My Brain On Books XXXVIII

 

   

 

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. 

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges that don't require a separate post..   

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

My new folding camper rocker which will be an integral part of thons from now on.

 

It is supposed to rain off and on the whole thon but unless it is below 50 degrees and/or the rain is being driven in under the porch awning I will try to spend some daylight time out here.  Other times I have the beanbag chair, the rocker and the couch/bed.  Also the mini-tramp if listening to audio.

I never got to sit outside.  It rained all day and was also windy and thus chilly with occasional blasts of rain under the awning.

1:44 AM - Time to eat again

And therefore time to listen to another disc of A Sudden Light by Garth Stein.  See below at update 5am.


12:22 AM - oops! my Kindle Fire shut down in the middle of a sentence

The Closing of the Western Mind
 by Charles Freeman

I was 11 screens from the end of the chapter I'd been reading for over an hour when my screen blinked black and powered off.  Ugh.  I hate when that happens.

I don't typically spend over an hour with a NF (except memoirs and biographies and books about writing craft or creativity.  Well maybe true crime and some investigative journalism that has a throughline as compelling as a novel) but this one was slow reading as it is so dense with quotes and references to other texts--and dates! Not to mention detailed presentations of the various arguments made by the early theologians of Christianity between Jesus and Constantine, including the influence made on them by Judaism and the Hellenistic philosophers.  Lots of things to keep straight.

I wouldn't have persevered if the book wasn't due tomorrow (well today now) probably before I wake from my post thon stupor.  I did not want Libby to snatch it from me before I'd finished that chapter or I'd probably have to reread it on my next turn. It was over 80 screens long!

This is the latest book on my currently reading shelf related to my obsessive decades long study of Comparative Cosmology which is the overarching concept that includes: Theology, History of Christianity (and other world religions and spiritual paths), Sacred Texts, Anthropology, Philosophy, Psychology, Quantum Physics and Mythology.


7:44 PM - Back to Reading!

But first food!  So back to the audio of A Sudden Light by Garth Stein while i fix and eat.  See below at 5am.


5:00 PM - Into the mystic

Savage Beauty
by Nancy Milford

Subtitled: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

I've been reading this one for several months and am still only about 15% in.  In this sitting I reached the point where she was 'discovered' at age 20 after submitting  a remarkably mature poem to a national contest in 1912.  It was her poem Renascence and after many pages of a play by play of that year in which lines from what she considered her first mature poem had been teased throughout the narration, the entire poem was presented in full. 

I was blown away.  I also got a lesson in how to read a poem.  Or maybe a reminder.  I tend to try to speed read but poems are not meant to be read that way.  Rather they need to be read mindfully, savoringly, and with careful attention to grammar, punctuation, image and metaphor.  I had to keep backtracking to pick up the thread again because I kept missing the signals (mostly punctuation) that indicated what phrase or image was referencing which previous phrase or image in order to complete a thought, an action, a comprehension... 

Missing these signals changes the meaning or throws the mind into confusion like being lost in a maze.  But once it all clicks into place...  WOW. 

I'm not proficient at reading poetry.  I'm too impatient maybe.  But on the random occasions when I manage to connect to one it always changes me.  This is no exception.  As i finally finished after nearly an hour on the poem alone, I exclaimed in my head: OMG she's a modern mystic.  How did I not know that?

Go find a copy and read it.  Better yet get this book and read also about her childhood and the influences on her writing of her experiences and her relationships with her parents and sisters and journals.  Yes, journals.  She named them and spoke to them as if in conversation with a person.  Not just a person but a beloved.

I have a feeling I won't be dilly-dallying my way through the rest of this book.

I will also be looking for a collection of her poetry very soon.

How did I not know she was a mystic?  I became drawn to mysticism in the mid to late 90s during my explorations into Comparative Cosmology.  Milly is the most modern one I've encountered so far.  Unless I missed the signals when I did encounter them, which is quite possible especially if I encountered them before my exposure to the Medieval Mystics during my Comparative Cosmology studies.

Oh my!  I think I need to return to the poets I discovered in my late teens and twenties two decades before my comparative studies and encounter with the concept of mysticism.  Emily Dickenson, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman...

There were others.  Mostly women writing in the 1900s and several publishing in the decades before and after my high school graduation.  I can't remember any other names in this moment but I'm raring to go seek them out somehow.

So poetry is apparently a form of mindfulness!

Just had that thought as something in me made the connection with something I read hours early in The True  Secret of Writing.

Something in me wants to apologize for getting off track but then I rebel against that because this is how I encounters with words and story and ideas affects me.  This is my brain on books!


2:00 PM - Sit Walk Write

The True Secret of Writing
by Natalie Goldberg

I'm about one third thru this after two weeks.  The secret can be summed up by three words understood in the context of Zen:

•  Mindfulness
• Non-Judgement
• Practice (Sit Walk Write)

12:00 PM - Next...

If it Bleeds

by Stephen King

I moved on from the Stein audio at 7AM.

Usually I would spend the next several hours after being immersed in a novel reading NF, spending 15-30 minutes in each of several.  But because of what happened this morning when I accidently opened a Stephen King book on my cell phone while preparing to sleep, I was eager to return to the novella that kept me awake until an hour before the official start of the thon.  Sigh.

I returned to the last novella in the collection, Rat, which was another of Kings exploration of a writer's mind and the bargains they are willing to make to succeed.

Since I'd finished my first coffee and my breakfast of yoghurt, cottage cheese and blueberries I moved from the rocking chair where I'd listened to the A Sudden Light for two hours over to the beanbag where I immersed in Rat for forty or so minutes before I started struggling to keep my eyes open.  So I moved back to the rocker for another half hour or so until yet again the drowse began to take me.  I developed a stitch in my side, a crick in my neck and twinges in my hip from the way I was slouching in my chair.  So I moved to the couch which is also my bed but I was sitting on it like a couch until at some point I wasn't.  I didn't notice the time I surrendered to a nap but it was probably after 9:30 and possibly after 10:30.  I woke at 11:11 when my cell alarm went off.  It is one that goes off every day to remind me to check in with myself and ask certain questions, like:

• have you hydrated in the last two hours?
• have you taken your meds and/or supplements?
• Is it past time to have something to eat?
• Is it past time to get up and move about?
  

Lately because of not sleeping well or much at all the main question it is asking is: Shouldn't you be awake already? Today it startled me into asking: Aren't you supposed to be reading?  Can't you even stay awake for Stephen King?  Oh far have the mighty fallen?

i got up and fixed a second coffee and sat in the rocker reading Rat off my cell for at least another hour.  I'm used to reading a King novella in one sitting so it was very frustrating to have it broken up like that.  It makes it difficult to hold it in my mind like the faceted gem it usually is.

5:00 PM - Starting with:

A Sudden Light
by Garth Stein

I read The Art of Racing in the Rain after seeing the movie last spring and fell in love with both.  Like that one, this one is set in the Seattle area of Washington state which I visited many times in my childhood.  But that is only one of the draws.  Both books also have elements of mysticism and/or magical realism.  This one might be a ghost story unless those elements are related to the use of gaslighting techniques by one or more characters on the rest.  The POV narrator is a 14 year old boy forced to join his father on a cross country trip to meet his grandfather whom his father has been estranged from for 23 years.  The dynamics of these two father/son relationships (both dysfunctional) interact.  The boy begins to understand that the grandfather has Alzheimer's and his father and his aunt who he's also never met and who is the grandfather's caregiver are on a mission to gain power of attorney so they can sell the mansion and acres of forest it sits on so they can afford to put their father in a nursing home and still have a significant inheritance.  He hears them speaking about 'developing' the land.  Also about a curse on the property and family because the family riches had been gained by exploiting the land during the era of the timber barons.  

This is first because it is an audio book on CD and for the first hour I'm awake my eyes are gluey and I'm at risk of falling back to sleep if I don't stay active.  So I will turn it on and listen while I make coffee and while I continue to prepare my beanbag chair for occupancy.  It became a fiber collector the last few weeks--from clothes to bedding to yarn and fiber WIP.  I was going to finish that project before I slept but ran out of time if I was going to get a solid sleep before 5.  

Yeah, right.  Fat chance!  Good intentions and all that.  Instead of clearing off the beanbag I sat on the edge of the bed and organized my ebook library on my cell.  It was suppose to be calming and make me sleepy.  I was suppose to be moving to the top several shelves the dozen or so books I was most interested in encountering in the next 24 hours.  At some point I accidently opened a Stephen King.  It was the If it Bleeds anthology.  I had left off some months ago with one novella left to read and of course I started reading.  Next thing I knew I had one hour left for sleep.  I turned off the cell and the light and settled in to try to catch a nap at least.  But all I did was lay there anticipating the alarm.  Ugh.  It could be a long day.  Coffee will be my friend.  Would it be wrong to take an extra Adderall?  Probably.  Maybe I'll just use coffee until around the 12 hour mark. Sometime between 4 and 6 this afternoon and then take he one Adderall. Ah well.  Times wasting...

4:44 AM - Intro Meme

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Kelso Washington USA.  Across the Cowlitz river from Longview where I grew up and had been living with my elderly mother between January 2013 and late July 2021.  I moved into my 400 square foot efficiency unit in late July 2021.  This  post was a photo essay of my new space.

So this is my 10th thon in my own home, counting the Reverse Thons in August 2021 & 2023 & 2024.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Non-Fiction: Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford (a biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Fiction: A Cautious Traveler's Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Savory: Jalapeno Poppers

Sweet: Coconut Bites (with Goji, Cranberry, Chia seeds and Chocolate

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

• My Mother died Thursday evening.  If there are any family events taking place over the next 24 hours I will have to set aside thon activities but for whatever hours of this 24 that I'm alone I will read and update.  The grief is still fresh but reading is one of the ways I process strong emotion and sitting and stewing won't help.  I may return to one of the books that helped me through the loss of my husband 4 years ago last month.
• Widowed September 2020  It still smarts at unexpected moments.  But at least it is usually only once or twice a month now instead of constantly.  
• Began living alone for the first time ever three years ago July. Sometime in the last few months it began to feel like home.
• Legally blind with RP aka tunnel vision.  Have only a sliver of vision left in center of right eye.  The rest is shadows and shimmers.
• Have struggled with mood disorder of Anxiety and Depression and insomnia since grade school
• Diagnosed with high functioning autism in 2015.  In my 50s!
• Have a caregiver who comes in four days a week to help with chores and errands I can't do alone. 
• I proved during this move that I have more volume in fiber art supplies than in clothes by at least thee times.
• I probably have double the volume of clothes in tree-books but since I still haven't got them all moved over I can't be sure.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

This is my 38th thon so there aren't many variations I haven't tried. 

Doing anything but especially reading or writing for a full 24 hours used to be my superpower but not so much anymore.  Now that I'm in my mid sixties the price I pay for that self abuse is significant as all my systems are less forgiving. 

Because of my vision issues I have always considered that the only metric on which I could compete as I'm now such a slow reader.  But I've discovered that I can rack up an impressive number of books dipped into in 24 hours.  I like to read a chapter each in 4 to 6 NF in an hour and then spend an hour immersed in a novel.

Ah but the ONE thing that I could do different that could make a lot of difference in the quality of the experience is to do a better job than in the past of staying hydrated.  But nearly equal to that in impact would be to get briefly active at least once every two hours.  But this isn't the first time I've set that intention.  Let's hope I do a better job at it this time.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

Read more...

One Last Time

 

Mom Summer 2023
age 91

My Mom has been in home hospice since Saturday.  She had been in the hospital for a week while they tried to figure out why she had suddenly started choking and then aspirating while attempting to swallow.  They never figured it out definitively other than to suspect it was neurological; possibly a mini stroke that went unnoticed or another degenerative condition.  She's almost 93 now and has been in a slow decline since her fall last Thanksgiving week when her bones announced they would no longer bear her weight and her foot nearly broke off her ankle.  She has been completely bedridden ever since.

They had to give up trying to help her last Wednesday because everything they tried to treat one condition created or worsened another.  The aspirating created pneumonia, then she went into a-fib because lack of nutrition caused potassium deficiency but she couldn't tolerate the potassium infusion.  Then her oxygen levels started dropping.  All the testing was also hard on her.  So my sister and the doctors in consultation with Mom decided it was time to switch to palliative care and home hospice.

Yesterday she was pressing her lips together to refuse all but ice chips.  Today she became nearly completely unresponsive and her breathing sounded like gurgles.  Half an hour ago I got a text from my sister that her breathing has started going into long pauses.  I am beside myself with sadness and feeling more than usually trapped by being a shut-in separated from her by a river and maybe two miles by bird flight but at least six by car.

Then it crossed my mind that what I needed to do was write.  But journaling was not going to cut it.  I remembered how I used to be able to take moments like this to my blog as easy as breathing.  So I decided to repost the Mother's Day Musing poem one last time under whatever musing I need to do about what is happening right now.  At first I balked thinking 'Don't make this about you.'  Yet even tho it is about her it is also about our Mother/Daughter relationship and thus about my grief.

I got to visit her in the hospital last Thursday when she was still alert part of the time.  She's been aphasiac since her stroke in 2008 but she had a few words and phrases.  For the last couple years she seems to have enjoyed listening to me talk about my crochet.  We bonded around crochet because she taught me.  Twice. The first time my senior year of high school when I made two afghans for Home Ec.  But I didn't really take to it then.  The second time was in 2009 about six months after her stroke when she didn't yet have much of her language back.

When my Dad died in 2005 I'd found a crocheted bookmark in one of his books and I asked Mom if she'd made it.  But she said no and thought it had probably been Grandma Thelma.  She told me I could have it.  I asked if she could teach me to make one.  She said yes.  But I was packing to go back home to the Rogue Valley Oregon so we promised we would on the next visit.  But we had not done it yet before her stroke.  She still had nearly zero words tho.  So she took the hook and thread and had me watch her make the chain and put the first stitch in and then complete the row.  Each row was twelve double crochet creating a single shell stitch.  Then she took it out and handed it to me and watched me try.  And try and try.  She shook her head no if I wasn't doing it right and nodded when I finally did.

So I got to see her at her house again on Monday and she was still responsive enough to know I was there and managed to stay awake as I chattered on about my crochet WIPS.  Whenever I paused too long she would say 'Uh huh'  until I started up again.  I ran out of things to say about my current crochet and then hit on the Jimmy Carter memoirs I've been reading since January.  So many.  But it wasn't the memoirs I wanted to tell her about.  I asked if she remembered President Jimmy Carter and she said 'Yes!'  very emphatic and I swear there was an actual smile in her tone.  So I told her he had just had his 100th birthday October 1st and had been in home hospice for over a year. She said several times, 'Oh My!  Oh My!'  Then I said 'He was a Sunday school teacher before he ran for office.  And she said, 'Yes!'  In a way I knew she was all there and remembering the Carter years clearly.

That was probably my last true conversation with my Mama.  Tuesday she barely acknowledged she understood I was there and could not stay awake.  There were no 'Uh huh' only 'Mmm hmmm'

Today I asked my sister not to try to get a response.  Forcing her to consciousness meant forcing her to suffer the pain.  I just wanted to sit with her and the family that was there.  To give and receive support form each other.

______________________________________
At just after 9:30pm, half an hour after the message that her breathing had gone into long pauses, I got the message that she is gone.  And that my brother and his wife are on the way from Portland.  My sister asked if I'd like to come sit with them and I said yes.  So now I need to get ready to go.  So I can't take time to edit this now.  Maybe I will later tonight when I get back home and add a postscript while I'm at it.

Meanwhile enjoy my Mother's Day poem photo essay honoring Mom.  It's a repost from way back.

A Mother's Day Musing

by Joy Renee

Have you ever noticed,
while flipping the pages
in a family photo album,
how often
mothers seem to not be
in the picture?

Even though we all know,
if we consider for just
one moment,
that every breath

every bite

every step

and every bright
smile

depends on her
involvement.


Maybe it's because
she was the one
taking the picture
or so busy making
stuff happen
or just
making stuff--
from matching outfits

to fully outfitted
snowmen


from flapper dresses

to wedding dresses


from birthday cakes


to wedding cakes;

picnics,

stage props,

rag curls,

curly tops,

smart bow ties

and...

matching eyes.

There needs to be,
don't you agree,
more than one day
each year when
the one who makes
it all happen,
who makes home
feel like home,
who frames all the pictures
of our earliest
memories,
is given her rightful
place
right in the middle
of the picture?

Read more...

Being Schooled and Groomed by My Church Nearly Doomed Me

Not the Lamb in This Story

It's time.

I've known for years now that the reason I fail to maintain regular posting here every time I set out to revive my blog is that I've been shielding too much of my whole true self.  There are too many topics I've made taboo.  Yet they are the topics that I spend most of my time thinking about, writing about, reading about and watching or listening to media about.  If I were to lift the taboos off myself I've got enough material in my daily life to post something meaningful to me nearly every day.  But I just can't stay motivated to prep the safe posts that used to be enough for me.

Safe is shallow.

Safe is boring.

Safe is irrelevant to both myself and what's left of my audience. 

But I have a story to tell that is relevant to current events.  So in spite of still feeling constrained by the taboos (some self inflicted and some specters of childhood) I'm also feeling called to contribute to the conversation that is attempting to ensure our rights to continue having conversations on any topic we please.  Because if I stay silent and that right is lost I will have been complicit in that loss.

Yesterday I watched a YouTube vid by Rev Ed Trevors of the Parish of St Margaret of Scotland in Nova Scotia commenting on some statement made by Kirk Cameron suggesting that every Christian parent should be homeschooling.  Watch it here: Kirk Cameron v Public Schools.  I was moved to tears by his story of how he and his wife had considered the possibility of homeschooling but in the end opted to keep them in public school because the obligation to equip them to be adults in the world was equal to the obligation to keep them safe from exposure to unsavory topics.

I was crying not because there was anything emotional about his presentation but because the topic itself had triggered an ocean of inchoate feelings from the trauma inflicted by my own sheltered funde (Darby offshoot) childhood.  Being schooled and groomed by my church nearly doomed me. The homeschool craze hadn't started before I graduated but the five or six meeting hall events each week added to the many culture participation taboos added to the taboo against fellowshipping with Christians outside our sect and then encouraging us to choose unchurched kids to 'befriend' so we could 'lead them to Jesus' by quoting bible verses, inviting them to Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, all added up to social isolation.  That along with the indoctrination that ensured that I never learned to think for myself about any topic meant I was ill prepared for adulthood--even the trad wife role which was the only thing I was groomed for.

It also left me with no mental or emotional or social resources to turn to when a traumatic series of events imploded our sect with a fusillade of excommunications that split up families.  Since my father and my mother's twin sister's husband were on opposite sides my uncle limited their contact to about once a year for the last ten years of my aunt's life.  A cruelty I could not fathom. That plus all the other married sisters and all the cousins and all the close friends among children that were cut off just broke my heart.  Staying neutral was considered worse than choosing a side.  All wives and unmarried daughters were expected to follow their head of household's lead.

My husband favored neither side and had no interest in imposing a choice on me. He had been one of those unchurched friends I had in high school and only started attending various church functions with some Marine Corp buddies a couple years before we were married.  He was completely blindsided by what he had married into.  It wasn't until I'd confessed to him several years after the events that imploded our Assemblies that my studies had led me to identify 'the meetings' I'd been raised in as a cult and I no longer felt any affinity with their teachings that he confessed to me that he had withdrawn his heart from them within the first year or so of our marriage--essentially the first time someone behind the pulpit had relegated all members of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God to hell on the basis that their salvation was unreal because their doctrines were heresy.  His Grandmother had been a Sunday School teacher in an Assembly of God church.  That was the moment he was done with it. He kept his feelings and his thoughts to himself for decades out of deference to me.

Thus I was left to try to figure it out on my own.  I was leaning toward the side that seemed to me less mean spirited and a tad more permissive.  It also helped that it was the side my Dad favored.  But then I witnessed someone I loved and respected from that side discipling his infant son for 'inappropriate use of his voice' justifying it to me later with verses and the 'original sin' doctrine insisting it was a father's duty to break his child's will as early as possible.  He added that he was concerned that 'my heart for babies' was clouding my reason and leading me astray.   

His definition of 'loving father' made that phrase an oxymoron and when I tried to apply his concept of it to my Heavenly Father my brain and my heart broke and so did my faith. I was suicidal for half a year before I began to try to reconcile the shreds of my soul. It took me ten years to sort it out.  I read widely across the Dewey decimal system and learned to think for myself.  Something I gave myself permission to do after realizing all the Elders had forfeited their authority over me in light of the mess they had made.  I swore then to never submit my mind or my heart to any human authority over my relationship to God. 

The one thing I never lost was the Jesus in my heart. I can thank my Dad for that as he was the one who introduced me.  It is one of my earliest memories.  I was still in the crib and possibly not walking yet because I still had to hang on to the rail with at least one hand to not plop on my butt. He was singing little Sunday School songs and quoting verses and pantomiming the meaning with gestures and my stuffed lamb.  (not the lamb in the picture) The message was that Jesus was a good shepherd that loved his little lambs and I was Jesus's little lamb and he'd always hold me in his arms and he knew my name and my name was written on his hand and he wanted to live in my heart.  I think I got some of it confused for a time because at least for as long as I remained in the crib I thought my little lamb's name was Jesus.  But those concepts were written on my heart as deep as a computer's operating system.  To erase them would have erased me.   

When I laid my new foundation it was with Jesus' own words, the declaration that God is Love coupled with the definition that Love casts out all fear, and the list of the Fruits of the Spirt in Galations along with the admonition that 'By their fruits you shall know them..  I added to it later but only things that were fully compatible with those things.

My goal when I started studying outside the Bible and the approved doctrines was to find a new faith family but of the hundreds of sects I encountered in my studies of church history none met my fundamental criteria that dogma and doctrine MUST bow to the Fruits of the Spirit.  I cannot tolerate even being complicit in a group practicing bullying.   There is very very little in organized, hierarchical religious communities that does not favor power, authority, control and the use of fear over the fruits of the Spirit.

I have teetered on the edge of giving up identification with Christianity for awhile now because I do not see (especially here in America) any churches that reflect the Jesus in my heart.  All I see is bullies and insistence on certainty as the definition of faith.  But every time I'm about to slip over that edge I encounter someone like Rev Ed Trevors who reflects back to me the Jesus in my heart.

After well over a year of reading and contemplating I came to understand that faith had little to do with believing a set of doctrines or adhering to a set of taboos. This was the first key solving the paradox that almost broke me.   Faith is about confidence in the loving-kindness and mercy of my Creator and then living from that. If I am not letting my light shine from that place then all the bible verses I might quote are worthless hypocrisy. 

'By their fruits you shall know them' became my motto. And then the philosophy at the root of my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld.  I suspect my reluctance to break those self-imposed taboos is also what is keeping my stories and poems trapped on my hard drives.

This key--that faith is not related to certainty--broke me free from the fear that the loving gentle Jesus in my heart might just be an illusion, an imaginary friend or even a manifestation of Satan impersonating Jesus to keep me on the path of disobedience.  All among the explanations given me by those offering counsel during those years.

I have found only a small handful of Christian pastors, teachers or writers in my decades of exploration  that I can tolerate listening to. Rev Ed Trevors is one of them.  Encountering him over this past year has given me hope that I may yet find someone on my side of the continent that I can tolerate listening to or fellowshipping with without loosing myself. 

I get the sense that even tho he might not agree with some of the new understandings I've developed he would still accept me where I'm at without insisting I either conform or keep my thoughts to myself.  I can never again do either in any sustained relationship like church fellowship requires.  In fact I've come to understand I don't need a big faith family..  Just one or two of like mind would be enough and fulfills Jesus' promise to be present if two or three are gathered in His name. 

I rarely comment on social media but after I got the emotions triggered by dark memories under control I was filled with gratitude just to know there are Christian fathers out there that encourage their children to learn to think for themselves.  It gives me hope.

I decided that warranted reaching out to thank the one who had given me many occasions over the past year to be grateful for encounters with someone who models Christianity in a way I can still identify with.  Then I found myself sharing my story in more detail and more candidly than I ever had here and when I found myself barely hesitating to post that comment, I realized it was time.

It has been 30 years this November since the incident that nearly broke me.  That baby now has two babies of his own and is 7 years younger than I was then. Until 2015 I'd maintained fairly good and semi-open relationships with my siblings and most of my extended family in spite of my refusing to attend church.  Then in 2016 it became obvious that I'd have to cloak over 80% of my true self while in their presence to preserve harmony (and at that time a roof over my head) which is a lonely place to be.  Even lonelier than living alone as a widow.

That brings me to the relevance of my story to current events.  It was when I learned that the Evangelicals were endorsing Trump in 2016 that I first began to feel alienated from my identity as Christian.  It was getting harder and harder to feel at home in that identity because the Jesus in my heart did not feel at home in that identity as it was being modeled all over the media.  NONE of the fruits of the Spirit were being exhibited.  Instead of Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Mercy, Kindness, Compassion, Moderation and Hope I saw instead a passion for Power, Control, Riches, Hate and Vengeance.

One of the things I was grateful for as I studied the history of the Church and it's relation to the state from the time of Constantine to the framing of our Constitution was that the Elders in my sect had not had weapons to use on each other and their flock or the power of the state to back their use of beatings, imprisonment or execution.  Nor did they have the right to invade our homes to confiscate forbidden media or to deny those they deemed heretic the necessities of life--jobs, food, homes, dignity, healthcare.  But that is the aim of those behind Project 2025. Which I began reading about a month ago.  I am unlikely to finish it's 900 pages before the election so any review I might produce at that time would not be useful in preventing it's implementation.  So I intend to start sharing my journey through it in other ways.

That is just one book of many with relevance to this topic that are in my currently reading or recently finished lists.  I think I'm going to start treating all of them more like I treat the books I read during the readathon (see My Brain on Books posts). By that I suppose I mean less formality, more reflection than review and spiced with elements of my personal story whenever it sheds light on the relevance of subject or story to me. Also sharing more than one book in a single post when they seem to be in conversation with each other.  I will do the same with other media.

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My Brain On Books XXXVII - Reverse Thon

   

 

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. 

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges that don't require a separate post..   

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

My new folding camper rocker which will be an integral part of thons from now on.

4:44 PM (Saturday) Wrap up

So I lost about 5 hours to sleep and another one or two to post sleep confusion but still I read in a total of 14 books in the last 24 hours.  5 in the first 12 hours and another 9 in the last 5 hours.

The following are the 9 from today:

Attack from Within

by Barbara McQuade

A breakdown on the use of disinformation, misinformation and propaganda in the media and politics.  Explains how to identify it and guard your mind against it's influence.  Analyses it's danger to democracy because of it's effect of muddying the waters of political discourse so that citizens are so polarized they can no longer communicate effectively across the divide due to there no longer being any agreement on what a fact.  McQuade also talks about how the current business model of media makes them complicit in the creation and perpetuation of this confusion

Medgar ad Myrlie

by Joy-Ann Reid

The story of Black rights activist Medgar Evers and his wife Myrlie who carried on his cause after his assassination.  It is an education in the history of the issues as well as a love story ad a portrait in courage.  Two portraits--unless Megar and Myrlie are both in the same frame.

The Chapter

by Nicholas Dames

A natural history of The Chapter as a literary and editorial device from antiquity to today.  The most interesting take away is how chapter division has come to create a sensation of time in our minds as we read.  And from there becomes the ubiquitous metaphor that trips off all our tongues: I'm starting a new chapter in my life.

Surprised by Oxford

by Carolyn Weber

A memoir about a young Canadian woman who went to Oxford to study Romantic Literature and there encountered the Gospel and enough compelling arguments in its favor that over the next several years she became convinced and committed to Christianity.  I still like this theme on two counts  One I never got to experience conversion since I was born into it and why does a fish need to be converted into believing doctrines about the necessity of water?  Two I'm still looking for my own Christian tribe as I still identify as Christian even tho 90% of the Christians I've personally encountered in my life would challenge me on that assumption.  When I think the thot, I'm a Christian in my head I always include a caveat.  Like:

• I'm a Christian but I'm not a bully
• I'm a Christian but I don't believe I have a right to force you to be one.
• I'm a Christian but I would still befriend a _______ without feeling the need to proselytize them
• I'm a Christian but won't go to church until I find one that will accept me just the way I am
• I'm a Christian but I'm also a feminist
• I'm a Christian but I don't believe in the inerrancy of scripture as that would define the God of the Old Testament as a genocidal malignant narcissist. 
  
• I'm a Christian but I don't believe in hell as that makes an oxymoron out of the phrase Loving Father.
• I'm a Christian but I trust the scientific method more than the 3000 year old sacred texts
• I'm a Christian but I won't let anyone whether from the pulpit, the government or my family tell me what I can or cannot read, listen to, watch, play, or love. I would even dance if I knew how.
• I'm a Christian but I'm a progressive liberal because my moral code is not defined by the ten commandments but by the Fruits of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Mercy, Temperance

So I still read memoirs like this and Christian apologetic along with the sacred texts of many other religions and their apologetics.

White Trash

by Nancy Isenberg

An intense investigation into the history of class in America and how it is perpetuated by policy and prejudice.  It is a stain on our national character as dark as that of slavery and yet another way in which our ideals as defined in the Constitution have not been fully realized.  our 'more perfect union' is still a work in progress but we can't make progress if we do not adequately define the problem.

Our Enemies Will Vanish

by Yaroslav Trofimov

Trofimov is an investigative reporter on the ground in Ukraine since the beginning of the war.  This is an eyewitness account of the first year of the current conflict.

Nine Black Robes

by Joan Biskupic

A narrative of the Supreme Court of the last decades as it swung inexorably to the right, focusing especially on the impact of the Trump era and how those changes reverberate into the future casting their shadow over and shackling even the present progressive leaning administration.

The Persuaders:

At the Front Lines of the Fight

 for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy

by Anand Giridharadas

Talks about the need for the art of persuasion for activists, politicians, educators and everyday citizens fighting for democracy in an era of polarization ruled by disinformation and rigid tribal thinking.  Giridharadas focuses especially on the propensity of individuals to just write off those who disagree with them when what is needed is more inclusion not less.  So how do you persuade without being a bully?  How to you contend with the disinformation that has formed the opinions you are trying to change?  How do you make human connection with those who have been primed to see you as the enemy?

Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership

by The Heritage Foundation

It touts itself as 'a comprehensive policy guide for the next conservative U.S. president' and brags that their previous editions were used for the first 100 days agendas in the administrations of Reagan, both Bushes and Trump. 

I don't have the stomach right now to describe what I'm seeing in here.  It gives me nightmares.  Google and read it for yourself.  Free copies are easy to find as well as free synopsis.  And finally in the last two weeks there has begun to be serious media coverage including influencers on social media.

12:22 PM (Saturday) Just Ugh

I'm not sure when I fell asleep exactly but my best estimate is between 4 and 5 AM.  I was counting on my 8:44 AM alarm to wake me but I forgot it doesn't go off on weekends.  Then I got woke by the doorbell at 10:30.  It was a registered letter from the State.  Due to an administrative error they have overpaid me on food stamps for over a year and now going forward will take back the overpayment from the lesser amount (assuming I continue to qualify for food stamps) at the rate of $10 a month for however long it takes to get back their $1400 and change.

It has taken me two hours to process this info and the range of emotions it triggered: fear and shame being the primary.  I guess there is some anger too but anger is a tricky emotion for me to recognize and process.  It was taboo in my upbringing so it tends to feed back into the fear and shame cycle.  Which feeds the anxiety and depression. Which makes focus on anything else hard.

I guess it is too bad I don't owe the state half a billion dollars in unpaid taxes as then I might be eligible to run for president.  

Ha.  That's snark!  That's not typical for someone on the spectrum.  Huh.  I used to be completely clueless with irony, satire and snark.  But I recognize that as some of that anger peeking around the corner.

This is probably inappropriate content for a read-a-thon post.  But it is part of my experience of the thon today.  I'm hoping that posting this will help me let go of the whirl of emotions and get back to reading for the 4 hours left of the thon.  It's not like there is much evidence of anyone seeing this anyway.

I know I said in the previous update that I'd have more to say about Familiaris today but I think I'll save it for an actual review after I finish the book.  I'd loose another hour of the thon to gather my thots.

Hmm.  I think I'll let the Kindle robot read to me while I fix and eat something as I've not eaten for close to twelve hours.  Unless the cream in my coffee counts.

12:34 AM (Saturday) - Just now about to post the 9:44 update

Familiaris

by David Wrobleski

I need to grab a high protein snack and maybe some caffeine and then I'm going to reward myself with a long immersive read in Familiaris by David Wrobleski.  But since I had only 5 hours sleep last night, chances are high I'll have to sleep before dawn and if that sleep catches me while reading I may have to wait until I wake to have anything coherent to say about it.  Tho I can say this much: this story lives up to the standard set by Wrobleski's first book, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.  This one is a prequel, telling the story of the founding of the family dog breeding farm and the creation of the special breed featured in Edgar's story.  There are mystical elements maybe even magical realism involved.  It begins just after WWI and I believe continues on to at least the beginning of WWII.  But I'm not sure as I've not peeked ahead.  I'm already 50% in on this nearly 900 page tome.  I could easily spend the rest of the thon trying to finish it but I'm also being called by all the titles on my Libby shelves (nearly 20) and also the borrowed via KU and Prime on my Kindle (another 30) and dipping into as many books as I can in a single day is one of my fav things to do and is also one metric I can still compete in during thons.

9:44 PM - First session dip into 4 NF

The Injustice of Place
by Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, Timothy J. Nelson

An examination of the root causes of poverty in America, tracing the cause and effect back centuries in some areas.  A few of them: cronyism, nepotism and outright corruption between local property and business owners and local office holders; embezzlement of public funds into the pockets by office holders and their family and friends often under the rubric of 'privatization' which is really siphoning off the public funds (local, state and federal) into local business and nonprofit claiming to provide the service the funds were meant for but really over 50% of the funds end up in the pockets of those running the organizations; stripping and or poisoning local resources including timber, minerals, soil and labor by non-local corporations sweeping in to build factories and other infrastructure at public expense with the promise of economic growth for generations only to abandon the community built around their business only a few decades later with degraded soil, water, air and a sickened population. 

American Idolatry

by Andrew L. Whitehead

An examination of the Christian Nationalism movement that now has the Republican party in its thrall.  Whitehead identifies three core beliefs of this movement that he believes conflict with the core message of the gospel: The wish and willingness to use power fear and violence to impose their doctrinal beliefs on everyone including their obsession to 'return' America to the Christian identity they claim the founding fathers created. Which is just objectively false based on the Constitution forbidding the establishment of an official religion at any level of government from federal to state to local. Several of the colonies had to rewrite their own local constitutions and by laws after the Revolution in order to be accepted into the Union.  The Boston Puritans anyone?

This is a topic that I've been reading obsessively in for decades.  Ever since I escaped the cult I was raised in in the 90s and shortly thereafter discovered the existence of this concerted effort on the part of powerful religious organizations and uber wealthy individuals to remake the entire nation into something resembling the cult I was raised in.  I've shied away from sharing my thots on this issue here (except for some of my personal story around losing my faith family) but this thon post will contain the opening salvos of my foray into sharing what I've learned about this movement and how close they are to reaching their goals and what that would likely mean for citizens lives going forward.

If you think this is hyperbole Google Project 2025 A Mandate for Leadership and read a synopsis if not the whole 900 page document from the Heritage Foundation which is their blueprint for how they will run every single government agency according to their version of biblical principles.  It is on my 'stack' for the thon (loaded on my Kindle) so I hope to share some thoughts about it before tomorrow evening.

Based on my personal experience with the sect I was raised in I know the viciousness of doctrinal disputes when only words and excommunication from the community are the available weapons. Our sect imploded on itself only two generations after it was founded.  We believed ourselves to be one big happy family. Or at least I believed that until I was 35. It took less than two decades to destroy, leaving behind a devastation of hundreds of intermarried families whose wives and children were forced to stand on the side their husband was on and forbidden to associate with any extended family members whose male head of household was on the other side.  That included my mother and her twin sister! But it was especially hard for the young children suddenly bereft of beloved relatives and friends.

I remember thinking at the time how fortunate it was that the Brethren did not have the power of Law or lethal weapons to enforce their rigid beliefs.  Project 2025 intends to have both.

Still not worried?  How will you feel when they close the libraries or pull all the books off the shelves that offend their 'Christian' sensitivities and replace them with material they approve of?  They are already experimenting at the local level all over the country by disrupting the meetings with obnoxious protestors wherever library funding or textbooks are being discussed for city, county or school libraries and where those with this agenda have achieved office they are already implementing some of it. (ie Governor Santis in Florida).

OK I guess I took this a little too far into the personal for a 'review' or 'synopsis' but that has always been hard for me to do--sound objective about whatever it is I'm reviewing.  I tend to have a passionate investment in nearly every book on my TBR or currently reading lists.  I think my attempt to dampen that passion for fear of offending is why I stopped reviewing and then let my blog lapse.  Because so much of what I really want to say on any topic I'm interested in doesn't feel safe.

We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I

by Raja Shehadeh

A portrait of a father/son relationship between activists for Palestinian rights under first British rule then Jordan and then Israel.  They seem to have the same passion but different ideas on how to achieve it.  Their personality styles clash and they communicate without listening.  So it wasn't until is father's murder in 1985 that Raja begins to learn who his father really was.

In telling this poignant story about their relationship, Shehadeh also explores the history of the Palestinian experience since WWII.  The focus seems to be more on the West Bank than elsewhere in Israel.  But I can't be sure since I'm only 2 chapters in.  It's a short book so I might finish it by thon end.

Secret Harvests

by David Mas Masumoto

A phone call alerts Masumoto, a peach grower in California, that his mother's 90 some year old aunt is still alive but in hospice in the institution her family had committed her to around the time of the WWII Japanese Internment camps.  He'd known his mother had a sister but he'd been led to believe she had died during the war though how had been left vague.  Family whispers said of her she had been off, some went so far as to say 'retarded'.  So this memoir is Masumoto's exploration into the double discrimination inflicted on his aunt (racial and disability) and how learning this family secret led him to explore his identity as a Japanese American and farmer and what motivated his family to continue to build their legacy in a land that did not want them.

Discrimination and the trauma it inflicts is one of my passions.  Another is ethnically diverse (from me) cultures from memoirs to novels to histories.  This is another short book that I just might finish before 5pm tomorrow.  Oh wait a minute.  Today!  I've spent three hours on this update so it is past midnight already.

6:00 PM - Almost ready to read

Didn't get this post prepped before my caregiver arrived this afternoon so had to wait until she left.  Way too busy going shopping for thon food, visiting my 93 year old Mom and then putting away refer and fridge food.  Then I had to prep this post including editing the intro meme, setting up the photo shoot and now this but at least the set up serves double duty as that's where I'm headed as soon as I drop my link over on the Dewey hub.  I forgot to sign up so no one will know I'm participating if i don't do that.

My first book will be Injustice of Place by Kathryn J. Edin and two others.  I'm starting there because it is a Libby book that is due in three hours and I want to read another chapter before trying to renew.

5:00 PM - Intro Meme

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Kelso Washington USA.  Across the Cowlitz river from Longview where I grew up and had been living with my elderly mother between January 2013 and late July 2021.  I moved into my 400 square foot efficiency unit in late July 2021.  This  post was a photo essay of my new space.

So this is my ninth thon in my own home, counting the Reverse Thons in August 2021 & 2023.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Non-Fiction: American Idolatry by Andrew L. Whitehead

Fiction: Familiaris by David Wrobleski (am about 50% in on this 900 page book)

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

Savory: Jalapeno Poppers

Sweet: chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

• Widowed September 2020  It still smarts at unexpected moments.  But at least it is usually only once or twice a month now instead of constantly.  
• Began iving alone for the first time ever three years ago this month. Sometime in the last few months it began to feel like home.
• Legally blind with RP aka tunnel vision.  Have only a sliver of vision left in center of right eye.  The rest is shadows and shimmers.
• Have struggled with mood disorder of Anxiety and Depression and insomnia since grade school
• Diagnosed with high functioning autism in 2015.  In my 50s!
• Have a caregiver who comes in five days a week to help with chores and errands I can't do alone. 
• I proved during this move that I have more volume in fiber art supplies than in clothes by at least thee times.
• I probably have double the volume of clothes in tree-books but since I still haven't got them all moved over I can't be sure.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

This is my 37th thon so there aren't many variations I haven't tried. 

Right off the bat I'm starting with a sleep deficit so I'm probably going to have to catch some sleep at some point.  Which makes me pout cz doing the 24 hour used to be my super power and it is the only metric I excel in anymore with both vision and hearing issue challenges making it impossible to rack up impressive numbers of pages or books finished.

Oh but I can rack up impressive numbers of books opened in 24 hours.  Especially with non fic.  I prefer to read one chapter of NF and set it aside for another for several hours and then spend several hours immersed in a novel.

Besides my devices loaded with ebooks, I have checked out books on CD from the library and hope to crochet while I listen.

The weather is perfect for venturing outside to sit on my front porch in my new folding rocker.  Or even walk to the Gazebo across the courtyard.  My caregiver helped me practice for months last year to make that walk with just my cane and I finally 'graduated' last August.  So now I'm not such a shut-in that I can't take three steps after letting go of the door handle or porch post without panicking.

Doing anything but especially reading or writing for a full 24 hours used to be my superpower but not so much anymore.  Now that I'm in my mid sixties the price I pay for that self abuse is significant as all my systems are less forgiving. 

Ah but the ONE thing that I could do different that could make a lot of difference in the quality of the experience is to do a better job than in the past of staying hydrated and getting up to move regularly.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

vote, fav and share for Dewey

We Miss You Dewey

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