An American Summer Sadly Like Every Other American Summer

although this one seems worse.  Or maybe I am finally more aware.  An American Summer:  Love and Death in Chicago is written by the brilliant Alex Kotlowitz.  And if one hasn't read There are No Children Here, it should be read today.  And then this one. 
And we have to do something, right?  But what do we do?  How do we make things right?  How do we, especially those of us who claim to follow the example of Jesus, and try to be Christ in the world, live out of faith so that we will live in a world where Black Lives will Matter?

My Eating

Eating has always been hard for me.  Most often I have eaten too much.  That is why David Levithan makes me so sad.  Sometimes I have eaten too little, and with the help of therapy, I am trying to get a hold on that problem.  

About 18 months ago I started a new part-time job.  I loved it, but it was a very stressful job for me.  I gained 30 pounds.  But the thing is, I am SUPER obsessive about weighing and measuring my food, counting my ounces of water, tracking my running and exercise and counting my steps.  

I hadn't made any changes in that time.  I have it all tracked.  

For whatever reason, I gained 30 lbs.  Three weeks ago I left my part-time job.  It was hard to do, but new demands at my full-time (I love that, too!  I am SO BLESSED work-wise and always have been and I am SO grateful) I knew I had to quit.

Well, in three weeks I have lost 14.5 of those extra pounds.  I can't explain it.  I haven't done anything differently, except leave my part-time job.

I did read The Mayo Clinic Diet:  Eat well.  Enjoy life.  Lose weight.  And I really think it is excellent.  But I haven't applied it.  But it is good to know that if I don't continue to lose weight, to get back to my pre-new-part-time-job weight, I can try this!  

And then maybe David Levithan will find me acceptable!  

I have 10 more pounds to go to get back to the weight I was when the photo on the right was taken.  I am trying, Mr. Levithan!

What a book...

What a beautiful meditation.  What a gift Jesmyn Ward is to the world.  Navigate Your Stars is a must-read for any graduate or soon to be graduate or someone who is breathing.  This book is inspirational for everyone.  EVERYONE.
I felt especially blessed to have listened to it because she reads it.  Just read or listen to this book right now.  It is the commencement speech that Ward gave to the students at Tulane and I bet they never will forget it.  I know I won't. 

An Interesting Time

in which to read Notes from the Apocalypse:  A Journey to the End of the World and Back.  For a while it looked like COVID19 was the beginning of the end.  It still might be.  A lot is still unknown.  Most things are unknown.  Except that the end is coming, for each of us.  Death is the only certain thing.  Well, earthly death.  Because the only other certain thing is that we were created by Love, shown how to love in Jesus and we will return to Love when our earthly lives are over.  I have said this before and I will say it always, I am a Trinitarian Universalist.    I don't worry about dying.  

I can understand Mark O'Connell's obsession with the end of the world.  Growing up the 80s I remember the fear of nuclear war, and I have written about that, too.

This book was good.  It was honest and heart-felt and smart.  I was scared to read about the preppers.  Not surprised, but it is always jarring to see or read about racist hate.  

Funny, thoughtful...really good.  

Why was I reluctant

To read Wow, No Thank You?  Maybe because I thought Samantha Irby was one of those actresses on Saturday Night Live.  I am not a big Saturday Night Live fan at all.  But I should have listened to my dear friend Rebekah.  She loved it and I did, too!  This lady is quite funny!

Complicated

Dignity:  Seeking Respect in Back Row America is a complicated book for me.  Some have criticized it because they consider it to be anti-Trump.  Well, I don't think that anything can be too anti-Trump.  So that wasn't my problem at all.  I found this article, written before the publication of the book, about Arnade's photography, some are included in the book, as the book is a compilation of the work he was doing and posting/publishing during the process.  
So I have some reservations...but I am more in line with this review from one the best journals out there.
And so I did give it five stars. 

"I'm a doctor! So what the heck am I talking to you for, p*!s off!"

Anyone remember that movie?  What a movie!  What a scene!  I have the entire thing memorize.  LOVE it!  Even though I have lost the great respect I once had for one of the co-stars, Dolly Parton.
Regardless!  Adam Kay WAS a doctor.  He is in the entertainment business now.  From reading This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, I think he was an amazing, caring, compassionate doctor.  And shame on the UK for the way in which they treat their doctors.  Quite funny!  Quite moving.  Laughter and tears here.

I Didn't Know Him

but Adam Wade seems like a really nice guy.  You Oughta Know Adam Wade was my introduction to him.   Here is why I couldn't be too enthusiastic about Mr. Wade.  I think I am jealous.  I have tried my hand at stand-up and I enjoy it and I have done well.  But more than telling jokes I am most successful when I tell stories.  Well, as you can imagine, when I found out that Adam Wade makes a living telling stories, my shadow self was on fire! 
"I am so much funnier than he is!"
"I could do better!"
Truth is, I am not!  And Mr. Wade is where he needs to be.  So if you enjoy laughing and love a good story, and your shadow self is in check, you will thoroughly enjoy getting to know Adam Wade. 

A Beautiful Book to Read to Start the Year

or end it, or at any point in the 12 month period.  That's true of any book by Anne Lamott.  Traveling Mercies:  some thoughts on faith is no exception. I do have one regret, I wish I would have read her chapter Mom before my mother died.  I urge you, if you still have your momma, read at least this chapter now. 

I don't watch much tv

and again, I HATE it when people say that!  But I really don't, just because I work so much and listen to books so much and play Cookie Jam so much!  So tv vs. Cookie Jam?  Cookie Jam wins.  It's not that I am an anti-tv intellectual, here!
So when my mom started getting into reruns of The Office, she really fell in love with Jenna Fischer.  And when we found this book by her, The Actor's Life:  a Survival Guide I got it on audible so that we could listen to it in the car.  It was a very good listen and I do think Jenna Fischer is a funny and smart woman.  It was great to hear her tips for people going in to acting.  And I so wish I had done it!  Even though I have no talent for it, but I have a giant ego!  I loved the recipe for aspiring actor's pizza.
At the end of the book she does some interviews with actors.  And man, there is just one who is really nasty.  I can't remember her name...but you will know the nasty one when you listen!  Ha!

Pornography

I guess that I just don't understand pornography's appeal to adults.  Teenagers, okay.  I mean, I can see why the curious minds and bodies would have an interest in finding out what intimacy is (NOT) like, but to me, porn and books like 50 Shades of Grey have absolutely zero appeal.  After listening to The Last Days of August I am even more anti-porn. The reason I am is because it dehumanizes people.  I know that some may argue to each their own, but personally and as a Christian, I can't support it because it seems to me that the industry and the product both deny (and certainly do NOT affirm) the beauty and the beloved nature of each Child of God.  Even the people in the industry who were interviewed for this book admit how terrible the life is and industry is.
That said, Jon Ronson does an excellent job investigating the suicide of August Ames, her real name Mercedes Grabowski.  The way in which he handled the whole thing just really, I don't know how to put it-- showed something about his character?  His heart?  Very well done.  Very sad. 

Word By Word

is an lecture of sorts, done as a result of the great success that Anne Lamott had with her book Bird by Bird which I hope to read very soon.  Word By Word is great though.  And it makes me want to read the book even more.  There is so much more here than advice for aspiring writers.  And today I even wrote 400 plus words!  So thank you, Ms. Lamott for your continued wisdom and joy.  It was cool listening to this after having finished the latest Jack Gantos book, on the same topic but for kids, but man, really for anyone.  I wonder if Gantos and Lamott have ever met.  I bet they would get along very well!

Best of All Worlds

Little Soldiers:  An American Boy, a Chinese School and the Global Race to Achieve was a super interesting and insightful.  Lenora Chu and her husband have decided to live in China and send their son to a Chinese school.  She has a lot of special insight because she is the daughter of parents who came from China and raised her in the US and now she is raising an American-born son in China.  He husband is from the US.  So there are all kinds of different POVs that figure in here. 
The conclusion that their family comes to is that hybrid of the US and Chinese school systems might be best.  And it just made me think about how good the grey is.  And how much better we all would be if we were willing to blend and mix and combine the best of certain things with the best of other things.  Great book.  It is super readable and so well done!

Plans C, D, E and so on!

Listening to an Anne Lamott book will be my whole Alphabet Plan for the new year and always.  Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith was another excellent listen.  My mother has been listening along and she really is inspired by Lamott who seems to be the first person to really ask the questions and share the concerns that my mother has.  Great, great stuff. 

Morning with Gayle

I had heard about Gayle King because she is Oprah's best friend, but I knew she was more than just Oprah's best friend, but I never really knew how awesome she was until I started watching CBS This Morning.  For that reason I was so happy to read Notes to Self:  Inspiring Figures Write to the Young People They Once Were.   I had thought that it was a book written by Ms. King about her own life, so at first I was a little bummed that I wouldn't learn more about King from it, but wow, she really picked the heavy hitters here!  Maya Angelou, Joe Biden for example.  And there's also Jane Fonda!  Along with some people I didn't know, but each one had really inspiring stories and wonderful things to say.  It was great listening to the book because each person read their own story! 

Inspiration

I am embarrassed to say that I was unfamiliar with Jackie Speier, author of Undaunted:  surviving Jonestown, summoning courage and fighting back.  What makes this especially embarrassing is that she is a US Representative, a woman of faith and has a very accomplished past, present and future.  This was such a great book and I can thank my dear friend for telling me about it and I guess I can also credit an incident that pretty much scarred me for life. 
Sometime after December 4 in 1978 I saw this at my grandparent's house and read the article.  TV news wasn't like it was today and I didn't know about Jonestown, before or after the mass killing on November 18 of that year.  Plus I was 7. 
It was my memory of this article and this horrific event that made me want to read the book and the book is not just about Jonestown, not at all, and I am so glad because I really, really am glad to have read this book.  Rep. Speier is a true role model and I listened to the book and she read it which was even more inspiring.  It is another hopeful book for dark times.
While the book is so much more than the title, which to me, made it seem like it would be mostly about Jonestown, I think it was a good idea to have Jonestown in the title because it may draw some readers that way and it is so worth it. 

Still Don't Really Understand Darning

But that doesn't mean that Stitches:  a Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair is excellent.  It seems that every Anne Lamott book review says, "Her most profound book yet.," and well, I have to agree.  I mean, I am not reading them in the order in which they were published, but every time I read a new one, I am blown away.
Oh, and here is how to darn! 

Why?

Why, why, why didn't I read Anne Lamott before now?  So many people told me to do so!  Why did I wait so long?  On the other hand, I REALLY need this now, you know? Grace (Eventually):  Thoughts on Faith was another read-by-the-author wonderful book.  What strikes me about this book and Small Victories is Lamott's description of her anger and heartbreak surrounding Little Bush's administration.  (My dad called the H.W. "Big Bush" and G.W. "Little Bush and I think I will do that, too.  Thanks, dad!)  I agree that this was a horrible, horrible time in our country.  And that Little Bush made reprehensible decisions and what was even more reprehensible was that he claimed to have a strong faith in Jesus, but I look at our current administration and I wonder what Lamott must be thinking now.  So I have been listening to podcasts like this one (and I just find it SO cool and hard to believe that I was on this podcast once!) and this one and this one.  And I fall deeper in love with Lamott.  Because she is so calm and so reassuring and while being completely aware and active.  I was especially captivated by Lamott's description of an eating binge, as well, you know my deal.  So thank you, Ms. Lamott for your brilliance and your grace, for who you are. 

I am one of those people...

who is using the internet in a bad way!
Hmm.  Let me explain!
We all thought that the internet would draw us closer together.  That it would open our eyes to other ways of thinking and POVs.  Well we know that hasn't happened, in fact, just the opposite.  The little wormy things that follow our searches come to know what we like and we are feed more of what we like and we seek out what we like and what we know and we can turn out or turn away from those things we don't like.  And so when I saw the book The Left Behind:  Decline and Rage in Rural America by Robert Wuthnow, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't falling into some garbage like this piece of trash.  Like the Vox interviewer, I think it was the title that really put me off.  Listening to Pulpit Fiction this week it all linked together.  White people in our country who consider themselves among the "left behind" or the afflicted are getting it wrong!  Whoa getting it WAY wrong and I didn't want to read a book that got it THAT wrong!
As I listened to the book I really didn't get the impression that it was biased, either way.  This made me irritated of course!  Because I wanted the book to be right!   You know, I wanted it to agree with me!  But it didn't agree or disagree with me.  It really was not leaning to one side or another, it just reported the facts!  Then at the very end, Wuthnow comes clean and admits that he is one of "us" and so of course, I loved the book.  (This is all said sheepishly b/c I know I am just being ridiculous and biased in my own way- of course, I am biased the correct way!)
I still can't conceive of people who follow Jesus and support our current president.  I still can't conceive of people who claim to follow Jesus and believe that capitalism is a good thing.  Or war.  Or the death penalty.  So it is hard for me to put myself in the place of those who believe these things.  But I know I need to remember that both right and left are two sides of a very thin coin.  And so I will not judge.  But I will continue to pray for "them" and "us" and the world.

Back in Seminary School....

I am so surprised by the number of times I get to write that!
Anyway, back then, in another life, I read Elaine Pagels.  So I was very interested when I saw that her new book was on hoopla and then I saw that she was on Fresh Air and I listened and then I listened to the book and it was excellent.  Why Religion?:  A Personal Story is, indeed, a personal one.  She writes about her husband, Heinz, who was killed in a hiking accident shortly after the death of there son. 
We have some similarities in our spiritual journy!  I mean, not exactly, her parents were scientists and she became famous and all, but we both were Evangelical Christians and were "born again" at a Billy Graham revival!  I went to the 1993 revival in Pittsburgh.  And although I had known Christ prior to my coming forward at this event, this was impactful for me.  This is a book that will evoke a lot of feelings, I believe.  For Christians who are more of the black and white kind, it will be disturbing, I think.  But for others and for even those who do not know Christ it is a must read.  It is also a must read for those who have suffered great loss.  Yes, for sure.