Where the Action Was

Where the Action Was: Women War Correspondents in World War II by Penny Colman
2002
Weight: 1.3 lbs
Method of Disposal:  Giving Away

This book was fantastic.  The women featured were absolutely incredible, and their life stories were fascinating.  It is just a taste of the world of women correspondents in the time of WWII, and it makes me crave more fiercely.  Wow.

Lee Carson wrote of life during war that it, "narrows down to an existence divided between fighting to stay alive and sweating out being killed.  The longer in the combat world the more improbable that other world--of sweethearts, mothers, baths, beds--becomes.  Death, dirt, and fatigue are the familiar.  All else fades into a dream.  Even such strong emotions as fear and hate are eventually wiped out by battle."

Martha Gelhorn says, "War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it causes is beyond our telling or imagining; but war was our condition and our history, the place we had to live."

Check out this book.  The women are amazing, as our their stories and photos.

The Shepherd's Life

The Shepherd's Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks

2015

Weight: 12 oz

Method of Disposal: Giving Away

I bought this book while visiting Harriet's home, friends, and family this past November.  I am always wanting to understand more about the place she grew up.  Harriet was definitely not from a family of shepherds, but there are shepherds and sheep all around that she has told me so much about.  She always grew up close to animals and helping other people with their horses, ponies, and other critters.  I found this book in a Waterstones and just started reading it this month.  I absolutely loved it.

The author's confidence in who is, his place, and his connection to time is powerful.  I cannot remember the last time I met someone who felt so connected to their home and ancestry.  I think that, in my life, it is only something that can be read about but, sometimes, a glimmer will shine through the fog of city life, a college education, and a family of people who all have different careers.  

I know physical labor at the animal shelter makes me so much more happy than all the meetings, computer work, and whatnot that make up much of my days now.  In kennels, you are aware of the changing temperature, the weather and what is to come, how the animals are feeling day to day.  There are clear tasks and a clear timeline.  The work is hard physically, though nowhere near as hard as a shepherd's work, but it is extremely rewarding.

This book had nothing to do with me and my life though.  It was about a family raising sheep in Northern England, and their place in an ever changing world.  The author particularly focused in on his grandfather, his father, and himself, though he also speaks about his mother, wife, and children.  I love how traditions have been passed down for so long that there are some things that are still done that no one really even knows why they are done, though they can speculate, such as "redding."  I also love how the sheep's genetic code ties the past to the present, sometimes over centuries.  That the effects of a decision made today may not be able to be seen for years.  That those effects may even show up after the person who made them is passed and gone.

Northern England is absolutely gorgeous from a visitor's perspective.  I remember the first walks we took around Harriet's village on my first visit.  I thought, now I understand why people have dreamed of magic and fantasy for so many years.  I had never understood before.  I remember the smells, the rain, the animals that were everywhere.  The little rules that everyone just knew about what to do with certain gates, with their dogs, with the grazing animals, even with driving on the narrow roads.  I was shocked to think of all the walls being handmade and to know that her grandfather had built so many--that she had helped.

This man though.  His connection to the land is from someone who is completely and always connected to it.  Not as a tourist.  It is not magic so much as it is a consistent, though evolving relationship, that is at once predictable and also completely unpredictable.  There are viruses, weather changes during lambing season, dogs to be training, outsiders coming onto the land, family crisis that shape the days and weeks, but everyone knows what needs to be done and there are all sorts of learned tactics to tackle problems that arise.  Verbal communication is not always so important, but hard work always is. 

This book is powerful and insightful.  I know more about sheep now after one book than I have learned in 34 years, and I still only know .00089 of what James Rebanks knows.  I see and respect the pride that comes from knowing where you belong and who you are, the value in doing many things the way they have always been done for centuries.  That is not something that I have spent much of my life recognizing.  As a lesbian identified woman in the Dirty South, I have always seen value in changing the status quo.  It would appear that, at least sometimes and for many people, that is not the answer.  I think I still have a lot to learn about from James as I think and dwell on this amazing book he wrote.

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurrasic Technology by Lawrence Weschler
1996
Weight: 5.6 oz

This one was not my cup of tea but others say it is bursting with wonder.  You start in one place and dance along to another, not able to distinguish between fact and fiction.  That is how I feel existing in this world during a pandemic.  Maybe I am projecting.  I feel like the things I enjoy the most are different now than even two weeks ago, but I also feel like I am not really living so much as waiting for the next shoe to drop. I work all day long every day, but I keep thinking eventually it will taper off.  I am not sure why.  Maybe because I cannot keep up like this? Also, if something terrible were to happen, this is not how I would want to spend my life.  Here we are, faced with our mortality, and I still do not change.  How can I when the pets need us to show up each and every day? 

No Walls and the Recurring Dream

No Walls and the Recurring Dream: A Memoir by Ani Difranco
2019
Weight: 1.9 lbs
Method of Diposal:  I might just have to save this one a little longer...

I received this book because I made a donation to Planned Parenthood at an Amanda Palmer concert May of last year.  It is an Ani Difranco book signed by Amanda Palmer.  The world was a mess and reproductive rights were in turmoil.  Both Alabama and Georgia were introducing extreme anti-abortion bills.  Every day it seemed like Trump was carrying out some new attack on undocumented immigrants.  In the months to follow, Brett Kavanaugh would be nominated to the Surpreme Court despite sexual assault allegations.  All the progress we had made as Americans over the decades seemed to be getting stripped away from us at an alarming pace.

That night, listening to Amanda Palmer, felt like a safe space with people who understood how much it hurt to have no control over your own body.  A feeling women and queer people and people of color and disabled people have had in countless ways for countless centuries.  We carry it in our blood and the marrow of our bones.  It is in our communal and independent histories.

Now, we are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic and everything is even more fragile and unstable than many expected (even with the warnings we had--there's always so much to worry about and so many warnings), and we have the same leaders we had in May 2019.  People are scared, frustrated, confused, and many are hunkering down, looking out only for themselves, but many of us are learning that there is no way to combat this without coming together as a bipartisan community.  Without every single one of us doing our part to stop the spread.  #canceleverything This could be powerful but, right now, there is a neighborhood fair down the road and the children are being lifted in the air and swung around in the parking lot of a mall that is otherwise empty.  We are in a National State of Emergency.  Georgia is in a Medical State of Emergency.  Atlanta's mayor has called a State of Emergency for the city.  There are 181,200 confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide, 7,115 deaths, and 78,085 people have recovered.  We have 121 cases in Georgia and rising.  Italy has shut their nation down.  France shuts down tomorrow.  Iranians and the folks in Ohio, USA are releasing prisoners (do you know how hard it is to get people to release prisoners?!).  The English Prime Minister is still at the stage of saying wash your hands and stay home if sick.

The numbers just keep rising everywhere but in China, where the virus first hit, and where they implemented extreme quarantines.  The Italians have sent us a warning saying in 9 days we will be worse than we could ever have imagined but, in America, we want freedom even if it means death.  Always and forever.  We cannot even give it up for a month to help the world population get on top of this and recover.  People are still hitting the bars, parading, and protesting that it is just a bug, just like the flu, and only kills the elderly and physically weak, as if the elderly and physically weak were not people we love and people that we are.  As if the virus does not make exceptions and decides to strike down the young too.

The world is constantly evolving, and I am not the one to predict what people will and won't do.  They surprise me, and it is not at all uncommon for me in my entire life to feel as if I am on the outside and looking in, not a part of the world in the way others are.  I think the first time I ever felt like I could relate in a real way to popular culture/the outside world/someone I did not know--it was when I was at a music store with my grandfather as a teenager.  He said he would buy my a CD.  Somehow, by some magic, I picked up "Not a Pretty Girl" by Ani Difranco and, knowing nothing about her at all, knew I needed it.  When I got home, I listened to it with hope, with love, and with a heart wide open and then I could not turn off the craving for more. 

I am not entirely sure if I would have made it through high school without having Ani Difranco to listen to.  She made me see all those parts of myself that the kids at school tormented me for not as weaknesses but as amazing strengths I needed to wield and walk forward with. As I grew older and Ani did too, her music changed and I changed too.  We evolved and continue to, as does everyone around us.  And yet, I find myself drawn to her book, to her music, to her thoughts still.  In this time of crisis, I crave the thoughts of others and need the passion and strength they offer to know that today we fight, tomorrow we do too, and sometimes we need rest.  What I love most about the evolution of Ani is that once I saw her like a mirror (though we were nothing alike), and I needed that then.  Now, I respect her as someone different and, because I respect her, that difference can intermingle with my thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.  The more my mind contains my own thoughts and includes the thoughts of others, the more I grow as a person.

This book was good and multi-faceted.  I would have enjoyed it as an Ani fan or not.  There was a lot she touched on in a short time frame and there was a lot that was left out, I know, but I am so thankful for what she chose to share and that she could sit with me in this moment when I am afraid and unsure just like I was when I was a teenage girl and though, her words do not speak to what I am going through, I see strength in her that makes me remember my own strength and helps me to flex those muscles I sometimes forget are there.

Meanwhile, the President and the Georgia Governor ask us all to pray.  Dear God, Save Us All.  I am focused on evolving and community.

The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry

The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry Edited by Alan Kaufman and S.A. Griffin
1999
Weight: 2.4 lbs
Method of Disposal: Left in a Lending Library

I purchased this way back when Waldenbooks was a store, and I worked there.  I was young and the rebellion of the poetry spoke to me.  Re-reading it as an adult, I had quite different impressions of so many of the authors.  The editors did a great job getting writing from all sorts or people and compiling it in the way they did.  The authors they chose are well-respected and well-known. 

Here are some of my thoughts:

1.  There are a lot of male authors that are beside themselves with fascination for women who work in sex work and for what it means for them to be sex workers.  These woman are called all sorts of names but rarely are they considered to be women or people outside of their work.

2.  Some people think if you insert sex the shock value will turn something magically into art.  I like sex, and I like writing.  I like kinkiness, honesty, and all the intense details.  I am not taken by sex for shock's sake.

3. Sometimes women seemed to try to write with this same energy and misconception.

4.  It is important to remember the time something was written in and that sometimes that can change the whole value of a poem.

5.  Reading anything in the midst of a pandemic changes your outlook on what you are reading. 

6.  I most enjoyed reading Penny Arcade, Maggie Estep, David L. Ulin's tiny poem, "Mendal's Law."  I liked Abbie Hoffman's "School Project for the 80s."

7.  There are some seriously strange thoughts men have about their moms, their lovers, their sexual partners, their muses.  I did not see a lot about friends.  I saw that all of those blurred together in their writing and, truly, women became objectified.  They generally showed up on the page as a mirror, to say something about the men who were writing the poems.