alike—The Clintons, Mia Farrow, and Nicholas Kristof are among their fans—and their work has changed the lives of many of Kibera’s most vulnerable population: its girls. Jess and Kennedy founded Kibera’s first tuition-free school for girls, a large, bright blue building, which stands as a bastion of hope in what once felt like a hopeless place. But Jessica and Kennedy are just getting started—they have expanded their model to connect essential services like health care, clean water, and economic empowerment programs. They’ve opened an identical project in Mathare, Kenya’s second largest slum, and intend to expand their remarkably successful program for change.

I had first heard of SHOFCO in the wonderful book A Path Appears. It is also featured in the documentary made from that book. Since reading that, I’ve been contributing monthly to the program.

I had heard that they had written their own book. I’m glad that I decided to read it even though I was aware of the basic premise of their story. This book goes much deeper into Kennedy’s childhood than the previous book did. It is a brutally honest book. Content warnings for rape, abuse, genocide.

Kennedy experienced every kind of abuse that a child could. The book goes into detail about his life with an abusive step-father. He left home at a young age to escape him and lived with a group of homeless kids who lived through crime. He tried to get out by appealing to the church only to be sexually abused there. It is amazing that he grew up to try to do something positive for the community. He wanted something besides crime in people’s lives. It all started with a 20 cent soccer ball and organized soccer games. That led to a theater group that tried to teach people how to live better lives. That’s how he met Jessica. She was a rich, white American college student who wanted to help with the theater. She does just about everything that you’d expect an American to do. She’s pushy. She makes many faux pas. She doesn’t understand the community. But eventually she learned to fit in and learned to love Kibera and Kennedy.

She went back to college and Kennedy was forced to flee Kenya because of violence. Jessica was able to get him into college in the U.S. for his own safety. The book does a good job detailing how difficult it was for him to move back and forth from Ohio to Kenya and function in both places.

It was the epidemic of child rapes around him that led him to decide to open a school for girls to prove that they are valuable. The school is the center of a whole-life program in Kibera. There is clean water provided and meals. There are safe houses if the girls are being sexually or physically abused at home.

This is an important story and an even more important program to know about. It shows how grass roots community organizing in places in need can help lift up everyone involved.

19 Apr, 2018

One Hundred and Four Horses

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

One Hundred and Four Horses by Mandy Retzlaff
on August 15th 2013
Pages: 288
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Published by William Collins
Format: eBook
Source: Owned
Zimbabwe

‘A letter is handed to you. In broken English, it tells you that you must now vacate your farm; that this is no longer your home, for it now belongs to the crowd on your doorstep. Then the drums begin to beat.’
As the land invasions gather pace, the Retzlaffs begin an epic journey across Zimbabwe, facing eviction after eviction, trying to save the group of animals with whom they feel a deep and enduring bond – the horses.
When their neighbours flee to New Zealand, the Retzlaffs promise to look after their horses, and making similar promises to other farmers along their journey, not knowing whether they will be able to feed or save them, they amass an astonishing herd of over 300 animals. But the final journey to freedom will be arduous, and they can take only 104 horses.
Each with a different personality and story, it is not just the family who rescue the horses, but the horses who rescue the family. Grey, the silver gelding: the leader. Brutus, the untamed colt. Princess, the temperamental mare.
One Hundred and Four Horses is the story of an idyllic existence that falls apart at the seams, and a story of incredible bonds – a love of the land, the strength of a family, and of the connection between man and the most majestic of animals, the horse.

What would you do if you had to leave your home in a few hours? Could you leave your animals behind knowing that animals left on other farms had been killed? That was one of the issues facing farmers in Zimbabwe when Robert Mugabe’s government instituted a series of land seizures.

The Retzlaff family didn’t leave Zimbabwe right away like many of the other white farmers they knew did. They moved farm to farm but the chaos followed them. As they moved across the country over a series of years, they collected animals. Eventually, they moved to the neighboring country of Mozambique.

I imagine that this is a book that could have a hard time finding an audience. Readers who care more deeply about people than animals might be offended by the effort and resources that went into moving and housing the horses when so many people were suffering. Horse lovers don’t like to read books where horses are mistreated. Horse lovers do need to be warned. Most of the horses you meet in this book don’t survive until the end. Many bad things happen to them regardless of the efforts of the Retzlaffs.

Another issue in this book is historical accuracy versus personal experience. Reading the book, the land reform movement seems to come on suddenly. I’ve been looking a bit more into the history because I assumed that there had to have been some colonial shenanigans that resulted in all these large landowners being white people. Yes, Rhodesia (the former name of Zimbabwe) had favored whites in land distribution. The black population was put onto the least productive land.

“Following Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, land legislation was again amended with the Rhodesian Land Tenure Act of 1969. The Land Tenure Act upended the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 and was designed to rectify the issue of insufficient land available to the rapidly expanding black population.^[3] It reduced the amount of land reserved for white ownership to 45 million acres and reserved another 45 million acres for black ownership, introducing parity in theory; however, the most fertile farmland in Regions I, II, and III continued to be included in the white enclave.^[3] Abuses of the system continued to abound; some white farmers took advantage of the legislation to shift their property boundaries into land formerly designated for black settlement, often without notifying the other landowners.”

“In 1977, the Land Tenure Act was amended by the Rhodesian parliament, which further reduced the amount of land reserved for white ownership to 200,000 hectares, or 500,000 acres. Over 15 million hectares were thus opened to purchase by persons of any race.^[3]Two years later, as part of the Internal Settlement, Zimbabwe Rhodesia‘s incoming biracial government under Bishop Abel Muzorewa abolished the reservation of land according to race.^[3] White farmers continued to own 73.8% of the most fertile land suited for intensive cash crop cultivation and livestock grazing, in addition to generating 80% of the country’s total agricultural output.^[3]”

“The Lancaster House Agreement [1980] stipulated that farms could only be taken from whites on a “willing buyer, willing seller” principle for at least ten years.^[4] White farmers were not to be placed under any pressure or intimidation, and if they decided to sell their farms they were allowed to determine their own asking prices”

“Between April 1980 and September 1987, the acreage of land occupied by white-owned commercial farms was reduced by about 20%.” – all quoted from Wikipedia

Ok, so they can’t say they didn’t know this was coming. They talk a little about the politics of it and how they weren’t paying any attention. They mention the vote on a referendum in 2000 only because their black workers asked to borrow transportation so they could all vote. It was the day before voting and they hadn’t really considered it?

“The government organised a referendum on the new constitution in February 2000, despite having a sufficiently large majority in parliament to pass any amendment it wished. Had it been approved, the new constitution would have empowered the government to acquire land compulsorily without compensation. Despite vast support in the media, the new constitution was defeated, 55% to 45%.” Wikipedia

It was after this failed that the government started to encourage mob violence to steal land without compensation. I understand that they were both born and raised in Africa and felt protected because they legally owned their land but the writing was on the wall. Things were about to get ugly and they were completely unprepared.

What happened as a result of the seizure of white-owned farms was a complete disaster. They were given as gifts to friends and family of powerful people who didn’t know the first thing about farming. Zimbabwe’s economy was based on farming and when the farms collapsed it collapsed. So no one is saying that this was a good and just plan but it couldn’t have been completely unexpected.

There are also some other statements that come across as very colonial. One time when they move to a new farm she discusses her family moving into the farm house and then talks about her workers settling into the huts around the property. She also has this quote – “John’s was a good old-fashioned cattle ranch of the kind the first pioneers in this part of the world had kept.” Sure, they were the first people in the area if you ignore millennia of existence before then. The author has commented negatively on reviews on Goodreads that bring up these aspects of the book. That’s never a good look.

As a horse person I wish there were more details. They talk about sometimes transporting horses in trucks. Where did the trucks come from? How many trips did you make? How many horses did you have at any given time? The synopsis refers to over 300 but the book doesn’t talk about that number. How are you affording all this?

What happened to this family is bad. But I can’t muster 100% sympathy for them. I would have liked to see a bit more self awareness. This book would have benefited from including the perspectives of the black workers who traveled with them. A few of these people are mentioned once or twice by name but generally they are described as a faceless group of grooms. That’s a big oversight in a book that describes many different white horse owners in detail.

10 Apr, 2018

The Fox Hunt

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

The Fox Hunt: A Refugee’s Memoir of Coming to America by Mohammed Al Samawi
on April 10th 2018
Pages: 336
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Published by William Morrow
Format: ARC
Source: Book Tour, From author/publisher
Setting: Yemen

A young man’s moving story of war, friendship, and hope in which he recounts his harrowing escape from a brutal civil war in Yemen with the help of a daring plan engineered on social media by a small group of interfaith activists in the West.
Born in the Old City of Sana’a, Yemen, to a pair of middle-class doctors, Mohammed Al Samawi was a devout Muslim raised to think of Christians and Jews as his enemy. But when Mohammed was twenty-three, he secretly received a copy of the Bible, and what he read cast doubt on everything he’d previously believed. After connecting with Jews and Christians on social media, and at various international interfaith conferences, Mohammed became an activist, making it his mission to promote dialogue and cooperation in Yemen.
Then came the death threats: first on Facebook, then through terrifying anonymous phone calls. To protect himself and his family, Mohammed fled to the southern port city of Aden. He had no way of knowing that Aden was about to become the heart of a north-south civil war, and the battleground for a well-funded proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. As gunfire and grenades exploded throughout the city, Mohammed hid in the bathroom of his apartment and desperately appealed to his contacts on Facebook.
Miraculously, a handful of people he barely knew responded. Over thirteen days, four ordinary young people with zero experience in diplomacy or military exfiltration worked across six technology platforms and ten time zones to save this innocent young man trapped between deadly forces— rebel fighters from the north and Al Qaeda operatives from the south.
The story of an improbable escape as riveting as the best page-turning thrillers, The Fox Hunt reminds us that goodness and decency can triumph in the darkest circumstances.

I didn’t know much about the causes of the war in Yemen until I read this book. It still doesn’t make much sense to me because it boils down to “Those people look different than us and think differently than us.” It is that kind of mindset that Mohammed Al Samawi was working against prior to the war.

The stars of this story of the activists around the world who play a high stakes game of Six Degrees of Separation. Who do you know? Who do they know? Can you get one man from Aden to Africa?

What struck me while reading this is the problems that are caused by Yemen’s patriarchy/toxic combination of masculinity and religion:

The whole conflict could be put down to this
He was unable to shelter with his uncle’s family because his uncle wouldn’t let him in the house where his unmarried female cousins lived. How messed up is that? Your nephew is alone in an apartment in a war zone but you won’t take him in because you assume he wouldn’t be able to sexually control himself around his female relatives?
Because he was male he was completely unprepared to live on his own without women to care for him. He moved to Aden and was living alone. He ate out daily since he didn’t cook so he had minimal food and supplies in the house when all the shops closed down.
After he was out of Yemen due to the help of a group of interfaith activists he was still too afraid to tell him mother (still living in a war zone) that he had been talking to Jews.

I found the beginning of this book with his entry into interfaith dialogue more interesting than the story of his escape from Yemen. I think that is partially because the writing is very plain. It reads like “This happened and then this happened and then this happened…” Secondly, I mostly just wanted to shake the guy. This is not a heroic memoir. Mohammed Al Samawi isn’t brave. He isn’t very good at planning. He moves from Sanaa to Aden but neglects to bring his passport even though he travels for work. These things all make trying to flee the country harder. He uses the distraction of a Northern man like himself being publicly tortured to death in the street by Al Qaeda to escape from his apartment while wondering why no one tries to help that man. He even refers to himself occasionally as a man-child. He was in his late 20s in 2015 when this happened.

In the end there were so many different lobbying efforts going on that it is not clear who succeeded in getting the order given to let him on the ship from Aden to Djibouti. I wish this had been investigated. It seems to be a very strange thing not to know who allowed his transport in a book about arranging his transport.

In the absence of facts, he falls back on the idea that God arranged his rescue. While comforting for religious people, this makes nonreligious people want to pull their hair out. Basically he saying that his God ignored everyone else stuck in a war (about religion and power) to concentrate on giving him special attention. It also diminishes all the hard work that people did on his behalf.

22 Mar, 2018

Meet the Frugalwoods

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

Meet the Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living by Elizabeth Willard Thames
on March 6th 2018
Pages: 256
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Published by HarperBusiness
Format: Paperback
Source: Book Tour, From author/publisher

The deeply personal story of how award-winning personal finance blogger Elizabeth Willard Thames abandoned a successful career in the city and embraced frugality to create a more meaningful, purpose-driven life, and retire to a homestead in the Vermont woods at age thirty-two with her husband and daughter.
In 2014, Elizabeth and Nate Thames were conventional 9-5 young urban professionals. But the couple had a dream to become modern-day homesteaders in rural Vermont. Determined to retire as early as possible in order to start living each day—as opposed to wishing time away working for the weekends—they enacted a plan to save an enormous amount of money: well over seventy percent of their joint take home pay. Dubbing themselves the Frugalwoods, Elizabeth began documenting their unconventional frugality and the resulting wholesale lifestyle transformation on their eponymous blog.
In less than three years, Elizabeth and Nate reached their goal. Today, they are financially independent and living out their dream on a sixty-six-acre homestead in the woods of rural Vermont with their young daughter. While frugality makes their lifestyle possible, it’s also what brings them peace and genuine happiness. They don’t stress out about impressing people with their material possessions, buying the latest gadgets, or keeping up with any Joneses. In the process, Elizabeth discovered the self-confidence and liberation that stems from disavowing our culture’s promise that we can buy our way to "the good life." Elizabeth unlocked the freedom of a life no longer beholden to the clarion call to consume ever-more products at ever-higher sums.
Meet the Frugalwoods is the intriguing story of how Elizabeth and Nate realized that the mainstream path wasn’t for them, crafted a lifestyle of sustainable frugality, and reached financial independence at age thirty-two. While not everyone wants to live in the woods, or quit their jobs, many of us want to have more control over our time and money and lead more meaningful, simplified lives. Following their advice, you too can live your best life.

Purchase Links: HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Author Links: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

Debt-free living is a topic that is very important to me so I jumped at the chance to review this book from TLC Book Tours. (Free book – Look at me being frugal!)

This is a memoir of a couple who used frugality to save enough to retire to the country in their 30s. They have a blog called frugalwoods.com. I hadn’t ever heard of this before so I went into this book with no preconceived notions about what their story was.

I appreciated the fact that the book starts with a discussion of privilege versus systemic causes of poverty in the United States. She realizes that just by being born to married, educated white parents in the suburbs of the Midwest that she got a leg up towards being able to be debt-free in her 30s. She points out that her frugality is elective instead of a requirement to be able to afford her rent.

I wish this was more of a how-to book. It doesn’t really explain how they became debt-free. She says things like she saved $2000 of the $10,000 she was given as an AmeriCorp stipend. She was living in Brooklyn with roommates but how did she manage to do that? I want charts and spreadsheets. She talks later about merging living expenses by moving in with her fiance and living below their means by not trying to keep up with the standard of living of their peers. She says that even before they really committed to saving a lot of money in order to retire early, they were saving 40-50% of their take home pay not including 401K and mortgage principal. This is where I started to feel pretty inadequate reading this book. We’re debt-free but we are not even close to that kind of savings. (I know the problem. I eat out too much. If I cooked every meal at home, I’d be golden. I need to make myself a challenge or something.)

I feel like reader’s reactions to this book will be influenced by where they are on their financial journey. I can see her story of giving up $120 hair cuts seeming flippant to someone who is struggling to buy groceries. At the same time, I can see it being inspirational to people who have the ability to start saving money. I could also see it being frustrating and making people feel like they haven’t been doing enough to secure their financial future. I’d be interested to see how people respond to the message.

Tour schedule:

Tuesday, March 6th: Bibliotica

Wednesday, March 7th: Stranded in Chaos

Thursday, March 8th: Literary Quicksand

Friday, March 9th: I’d Rather Be At The Beach

Monday, March 12th: A Bookish Way of Life

Thursday, March 15th: Man of La Book

Monday, March 19th: What Is That Book About

Tuesday, March 20th: Tina Says…

Wednesday, March 21st: Doing Dewey

Thursday, March 22nd: Based on a True Story

07 Mar, 2018

Hippie Food

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat by Jonathan Kauffman
on January 23rd 2018
Pages: 352
Length: 9:13
Genres: Nonfiction
Published by William Morrow
Format: Audiobook
Source: Library

An enlightening narrative history—an entertaining fusion of Tom Wolfe and Michael Pollan—that traces the colorful origins of once unconventional foods and the diverse fringe movements, charismatic gurus, and counterculture elements that brought them to the mainstream and created a distinctly American cuisine.
Food writer Jonathan Kauffman journeys back more than half a century—to the 1960s and 1970s—to tell the story of how a coterie of unusual men and women embraced an alternative lifestyle that would ultimately change how modern Americans eat. Impeccably researched, Hippie Food chronicles how the longhairs, revolutionaries, and back-to-the-landers rejected the square establishment of President Richard Nixon’s America and turned to a more idealistic and wholesome communal way of life and food.
From the mystical rock-and-roll cult known as the Source Family and its legendary vegetarian restaurant in Hollywood to the Diggers’ brown bread in the Summer of Love to the rise of the co-op and the origins of the organic food craze, Kauffman reveals how today’s quotidian whole-foods staples—including sprouts, tofu, yogurt, brown rice, and whole-grain bread—were introduced and eventually became part of our diets. From coast to coast, through Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, Minnesota, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Vermont, Kauffman tracks hippie food’s journey from niche oddity to a cuisine that hit every corner of this country.
A slick mix of gonzo playfulness, evocative detail, skillful pacing, and elegant writing, Hippie Food is a lively, engaging, and informative read that deepens our understanding of our culture and our lives today.

Obviously I had to listen to this book. They should have just titled it “A Book for Heather.”

This is a history of the health food and vegetarian food movements in the U.S. It starts with briefly talking about health food people like the Kelloggs and Dr. Graham at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. It then segues into the macrobiotic movement which came to the U.S. from Japan. The bulk of the book focuses on the post-WW II push back to the marketing of processed convenience food.

What I really learned from this book:

White Folks Can’t Cook

The hippie/back-to-the-land movement was overwhelmingly white. That’s briefly addressed but not explored deeply. A lot of these people seemed to come from a background where they didn’t learn to cook without convenience foods. So when they tried to cook whole food ingredients, they pretty much failed. Spices? What are they?

That’s how vegetarian food got a reputation for being bland and boring. It only started to get good when they started stealing ideas from other cultures. Japanese influences came in through macrobiotics. This gets linked to politics because of the 1965 immigration reform that allowed more immigrants from non-European countries. Those people opened restaurants and suddenly people realized that you don’t need to eat food with the texture and taste of tree bark. If the movement was inclusive from the start, hippie food might not have had such a bad reputation.

I loved hearing about how all sorts of foods that we consider staples now came to the United States. Again this is presented from a white, middle class perspective. It talks about starting tofu production in the States but I’m sure there were people in Asian communities who were doing this before white people adopted it and started mass production. The same can go for different spices and/or vegetables that I’m sure were in use in black or Latinx communities. That’s my major criticism of this book.

I would get excited whenever some of my favorites where mentioned. Diet for a Small Planet! (Yes, her made up theory of the necessity of “complete proteins” has been repeatedly debunked. Can we let that die now? Please? Asking for all vegetarians who get asked about it ALL THE TIME.) The Moosewood Cookbooks! Those were some of the first I read.

Read this one if you love food history as it relates to personal ethics and politics.

06 Mar, 2018

Love Unleashed

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

Love Unleashed: Tales of Inspiration and the Life-Changing Power of Dogs by Rebecca Ascher-Walsh
on March 6th 2018
Pages: 160
Genres: Nonfiction
Published by National Geographic Society
Format: Hardcover
Source: Book Tour, From author/publisher

A book for dog lovers everywhere. Celebrating the amazing relationships shared with our four-legged friends, each story recounts the love of dogs and the powerful ways dogs impact our lives.

In this heartwarming collection of stories, readers meet 38 incredible dogs who have gone above and beyond the job description of best friend. Each uplifting story provides an inspiring look at the animals who change our lives. Meet rescue dogs who learn to serve others, working dogs who go beyond the call of duty, and underdogs who surmount extraordinary challenges on the road to finding their forever home. This treasury of man's best friend features photographs and personal anecdotes from those who have been touched by the selfless love of a beloved pet.
Readers will be inspired by...* Extraordinary reunions: A dog is rescued from Aleppo, Syria, and reunited with his family in Canada, where they had relocated in 2015 after a missile destroyed their home.* Friendships meant to be: When a prosthetics clinic scheduled appointments for 9-year-old Avery and shelter puppy Hattie Mae on the same day, a fateful encounter leads to a lifelong friendship built on combatting disability. * Heroic acts: Shaya, a crime-fighting dog trained to track illegal poachers, hurt his leg chasing an injured rhino. The leg had to be amputated, but Shaya goes right back to work protecting animals.* True devotion: As he was participating in China's Four Deserts Gobi March, a six-day foot race, Dion Leonard met a dedicated pup who accompanied him for about 120 miles. Afterward, he decides to adopt the dog.

Of course I loved this book. How could you not? This is a book filled with beautiful pictures of dogs as you’d expect from National Geographic.

Each dog has a story that is 2-3 pages long. It describes how the dog was taken out of a shelter and found a job that they love to do. There are therapy dogs, security dogs, actors, medical dogs, and anything else you could think of. There are probably dogs doing jobs that you’ve never even thought of before.

I’ll be taking this book to my office for people to look at in the waiting room.

14 Feb, 2018

A Mother’s Reckoning

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold
on February 15, 2016
Pages: 336
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Format: Audiobook, eBook
Setting: Colorado

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives. For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently? These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. In A Mother’s Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible. In the hope that the insights and understanding she has gained may help other families recognize when a child is in distress, she tells her story in full, drawing upon her personal journals, the videos and writings that Dylan left behind, and on countless interviews with mental health experts.

As soon as I heard about this book I knew that it was a book I needed to read. I turn into a tower of rage whenever I hear “Where were their parents?” in response to a teenager committing a crime. I feel this because I know that someday this accusation is going to leveled at me concerning my stepdaughter.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t read this book to get into the mind of a mass murderer. I wanted tips about what to do after a child commits a crime. Knowing that I wanted this felt awkward so while reading this book I broached the subject with my husband.

Me: “So…… I’m reading Sue Klebold’s book about the aftermath of Columbine. I sort of wanted to know what you do after a crime.”

Him: “Yeah. (long pause) So what did you find out?”

Me: “Lawyer up and grab the pets and go into hiding with relatives who don’t share your unusual last name.”

Him: Looks concerned at me while we contemplate our very unusual last name. We’re screwed.

The Klebolds had a very different experience than parents of mentally ill children do. She addresses this at one point.

“I have heard many terrible stories of good people struggling to parent seriously ill, violent kids. I have nothing but compassion for them, and feel we must rehabilitate a health care system that too often leaves them out in the cold. If you want to feel sick to your stomach, listen to a mom tell you about the day her volatile ten-year-old narrowly missed stabbing her with the kitchen shears, and how it felt to call the police on him because she was worried the lock on his younger sister’s bedroom door wouldn’t hold against his rage. Too often, parents of seriously disturbed kids are forced to get the criminal justice system involved—even though it is drastically ill-equipped to manage brain illness—simply because there is nowhere else to turn.”

One thing I was surprisingly shocked to read was how many lawsuits were filed against the families of the shooters. It wasn’t like they helped their kids stockpile weapons and then drove them to the school. How were they at fault? I think it is a sad commentary on our society feeling like someone has to take the blame for anything that happens and if the people responsible are dead, then the victim’s families just wanted someone else to blame. There are excerpts of letters written to her by parents of the victims years later blaming her for not talking publicly so people could see if she was showing enough remorse. They talk about wanting to know if she has learned anything. This hounding from the victims’ families is part of the reason she wrote this book. The proceeds are all being donated to mental health research.

I found Sue Klebold’s descriptions of herself and her parenting to be an example of the type of parent that drives me to exasperation. It is the overinvolved yet absolutely clueless type. These are the perky women who tell you that they have a great family and will fight to the death to uphold their belief that their precious little munchkin would never do anything wrong while you know that their child is the local drug dealer. I’ve known a few of these types of mothers. They are exhausting. I switched halfway through the book from audio to ebook because listening to her talk about the time before the shooting was irritating. I understand it though. The parents’ letters ask if she ever hugged her child or had a sit down meal with him. People want to think that if they do everything “right” then their child will never commit a crime. She admits that she thought like this too until her son went on a rampage.

Few of these parents ever have their illusions shattered as horrifically as this author did. But she admits that she was able to shield herself from hearing anything about the crime for months so she was able to persist in her denial that her child did anything wrong. She convinced herself that he was drugged or kidnapped or really a victim or was being threatened with danger to his family. She was willing to believe anything except that he was a killer. She persisted in this belief until the police laid out their whole case for them about 4 months after the murders. Here is a horrible example of how she tried to justify her thinking.

“This wasn’t the drug-riddled inner city, or some supposedly godless corridor like New York or Los Angeles.“

Her solutions are jarring. They are based in the idea that parents should know everything about their children. She is obviously an extrovert who says that she loves to talk about issues. If only you could force your children to tell you everything, you could prevent problems. I can feel my poor little introvert soul shrinking when she talks about this.

“I’ve even imagined barricading myself in his room, refusing to leave until he tells me what he’s thinking.“

She advocates searching rooms to find hidden journals or papers. She says this knowing that her son hid weapons and bombs from her while she was actively searching his room. They hid things so well that the police didn’t even find some of the hiding spots until they watched videos Dylan and Eric had left behind explaining how they had hid everything. If a kid doesn’t want you to know something, you aren’t going to know it.

She brushes over the practical aftermath of the shootings for her family in one paragraph. Basically, they were sued over and over and over and lost their house and went bankrupt for a crime they didn’t commit. They also eventually divorced after 43 years of marriage because she is active in suicide prevention and he wanted to leave all of this in the past.

I think she dismisses the bullying that Dylan and Eric had at school too much. She doesn’t talk about it much at all. Other sources have talked about how toxic Columbine High School was. I did appreciate this statement in the book.

“Larkin also points to proselytizing and intimidation by evangelical Christian students, a self-appointed moral elite who perceived the kids who dressed differently as evil and targeted them.“

So much was made after Columbine in evangelical circles about the targeting of Christian kids. It was used as proof that the shooters were evil. Maybe the Christian community also needed to look at the behavior of their kids.

That’s ultimately the point of this story. Everyone wants to demonize the parents of murderous kids because if you find the thing they did wrong, then it won’t happen to your family. No one wants to admit that that isn’t the case. Until society admits that it could happen to anyone, real help won’t happen.

09 Feb, 2018

Ninety Percent of Everything

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate by Rose George
on August 13th 2013
Pages: 304
Length: 9:33
Genres: Nonfiction
Published by Henry Holt
Format: Audiobook
Source: Audible, Owned

On ship-tracking websites, the waters are black with dots. Each dot is a ship; each ship is laden with boxes; each box is laden with goods. In postindustrial economies, we no longer produce but buy. We buy, so we must ship. Without shipping there would be no clothes, food, paper, or fuel. Without all those dots, the world would not work.
Freight shipping has been no less revolutionary than the printing press or the Internet, yet it is all but invisible. Away from public scrutiny, shipping revels in suspect practices, dubious operators, and a shady system of "flags of convenience." Infesting our waters, poisoning our air, and a prime culprit of acoustic pollution, shipping is environmentally indefensible. And then there are the pirates.
Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Ocean with an anti-piracy task force; she joins seafaring chaplains, and investigates the harm that ships inflict on endangered whales.

I’ve been intrigued by shipping ever since I heard a statistic in Moby Duck that said that 2 ships are lost weekly. I never knew whether I should believe that or not. That seemed like a lot of ships to lose without it being something everyone knows. This book didn’t tell me if that was true but it did say that over 2000 people a year die at sea.

This book follows a container ship journey from England to Singapore with side trips to investigate issues like piracy. You learn about shipwrecks and human smuggling. My favorite fact was that a container of broccoli will set off the radiation detectors at the shipyards. (I knew broccoli was bad for you.)

I was surprised by how horrible life as a sailor is. I knew it wasn’t a cushy job but the companies seem to go out of their way to make it worse. The amount allotted per day for meals keeps dropping. There is no internet even on ships built in the last few years. Fast turnaround at docks means that shore leave is pretty much a thing of the past. Some sailors she talks to haven’t been off the ship in 6 months. If your ship gets captured by pirates, you are pretty much on your own for a while. There is a set time that negotiations generally take. If your company tries to speed it up so it doesn’t take months, the pirates get suspicious and keep you longer.

I was interested to hear how the dockside churches are stepping up for sailors. Because they can’t leave the ships, chaplins come onto the boats to help them get things they need. They also try to help fix some of the horrible conditions by finding the right authorities for sailors to report complaints to.

Read this one to find out everything about an industry that is so pervasive but no one knows about.

I loved the narrator of this audiobook. She doesn’t sound like a typical nonfiction book narrator. She’s very posh and British. I looked up what else she has narrated because I was going to listen to them all. It turns out that she is mostly a narrator of Regency Romances. She sounds like she should be reading those. I want her to read more nonfiction because that’s mainly what I listen to on audio. Pearl Hewitt for narrator of every book!

08 Feb, 2018

Waking the Spirit

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

Waking the Spirit: A Musician's Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul by Andrew Schulman
on August 2nd 2016
Pages: 304
Genres: Medical, Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs, Science
Published by Picador
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Setting: New York

Andrew Schulman, a fifty-seven-year-old professional guitarist, had a close brush with death on the night of July 16, 2009. Against the odds—with the help of music—he survived: A medical miracle.
Once fully recovered, Andrew resolved to dedicate his life to bringing music to critically ill patients at Mount Sinai Beth Israel’s ICU. In Waking the Spirit, you’ll learn the astonishing stories of the people he’s met along the way—both patients and doctors—and see the incredible role music can play in a modern hospital setting.
In his new work as a medical musician, Andrew has met with experts in music, neuroscience, and medicine. In this book, he shares with readers an overview of the cutting-edge science and medical theories that illuminate this exciting field.
This book explores the power of music to heal the body and awaken the spirit.

Andrew Schulman was a professional classical guitarist. He went into the hospital to have a biopsy but an allergic reaction to medication while in surgery led to him spending time in a coma in the surgical ICU. He was nonresponsive to anything until his wife started playing his favorite playlist of music for him. After his recovery, he started to research the links between music and healing. He also returned to the surgical ICU three days a week to play for an hour.

I’ve been lurking on some music therapy harp groups on Facebook. I like the types of music that these musicians seem to play and I was actually looking for good sources of music for relaxing harp pieces. I know a lot of it is improv. In this book, Andrew Schulman does some improv but finds himself mostly playing three types of music – Bach, Gershwin, and The Beatles.

There are a lot of stories in the book that show how small of a world the New York music world must be. He meets family members of composers, Gershwin scholars, and people who performed on his favorite recordings. Along the way he is shocked to find that he starts to heal the brain damage that his time in a coma caused.

I liked the incorporation of the science along with the stories. He will talk about seeing music calm pain responses and then will get a scientific opinion on why that works.

You’ll finish this book believing that Bach should be playing in every recovery unit in the hospital. Even if you don’t play an instrument, this is an uplifting story about how the body can heal itself and how not every medical intervention needs to be using drugs.

02 Feb, 2018

When They Call You A Terrorist

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Asha Bandele
on January 16th 2018
Pages: 272
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Published by St. Martin's Press
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Setting: California

From one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement comes a poetic memoir and reflection on humanity. Necessary and timely, Patrisse Cullors' story asks us to remember that protest in the interest of the most vulnerable comes from love. Leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have been called terrorists, a threat to America. But in truth, they are loving women whose life experiences have led them to seek justice for those victimized by the powerful. In this meaningful, empowering account of survival, strength, and resilience, Patrisse Cullors and asha bandele seek to change the culture that declares innocent black life expendable.

The phrase “When They Call You A Terrorist” refers to two episodes in the author’s life:

When Black Lives Matter is referred to as a terrorist group by people who oppose them
When her mentally ill older brother was charged with terrorism for yelling at a person during a traffic accident

This memoir focuses more on her life leading up to the founding of Black Lives Matter than the aftermath. It tells the story of living in a community that is very heavily policed. When her brother starts showing signs of mental illness his interactions with the police increase. He is taken away and no one is able to find out where he is for months despite constant searching. He isn’t treated but just medicated to keep him quiet. He is repeatedly beaten by the police.

I immediately compare this to police treatment of my mentally ill step daughter. She’s 14. She has been repeatedly restrained by the police both at schools and at home because of her violence. She has sent adults to the hospital. She has destroyed property. The police will not ALLOW her to be charged with a crime despite multiple requests because “she has a diagnosis.” Wanna guess the other differences between her and the author’s brother besides access to healthcare to get a diagnosis? Yeah, she’s white and lives in an affluent suburb.

I’m not sure how so many white people can continue to think that unequal policing doesn’t exist. Even if you aren’t involved in a situation that highlights it, so many videos exist. It has to be just willful ignorance to deny the evidence.

The author helped organize a bus trip into Ferguson after Mike Brown’s death. A church was offered as a staging place for the 600 people coming in. I thought about that for a while. My brother works at a church that would be perfect for that sort of thing. It is right off the interstate. It has a huge parking lot that could hold a lot of buses. There is a school attached so maybe there are locker rooms so people could shower. Then I laughed and laughed. I can’t imagine a white majority church EVER opening their doors to a protest group. They’d have to fight about it in committee and through the church gossip networks for months before they could even begin to make a highly contested decision. Then the pastor would be fired.

My mental tangents aside, this book is ultimately about the power of love and what it looks like to try to live out that love in the real world. It is a short, lyrical book that can help open people’s eyes to the needs in communities that have adversarial relationships with police.

19 Jan, 2018

The Big Push

/ posted in: Reading

The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy by Cynthia Enloe
on October 26th 2017
Pages: 208
Genres: Nonfiction, Political Science, Social Science, Women's Studies
Published by University of California Press
Format: Paperback
Source: Library

For over a century and in scores of countries, patriarchal presumptions and practices have been challenged by women and their male allies. “Sexual harassment” has entered common parlance; police departments are equipped with rape kits; more than half of the national legislators in Bolivia and Rwanda are women; and a woman candidate won the plurality of the popular votes in the 2016 United States presidential election. But have we really reached equality and overthrown a patriarchal point of view?
The Big Push exposes how patriarchal ideas and relationships continue to be modernized to this day. Through contemporary cases and reports, renowned political scientist Cynthia Enloe exposes the workings of everyday patriarchy—in how Syrian women civil society activists have been excluded from international peace negotiations; how sexual harassment became institutionally accepted within major news organizations; or in how the UN Secretary General’s post has remained a masculine domain. Enloe then lays out strategies and skills for challenging patriarchal attitudes and operations. Encouraging self-reflection, she guides us in the discomforting curiosity of reviewing our own personal complicity in sustaining patriarchy in order to withdraw our own support for it. Timely and globally conscious, The Big Push is a call for feminist self-reflection and strategic action with a belief that exposure complements resistance.

I heard about this book somewhere on Twitter. I was able to get a copy sent to me through interlibrary loan. Then through the vagaries of mood-reading, I didn’t start to read it. I felt that it was going to be an academic slog through feminist theory. But, I had gone through some effort to get it and it needed to be returned soon so I decided to give it a try.

I was so wrong about this book.

I didn’t expect to get teary-eyed sitting in a restaurant that specializes in feeding huge plates of food to Trump supporters with a country music soundtrack because of the author’s insistence of the importance of the Women’s Marches. The author perfectly recreated the feeling of needing to be in the vast sea of people to voice your opposition to what was going on in the country.

I didn’t expect to have to totally recalibrate my thinking about how I look at world events because I had missed a major plot point. I had read Richard Holbrooke’s book about negotiating the Wright-Patterson Accords to end the Bosnian War. I had read Might Be Our Powers by Leymah Gbowee about women’s protests outside the peace negotiations for Liberia. What I missed in both was these was asking why women were not included in the peace negotiations from the beginning. Ending armed conflict is traditionally seen as requiring just the armed participants to come to an agreement. That can stop the fighting but it is ignoring the majority of the population who need to live in the rebuilt country afterwards. Even now, women are not seen as participants even if they are the people still on the ground providing assistance to civilians. The author gives examples of conflict resolutions that were seen to be enlightened because they would let women draft a statement that would be read into the proceeding by a male delegate. There could only be one women’s statement though so women from all sides of the conflict had to sit down together and draft a consensus statement that might or might not be taken into consideration by the men who hadn’t yet been able to reach a consensus. How would the rebuilding of nations look different if women were included from the beginning?

This book will lead you to see more areas for improvement in our world that you may have been blind to before. I was reading this at the same time as I was reading a book that glamorized a war from a patriarchal perspective. Every comment like that in the other book jumped out at me in a way that it may not have before.

This book gives hope for a world that so far has been beyond most of our imaginings. Hopefully, once people start to see what really could be possible we might be able to approach it.

10 Jan, 2018

Heart in the Right Place

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

Heart in the Right Place by Carolyn Jourdan
on June 15th 2007
Pages: 304
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Published by Algonquin Books
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Setting: Tennessee

Carolyn Jourdan had it all: the Mercedes Benz, the fancy soirees, the best clothes. She moved in the most exclusive circles in Washington, D.C., rubbed elbows with big politicians, and worked on Capitol Hill. As far as she was concerned, she was changing the world.
And then her mother had a heart attack. Carolyn came home to help her father with his rural medical practice in the Tennessee mountains. She'd fill in for a few days as the receptionist until her mother could return to work. Or so she thought. But days turned into weeks.
Her job now included following hazmat regulations for cleaning up bodily fluids; maintaining composure when confronted with a splinter the size of a steak knife; distinguishing between a "pain," a "strain," and a "sprain" on indecipherable Medicare forms; and tending to the loquacious Miss Hiawatha, whose daily doctor visits were never billed.

At first glance this is a funny memoir of life in a small town medical office. Stories of men who try to operate on themselves or get injured doing ill advised things abound. There are also heart breaking stories of the deaths of beloved patients and friends. If you like stories full of small town characters, this would be a great read for you.

On a deeper level though, I found it quite disturbing. The author’s father is a doctor. He has a practice with one nurse and his wife is the receptionist/office manager. His wife is unpaid for this more than full time job. She also has a doctorate but has spent her life doing unpaid work to support her husband’s job. When she gets sick her daughter comes home to take over her job. Her daughter is a lawyer working for a Senator and is an expert on U.S. nuclear policy. She gives up that job to become her father’s unpaid helper. The reason they can’t hire anyone else is that the practice doesn’t make enough money to support a paid receptionist. So now you have two highly educated women who have given up their careers to support this practice and you are denying a job to a person in the community who could be a fine receptionist if the job was paid.

The reason the practice isn’t making any money is because the patients are too poor to pay for healthcare. Now we get into the failures of the U.S. health care system. Unfortunately, that isn’t what people tend to take from memoirs like this. They see a fine doctor who cares enough not to charge for services if people can’t pay. That’s admirable but not sustainable. If you can’t pay to keep the electric on, then the community loses its only health provider.

(This is a touchy subject for me. I work in a low cost, walk in veterinary clinic in a poor area. I am basically living this doctor’s life in the veterinary world but with better staffing and hours. People come in and regale us with tales of TV shows they’ve seen where the vet cares so much about animals that they don’t charge people. The implication being that if we do charge, then we don’t care. We just nod because no one wants an economics lesson or to hear about my massive pay cut to work here or the fact that the owner isn’t getting paid yet because the clinic just opened…)

The answer for communities like this is to find a better way for people to afford health care, not to emulate this model. It isn’t possible moving forward. Student debt is too high for newer doctors to be able to afford to live on what a practice like this makes. I looked at buying a practice like this once. The vet was making about $100,000 a year being on call 24/7. I wasn’t willing to do that because that type of stress will kill you and once you figured in paying back a loan to buy the practice and doing some way past due maintenance to the building, I would have almost been paying to work there. I had been out of school long enough not to have any student loans left. If I had had the debt of today’s graduates, I could never have even considered it.

So, yeah, the book is cute and funny and sweet as long as you don’t look too closely at why a practice like this is needed.

19 Dec, 2017

The Newcomers

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom by Helen Thorpe
on November 14th 2017
Narrator: Kate Handford
Length: 15:09
Genres: Nonfiction, Social Science
Published by Dreamscape Media
Format: Audiobook

Offering a nuanced and transformative take on immigration, multiculturalism, and America's role on the global stage, The Newcomers follows and reflects on the lives of twenty-two immigrant teenagers throughout the course of their 2015-2016 school year at Denver's South High School. Unfamiliar with American culture or the English language, the students range from the age of fourteen to nineteen and come from nations struggling with drought, famine, or war. Many come directly from refugee camps, and some arrive alone, having left or lost every other member of their family. Their stories are poignant and remarkable, and at the center of their combined story is Mr. Williams: the dedicated and endlessly resourceful teacher of their English Language Acquisition class-a class which was created specifically for them and which will provide them with the foundation they need to face the enormous challenges of adapting to life in America.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to move to the U.S. from a non-English speaking country and have to learn to survive here. This is a book that answers those questions. I think this should be required reading for anyone who wants to talk intelligently about the immigration debate in the U.S.

The author spends 18 months with a group of teenagers who are in a Newcomers class in a Denver high school. All of them are recent immigrants and have tested at the bottom level of English language proficiency. They represent most of the major conflict zones on the planet – The Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria, Iraq, Burma, Central America, Eritrea. The school year starts with learning how to introduce yourself in English. Most of the kids are stumped.

One of the things I found interesting in this book was the transparency of the author’s process. She is writing about minors who have all experienced a great deal of upheaval and trauma in their lives. She explains how she approaches the kids with a translator in their home language to ask if she can include their stories in the book. There are kids who say no at this point and she respects that. If they agreed, she sent home a letter written in their language to their parents that requested permission to interview the children and requested to interview them. If permission is given, then home visits are started with an interpreter. In spite of all these precautions, there are still communication errors and just the plain inability of an American to truly understand the lives that refugees have led. She discusses her thought process about what questions to ask about their backgrounds. When does reporting the story just become an excuse to pry into things for the sake of the sensational details? She talks about when she chose to walk away from lines of questioning that are relevant to the story but would lead to retraumatizing the people being interviewed.

For the families that agreed to participate, it opens a window in to the lives in war zones. Hearing what they had to endure before fleeing their homes was heartbreaking. There are Iraqis who worked with the U.S. Army and then were left behind. A Central American female police officer was targeted for murder after arresting gang members and when they couldn’t get to her they starting threatening her children. A family with 10 children had to walk out of the DRC to avoid repeated violence. Some of the kids were born in refugee camps. Most are already multi-lingual.

Life in the U.S. isn’t easy. Resettlement agencies help but families are required to be self-supporting within 4 months of arrival. That’s hard when you don’t speak the language and can’t get a good job. I’m surprised how many families did it. Other families’ stories show how one small setback can upset their whole resettlement journey.

The importance of this story is underscored by the fact that it takes place from September 2015 to December 2016. Reading about the rise of Donald Trump as it relates to these families was stressful all over again. Incidents of racism rise on public transport as the election takes place. Court cases to receive asylum for Central American children are suddenly in doubt. Family members scheduled to arrive from Somalia are suddenly turned back at the airport.

The author does go to the DRC to see where the family that she knew from Denver came from. She traces their route to refugee camp and meets friends and family members who have been left behind.

This is an ultimately hopeful book as you see how far the kids come in 18 months. Some go from silent observers on day 1 to being a part of the student government a year later. Others are still struggling with English but are able to have full conversations. No one who reads about these families would think they are lazy and trying to work the system. This is a book I’d love to force all Trump fans to listen to in order to see if these people’s realities align with their idea of what immigrants are.

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

Audiobooks
Books Set in Africa
Books Set in North America

15 Nov, 2017

A Country Between

/ posted in: Book Review, Reading

A Country Between: Making a Home Where Both Sides of Jerusalem Collide by Stephanie Saldana
on February 7, 2017
Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs
Format: eBook
Source: Library
Setting: Israel

When American writer Stephanie Saldana finds herself in an empty house at the beginning of Nablus Road, the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem, she is a new wife trying to navigate a fragile terrain, both within her marriage and throughout the country in which she has chosen to live.
Pregnant with her first child, Stephanie struggles to protect her family, their faith, and herself from the cracks of Middle Eastern conflict that threaten to shatter the world around her. But as her due date approaches, she must reconcile herself with her choice to bring a child into a dangerous world. Determined to piece together life from the brokenness, she sets out to uncover small instances of beauty to balance the delicate coexistence between love, motherhood, and a country so often at war.
In an urban valley in Jerusalem, A Country Between captures the fragile ecosystem of the Middle East and the difficult first years of motherhood in the midst of a conflict-torn city. What unfolds is a celebration of faith, language, family, and love that fills the space between what was shattered, leaving us whole once more.

This memoir is the story of an American woman who was considering becoming a nun in a Syrian monastery. She met a French novice monk there. Eventually, they left and married.

Through a series of unplanned events, they found themselves setting up their first household in Jerusalem. It was near the dividing line between Palestinian and Jewish areas near the Damascus Gate.

“The sun rose in the east speaking Arabic and set in the west speaking Hebrew, and we tried to find our way in between.”

This is the story of trying to make a marriage while dealing with your husband’s deep grief about leaving the monastery. It is worrying about what might happen every time you leave the house.

“…a great many of the dramas that happen in the Middle East begin with the simple intention of leaving the house to buy vegetables.”

This is a very lyrical memoir of their lives in this house. I think that it started too slowly. There was too much information about her childhood. It slowed down the pace of the book. Now I know that there was a first memoir about meeting her husband and the decision to leave the monastery. This was also covered here for those of us who didn’t read the first book.

There is some discussion of the larger political issues that affected their day to day lives but mostly she discusses the affect of policy on her street. She discusses roadblocks and violence. She talks about taking her kids to play in touristy areas. Her neighborhood is a microcosm of all the religions that call Jerusalem home.

It can also be funny.

“When the Franciscans came into view in their brown cassocks, Joseph’s face became overcome with wonder. He ran to them and quietly bowed his head. Then he whispered, in solemn greeting, “Heigh-ho. Heigh-ho.””

Ultimately I would have liked more politics to understand what was happening but that isn’t the point of this book. Read this one if you like beautifully written slice of life stories.

“If I can ask you to remember only one thing, then let it be this: keep watch. You have not been born into an easy world. But every now and then, in the midst of our daily lives, a miracle strikes.”

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

Books Set in the Middle East

← Older Posts

USA - Veterinarian - Vegetarian - Into books and quilting and all manner of geeky stuff. Want to know more? See Meet the Cast below.

Heather

In the Past

UA-56222504-1