Books And More Books

The advantage of being housebound is that I have no guilt in spending hours and hours reading.

Here are the newest books to add to the "finished reading" list:

24. The Lost City Of The Monkey God by Douglas Preston (the 21st century discovery of La Ciudad del Jaguar in Honduras and more about the parasitical disease Leishmania than I ever wanted to know)

25. Danny The Champion Of The World by Roald Dahl (more anarchy from Dahl; thank you, Amanda, for the great recommendation!) 

26. Everything Here Is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee (sisters, life, love, alienation and mental illness in one beautifully written novel) 

27. Crǣft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Landlands (a well-written, thoughtful exploration of the historical role and deeper meaning of crǣfts (yes, "crafts" but not "crafts") and what we have lost in our modern world by abandoning them)

28. This Fine Place So Far From Home: Voices of Academics From the Working Class, edited by C. L. Barney Dews and Carolyn Leste Law (this work moved me so deeply that I am writing a separate post about it)

I also read about four-fifths of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, a collection of essays by Columbus writer Hanif Abdurraqb. Many of the essays are reviews of rap, hop hop, emo (yes) and other music genres I am largely unfamiliar with; Abdurraqb ties the music reviews with observations of his life and modern America through the eyes of an African-American man. I bogged down in the music reviews, but caught the other essays, including "My First Police Stop" and "They Will Speak Loudest of You After You've Gone." Just superb writing. And thanks to Abdurraqb, I am now introduced to Chance, the Rapper and his most excellent release Coloring Book.  (Yes, Anne Konarski Anderson, you read it here first!) Because I didn't finish every essay, I'm not adding this to my list, but I came damn close. 

Warren continues to shoulder the household, the Symphony, and me. Not to mention run to the library as reserved books become available. My love and appreciation of him are boundless. 

My Laura Ingalls Moment

This is a photo from the summer of 1958, when our hometown celebrated its sesquicentennial. There were several days of parades and pageants celebrating our community's humble pioneer beginnings. Men grew beards and women dressed in sunbonnets and full-skirted dresses.

I'm the child on the left, waiting while my mother adjusts my outfit. I am holding hands with Kathy, who was a few years older and the oldest daughter of my mother's best friend. Kathy looks adorable. I am pouting.

I posted this photo on Facebook in response to cousins asking about another family sesquicentennial photo, one which I could also explain.

Margo pounced on my post immediately. She saw what I had not seen in all the decades I have had that picture:

Of course it was my friend Margo who responded immediately. Margo with whom I have had long discussions about the Little House books, ranging from "what about toilets?" (Caroline Fraser addressed that burning question in her new, absolutely sublime biography of Wilder: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder) to shaking our head over Pa scarfing down pancakes and bacon with the Wilder boys while Ma and the girls starved during the long, hard winter. Margo, my Little House comrade in arms.

Clearly some things are just meant to be. 

An Update From Laid-Up Land

I am six days out from my surgery to repair a torn tendon in my right foot. The surgery went very well. It remains to be seen whether I undid the surgery when I took a hard fall in the middle of the night two days later, coming down full force on my poor foot. The medical professionals told me that in 95% of the cases, no damage is done, but I have to wait several weeks until I am in physical therapy for them to assess whether I am in that unlucky 5%.

Other than that, recovery has gone well. Due to my tendency to bruise easily (courtesy of myeloma and lots of treatment), I am covered in bruises, including, to my dismay, several around my left knee where the compression sock that one is advised to wear ends. I get around with a hands-free crutch and a knee caddy (a scooter) which my longtime friend Katrina advised me to get. I don't know if that is the best advice Katrina has ever given me, but it certainly ranks high on the list!

For the first few days post-surgery, my dear sister-in-law Margaret was here to keep me company. That was a godsend in more than one way. She and I are very close and I relish any opportunity to spend time with her. She was also invaluable in that Warren had rehearsals, an educational session, and a concert that were scheduled months before my surgery and could not be scrubbed. Margaret kept me company while Warren took care of those matters; she even took me to the post-fall medical appointment so I could be assessed.

Warren, of course, is doing yeoman's duty taking care of the household, taking care of the Symphony, and taking care of me. I worry about adding to his load, which is never light, but he dismisses my concerns. I will admit: it is very hard to be this constrained.

And there have been visitors to break up the quiet: Tonya, Cindy, Roger. I even hosted Poetry Night on Monday.

So what am I doing in the rest of my leisure time? Reading, of course. Here are the titles I have finished since my last post:
18. Mathilda by Roald Dahl (anarchy at its best. I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts to ban Dahl's book)
19. Grant by Ron Chernow (a masterful biography of Ulysses Grant; I was convinced after finishing it that he is our most underrated president ever)
20. This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jenkins (another entry from the reading list of women of color authors; superb writing guaranteed to make you think not just twice but three or four times)
21. Heart Berries by Teresa Marie Mailhot (a heart wrenching, gut wrenching memoir by an indigenous author who weaves together her tribal history, family history, and personal history into this telling)
22. Feel Free by Zadie Smith (essays by a powerful writer, also one of the titles on the women of color reading list)
23. Ariel/The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath (thank you again, Frieda Hughes, for rescuing your mother from frozen martyrdom. Hughes's strong, deftly written preface explains the layout of the original British edition of Ariel, the original US edition of Ariel, and the differences thematically and chronologically between those editions (laid out by Ted Hughes) and Ariel as laid out in complete manuscript by Plath)

I am in the middle of a most unlike nonfiction work called The Lost City of the Monkey God.  I kid you not.

Life will change again this Friday when I go into a cast. It will still be non-weight bearing, so I will still be reliant on the crutch and the scooter. Next Tuesday I hope to return to work. I will not be in the schools for several more weeks, but this will at least put me back in the mix.

One step (well, one hop, or one scoot) at a time.

Updates: Books and Money

Back at the start of January, I wrote about money and what I thought 2018 would hold both in terms in income and outgo. Well, January is two days behind us and here is where things stand.

Combined groceries and household (soap, sandwich bags, shampoo) for January; $159.44. Of that, $147.60 represents food, $11.84 is what we spent on household items. So I came in under the $175.00 a month I dreamed about but was skeptical I would hit.

The surprise item was eating out. I commented in that earlier blog that we rarely ate out, which is true. That being said, we ate out twice (one lunch, one breakfast) in January. Those meals, along with two post-chemo fast food stops (so we both can get some lunch in us before Warren heads back to his office and I head home to unwind) and a cup of tea with a friend at a local coffee shop, came to a whopping $44.14 ($4.00 of which represented tips). Holy smokes! For us, that's a huge amount. (I'm not being facetious. That is a huge amount for us for a month, unless we are on the road to/from Mayo.)

However, I can say with pretty good certainty that the February figure for eating out (including take out) will be significantly less because in the last two weeks we also got to the bottom of my foot issues.  The MRI revealed a badly torn peroneal tendon in my right foot (it's around the ankle). Next Thursday I go into surgery to have it repaired. I will be housebound and non-weight bearing for a week, then back at work and non-weight bearing for three more weeks, and then in a weight bearing boot for another three to four weeks after that. There's not going to be a whole lot of coffee dates, let alone lunch or dinners out. (Let's face it: there will be ZERO coffee dates during that time!)

I'm glad the food costs in January were so low, because I have already shelled out a lot of money for doctor appointments, equipment, and my 2018 out of pocket (met) and personal deductible (almost met) for my medical insurance. Ouch.

Good thing there are books. Because reading is what I plan on doing that week I am housebound. Since posting my first ten titles of 2018, I have added to the list. To wit:
11. The Cliff Walk by Don J. Snyder (Subtitled A Memoir of a Job Lost and a Life Found, this was a reread)
12. Corazon de Hojalata/Tin Heart by Margarita Saona (the author's poems about her heart failure and eventual transplant, in Spanish and English)
13. So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (Read. This. Book. This is one of the 46 titles by women of color I referenced in my last book post)
14. Elmet by Fiona Mozeley (a deftly written, disturbing modern tale set in Yorkshire)
15. Planting Dandelions: Field Notes From a Semi-Domesticated Life by Kyran Pittman (quirky essays by a writer I first met in the pages of Good Housekeeping)
16. Reset: My Fight For Inclusion and Lasting Change by Ellen Pao (Pao fought her termination by a major Silicon Valley venture capital firm; although her lawsuit for gender discrimination was not successful, I read this book thinking "yeah, you lost the battle but you have made major offensive progress in the war.")

After finishing Pao, I started the massive (MASSIVE) tome, The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume I: 1940-1956.  For someone like me, who has read most if not all of the Plath biographies, having her letters published without extensive editing and suppression, has been a revelation. Kudos to Frieda Hughes, the daughter and only surviving child of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, for releasing this collection, which takes Sylvia from childhood to her marriage to Hughes. I feel like I am reading and hearing a Sylvia Plath whom I could only catch glimpses of before. Just reading her letters to Ted after their secret marriage gave me a whole new perspective on and appreciation of just how much in love they were and how from the outset they were each other's critics and editors.

The Plath letters weighed in at 1339 pages (not counting the introduction and forward). The book is so imposing and heavy that when I accidentally dropped it on my foot (my left foot, fortunately, not the right), I limped around for 20 minutes.

I finished Plath last night, bringing my 2018 totals to 17. I am two-thirds of the way through Matilda, by Roald Dahl. I have read very few of Dahl's books, including this one, so this has been fun. And as I type out these words, I know that there are three books at the library just waiting to be picked up and two more en route (from branches) that should be in later today or tomorrow. That should get me to the surgery next week and into my convalescence.

Onward to February!

Privilege

Privilege.

Writer Roxane Gay defines it as "the right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor...Privilege is relative and contextual. Few people [in this country] have no privilege at all." (From her essay "Peculiar Benefits, in her book Bad Feminist (2014).) Daniel J. Beal defines it as "a group of unearned cultural, legal, social, and institutional rights extended to a group based on their social group membership. Individuals with privilege are considered to be the normative group, leaving those without access to this privilege invisible, unnatural, deviant, or just plain wrong." (Beal, "Conflict and Cooperation in Diverse Workgroups," 2009.)

I work in a court and see privilege played out in many different ways. I have presented workshops on implicit bias, the kissing cousin of privilege, several times (and will be doing so at a state conference with a co-facilitator in March). That being said, I am like many privileged people in that I swallow hard when I am in a group and someone makes a statement smacking of privilege. While I know I should speak up, I too often don't speak up because I am too uncomfortable and don't want to rock the boat.

So I was both stunned and pleased when I rocked the boat at a recent training session.

The training session was on domestic violence and mediation: how to screen for it, how to address it, what precautions a mediator may need to take if the dynamics of the mediation take a turn for the worse. The facilitator, a well-known and experienced mediator in Columbus, was talking about items in a mediation room that could be turned into weapons, such as metal travel mugs. She related the story from many years ago when she had a young mother with an infant and a worker from Children's Services in the room. The agency worker went to take the child from the mother. The mother was not aware this was happening at the mediation (nor was the mediator). In response, the mother picked up a chair and threw it at the agency worker. Our facilitator assured us the chair did not hit anyone (including the infant) but that she was always careful after that as to what was in the room. She also related that, many years later, she still felt she had failed at that mediation by not making it a safe space for anyone, including the mother.

A few minutes later, an attendee, a woman attorney, spoke up and said the mediator should not consider it a failure. Perhaps she had saved the child from a terrible life. And if nothing else, "the mother showed her true colors in the mediation," said the attendee.

We were all quiet for a moment. I was uncomfortable. But instead of swallowing my discomfort as I so often do, I spoke up.

"I don't think the mother showed her 'true colors' at all," I said. "I'm not sure I would be calm and in control if Children's Services suddenly took my child during a meeting and I wasn't expecting it. Losing control wouldn't make me a bad parent." 

All of us in the room were white, well educated (all but one of us were attorneys), and not struggling with dire poverty. To my knowledge, none of us had had any children removed by an agency. Those are all privileges that the long ago mother may not have had, or may have had some but not all of them.

Privilege is everywhere. It is not inherently evil, just as implicit biases are not inherently evil. But when it raised its head in that training, I'm grateful I found the resolve to say something.

A statement I keep in my office is "speak the truth, even if your voice shakes." I'm learning.

Books And More Books

Books 8, 9, and 10 on the list below. 

I have a friend, a constant reader, who keeps a log of every book she has read. The log, or at least the recent years of it, is on her iPhone, so when we are discussing a book, she can pull up the title and author. And I have met others, always women, who have kept book logs, also going back years, in notebooks or special journals. I admire the thoroughness of recording the reading life, but I always think, "Holy Smokes, I'd have to have a whole bookshelf set aside just for journals of what I have read!"

This is on my mind because I have several friends who set themselves a challenge this year of reading 50 books. Occasionally, they post on Facebook or Instagram how they are doing in the challenge.

I love people committing to reading and give them thumbs up when I see that happening.

Seeing all these reading challenges got me thinking about how much I read a year. I confess: I am a voracious reader. I am one of those people who grew up reading the backs of cereal boxes to have something to read since we weren't allowed to bring books to the table. Reading is my go-to activity whenever I have downtime. Reading is how I spend a huge portion of my evenings. I also read very, very fast, so finishing several books a week is not unusual for me.

So how many books a year do I read? More than I think? Or way less than I think?

I'm not joining a challenge, but I am going to keep track of the books I read (and reread, because I often reread books when I am waiting for selected titles to come in at the library)  in 2018. Here's my list current to date:
1. Adams by David McCollough ( A reread)
2. Babbit by Sinclair Lewis (A reread)
3. Dear Martin by Nic Stone (Excellent YA novel about race and perception of race)
4. John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul Nagel (After reading Adams again, I wanted to read more about John Quincy Adams. Fascinating man.)
5. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (Best. Wilder. Biography. Ever.)
6. Ordinary Resurrections by Jonathan Kozol (A reread of a book by someone I admire greatly)
7. The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America by Edward Ayers (Wow wow wow. A history from 1862-1902 told through the lenses of two communities, Chambersburg PA and Staunton VA, using letters, newspaper editorials, and diaries from members of those communities, including African-Americans who fought for the Union. It was excellent, with a thoughtful analysis of the political positions of the major parties and players and how those changed after the 1864 presidential election and the lost promise of Reconstruction with Andrew Johnson in the White House following the assassination of Lincoln. At some point sooner than later, I will read the author's companion book, In The Presence of Mine Enemies, The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1869-1864.)
8. Halsey Street by Naima Coster (An excellent debut novel that I learned of because I am reading through the titles on the list 46 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2018.)
9. When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele (The authors with other women founded the BLM movement because, as they make abundantly clear in their work, Black lives don't matter in this country. Even more so since January 20, 2107. This too came from the list of 46 Books referred to in 8.)
10. Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt For The Lost Franklin Expedition by Paul Watson (Because what could be fascinating than a search for a lost Arctic expedition from 1845? I mean, seriously!)

I just finished Ice Ghosts last night and need to head back to the library, where more titles are waiting to be picked up. I have another nine on hold, several from the 46 books list referred to above. If I don't make it today, I will no doubt reread something around the house and add it to the list.

To be continued.

Small Moment

We have been in a lockdown deep freeze for much of the last two weeks, so my time outside is limited. But that doesn't mean I can't experiment with the new camera inside. These are a few of the small items I keep on my desk.

This pig has been part of my life forever. It probably belonged to my mom or one of her siblings, maybe even my grandmother, before I got my hands on it in grade school. It has traveled back and forth across this country more times than I like to think about. I keep it as a visual reminder that money isn't everything and being frugal helps.

The rocks are from Lake Superior, a wonderful trip Warren and I took several years ago. The seashell? Just one I have had for a long time because I like how it looks.

I bought this Frida Kahlo/Day of the Dead figurine in Portland on one of my trips there. I loved the combination of the watermelon and the parrot. And seeing her grinning at me each time I sit down to type reminds me of this favorite quote by Sir Francis Bacon: "Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand—and melting like a snowflake."

Not that the snow outside is melting at all.

Part of the learning curve with the new camera is the focus, which is not unlike life itself. Each time I pick the camera up, I have to think about my focus and what I am looking to see. Each day I wake up, I have to think about my focus and what I am looking to do.

Sometimes life imitates art after all.