The Women

 The other day I was in the library and I read a list of the best historical fiction novels. Kristin Hannah's book, The Women, was on the list. Then I saw the book sitting on the large print book shelf. So I took it down and read the first 240 pages. That was last week. Today I found the book again and read it to the finish. It was a great story about the women who served as nurses during the Vietnam War. The story is about a woman names Frances (Franky) McGrath. After her brother joined the Navy and was sent to Vietnam, she decided to enlist as a nurse. The Navy wouldn't take her because she had only a couple weeks of nursing experience after graduating from nursing school. The Air Force wouldn't take her. The Army Nurse Corp let her join and sent her there totally unprepared. She made friends for life with two other nurses. Franky found her calling in life serving as a nurse. She saw appalling injuries and events with massive casualties. She decided to sign up for a second year. Coming back home she was spat on and called a baby killer. Her story about transitioning back to civilian life is sad and tragic like it was for many Vietnam vets.

 

 

Walking Around Town

Today I was walking around downtown Mankato, looking at historic houses. This town has quite a few places on the national historic register. He is the old Blue Earth County Courthouse. At the top is a statue of a lady holding the scales of justice.

They also have art installations all over town. Some are not as appealing. I liked this one. The paper reads: Dear Jumbo, Eggsiting news! The research is conclusive. THE EGG CAME FIRST! Signed, The World Poultry Council.

 

East Of Eden

 Finally I finished reading East Of Eden by John Steinbeck. This massive novel, published in 1952 too be 9 and a half hours to finish. The beginning of the book is set in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Over half the story takes place in the Salinas Valley in California. The story starts with the Trask family. Adam and Charles are brothers on a farm. Adam's father forces his to join the Army and fight Indians. Eventually Adam returns to the farm and works with Charles. When their father dies Adam and Charles inherit a considerable amount of money. Adam moves to California with his wife, Cathy. He buys a great farm in the Salinas Valley where he meets the Hamilton family. Sam Hamilton has a large family. Unfortunately his farm is too rocky to produce much produce. He gets by with blacksmithing and helping other families. Most of the time the author keeps the story about the people. Once in a while he throws in a chapter criticizing American society and their thoughts about the war. Overall I thought it was a great story. I can see why it was a bet seller.

 

 

 

Reconciliation Park

Today I visited the Blue Earth County Library in Mankato. Located downtown and across the street and the railroad tracks from the Minnesota River. Also in the area is Reconciliation Park.

This park is the location where, on Dec. 26, 1862, 38 Native Americans were hung to death simultaneously in the largest single execution in American history.

 

Minneopa

I am staying in Mankato for a couple weeks. Today I visited Minneopa State Park. First I walked to the waterfalls.

Then I drove to the day use area and decided to take a long (5 mile) walk around the bison pen. I didn't see any bison for the longest time. A half hour before I got back to my car I saw the bison. Despite what the song "Home On The Range" says, we do not have buffalo in Minnesota. Buffalo are native to Asia and Africa. Bison are native to the Americas and Europe.

I watched the bison eat for ten minutes or so. They are digging down below the dried grass to get the new green shoots that are coming up. This prairie had 24 bison. I didn't see any bison calves. March must be too early for them to give birth.

 

Lazarus Man

 I read a book called Lazarus Man that was written by Richard Price. The story takes place in Harlem, New York City. Several characters frequent the neighborhood. One is the owner of a failing funeral home business. Another is a young man who uses his camera to take pictures of the neighborhood. The parks department buys some of his photos. Another is a recovered addict. One morning a apartment complex in the neighborhood collapses. Some tenants are killed. A local police officer is bound and determined to find all the missing persons. Three days after the collapse the recovered addict is found in the rubble. He is taken to the hospital where, besides breathing in all kinds of dust and rubble, his biggest injury is a sore on his tail bone where he laid on a piece on concrete. He becomes famous and starts giving motivational speeches that uplift others and actually help him too. I enjoyed this story about the Harlem community.

 

 

The Vegetarian

 Being a vegetarian myself, I decided to read The Vegetarian by Han Kang (translated from Korean by Deborah Smith). The story is set in Korea. A young wife has bad nightmares about horrible acts. To get away from these dreams she decides to become vegetarian. The dietary choice estranges her from her husband and eventually her family. Her name is Yeong-Hye. Her parents don't understand and they try to force feed her. When she is hospitalized for malnutrition, her husband seeks a divorce. This interesting fiction novel, set is current times, can be considered a horror novel or a mental health novel.

 

 

Woman Of Intelligence

 Karin Tanabe is the author of the book I took out from the local library called Women Of Intelligence.  This is a historical fiction story set in New York City during the McCarthy era. This was the time of the red scare. To be a communist was to be a traitor to the country. Katharina Edgeworth worked for the United Nations during her career. She ends up marrying a wealthy pediatric surgeon and has a grand apartment on Fifth Avenue. Now, stuck at home with two children, she is unhappy. Her husband does not understand. He grew up with nannies and does not want his two boys to have a nanny. He also wants Katharina (Rina) to nurse the boys for at least 3 years. One day Rina is approached by a man from the FBI asking her to spy on a known communist who was also her lover at Columbia University. Rina speaks four languages. She was educated at an Ivy League school. Rina really needs to get out of the house and have some alone time. The story about Rina was very engaging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Spring

Today I had an early appointment on Como Avenue so I thought I would celebrate the first day of spring by visiting the Marjorie McNeeley Observatory. Here is a rosemary bonsai that I admired.

They had several azalea bonsai. I was hoping to see the spring flower show in the sunken garden room but unfortunately that room was closed while they took down the winter show and added the spring show. They looked like they were almost done working. Rumors were flying that they might open the sunken garden room this afternoon. I waited for awhile before I walked down to and around the lake.

The southern third of the lake had thin ice but the rest was open water. I thought maybe the wind pushed the ice this way but it seemed to fit nicely in the bay so maybe not. I saw red winged blackbirds. I was happy to see the first Eastern bluebird of the season.

 

The Dream Daughter

 I picked up The Dream Daughter because I enjoyed Diane Chamberlain's book Necessary Lies. Looking back at this blog I realize I have read two other books by this author including Pretending To Dance and The Last House On The Street. Of the four books by her, I liked this one the least. I liked it least because it involves time travel and also because it went on and on and on. In the story Carly is trying to save her daughter who was born in 1970. She time travels to the future so the baby can have fetal surgery to repair her heart defect. But this Carly isn't sure if she should stay in the future or go back to 1970. She thinks this, she thinks that, she thinks another thing. I got tired of listening to her think. But I did finish it. I suppose others might like it better than I did.

 

 

Knife

 Salman Rushdie is the author of Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder. He was also the author of The Satanic Verses for which, in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the ruler in Iraq, put a fatwa on his head for what he wrote. Salman was born in India and education in Britain. After the Iraq decision to declare a fatwa he knew what fear was. He decided the freedom of speech was more important and did not live in fear for his life. He went out in public. He continued to write books. In 2022, at the time of the attack, he was living with his wife in New York City. He went to a writer's in Chautauqua, New York which is close to the Pennsylvania line. He writes detailed description of his attack and all his injuries. He is grateful to the medics and helicopter medics who saved his life. He was not expected to live at first. He writes about the fears of his wife and his children and his friends. He had one son living in England. His son had a fear of flying so he took a ship from England to New York City. He writes about his doctors and nurses and physical therapists. He even writes imaginary conversations he has with his assailant. After his attack he did hire protection services for a time. After the hospital he stayed at a friend's empty apartment because there were too many reporters hanging around his apartment and his hospital. I think the book was his way of processing what happened.

 

 

Madison

I spent 5 days in Madison, Wisconsin. This is a bike friendly town with Culver's restaurants every couple of miles. I went to the Olbrich Botanical Gardens where I saw this bird of paradise.

This canary was in the garden too.

Last year they had a wood carvers convention. This is one of the three carved statues. The carvers were from Poland, Germany and Switzerland.

This is an actual Thai temple with real gold.

One warm day I went to the Aldo Leopold nature center where I saw these sandhill cranes walking by. I also walked downtown Madison to see the capitol building and visit a modern art museum with a rooftop garden.

 

The Light We Lost

 Jill Santopolo is the author of the fiction book called The Light We Lost. Most of the story takes place in New York City. The story starts out at Columbia University on September 11th. Two students, Gabe and Lucy meet and hear the tragic news. They decide to climb to the roof of one of the dorm rooms at the university and look south toward Manhattan. They see the toxic smoke and dust rising into the sky. For a time after graduation they are a happy couple. She helps direct a children's educational television show. He takes more photography classes. He decides to go to Iraq and take photos and their lives drift apart. Even though they are not together, they are on each other's minds daily. I enjoyed this interesting story about two intelligent people.

One Day

 One Day is a fiction novel written by David Nicholls. Set in Britain, Dexter and Emma meet on the day they graduate from college. Every year they meet again on the anniversary of their first meeting. Dexter goes into television work and Emma teaches school. Both Dexter and Emma have serious relationships over the 20 years that are covered in this novel. We don't get the whole story but just snippets from a single day of the year. If I was Emma I wouldn't have kept Dexter as a friend. He is often rude, inconsiderate, condescending and drunk. But I did enjoy reading the book.

Nessary Lies

Diane Chamberlain is the author of the fiction book set in North Carolina called Necessary Lies. The story is about a poor family living on a farm in exchange for working on the tobacco farm. Fourteen year old Ivy is trying to protect her grandmother, her older sister with mental illness, and her two year old nephew. A new social worker begins to work with the family by the name of Jane Forrester. Newly married to a pediatrician, Jane struggles to connect with her families who are impoverished. Shocked by the county's use of eugenics, she protests when her supervisor tells her to apply for Ivy to be sterilized. Ivy's older sister was sterilized after she gave birth but was told she had an appendectomy. This was considered a necessary lie. Jane protests which gets her in trouble at work and at  home. This was a fascinating story. After the story was finished the author gave more information about the eugenics board in North Carolina that started in 1933. North Carolina started sterilizing people in 1919. After World War Two most states quit the eugenics program because of it's association with the Nazi's. But North Carolina increased the number of sterilizations after World War Two. People in institutions were sterilized. People with mental illness were sterilized. People with epilepsy were sterilized. People who got welfare were sterilized. I was shocked to learn that this went on until 1977. At first very few black people were sterilized but by the 1960's most of the eugenics victims were people of color. I find it crazy to think such wrongs were considered to be right.

 

 

Ohio's Flag

 Today I drove from West Virginia, through Maryland a little bit, back to West Virginia, through Ohio and into Indiana. While stopped at a rest stop in Ohio I noticed the three flags on the flagpole. The American flag was at the top. The POW flag was in the middle, and an unusually shaped flag at the bottom. Ohio is the only state in the union that does not have a triangular flag. This flag was designed in 1902 and I really like the looks of it.

 

You Will Never Be Me

 I read a silly book about influencers called You Will Never Be Me written by Jesse Q. Sutanto. The story is about a pair of mothers with small children who earn money by advertising via Instagram. These women do crazy stuff to make their lives seem incredible. They do stunts like pretending to get out of bed only it's a reenactment because it's four in the afternoon. Or they buy carrots from the store, bury them in the garden, and film themselves harvesting vegetables from the garden to make for dinner. I can't say I really enjoyed the book but I did read the whole thing.

 

Catoctin Mountain

 This morning Offspring #1's family and I took off for Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland. The drive was just over a half mile south, past Gettysburg. We hiked to a local overlook where we could see the town of Thurmont, Maryland. The hike was one of those where most of the time you have your eyes on the ground in front of you because of the numerous tripping hazards. There were more rocks to watch out for than roots. We had a good hike. The temperature was about 50 degrees but the wind was gusty and cold. Later we went to a playground in Thurmont so the kids could get rid of excess energy. I had to excess energy after hiking 3 difficult miles. I did try the see saw and found that was more fun than I expected.

Local Hike

 Yesterday, while the kids were in school, my daughter-in-law and I went for a hike up a local mountain. The drive was only about 15 minutes. We parked, took out the hiking sticks, and started walking. We have walked this trail before. Spring has not yet arrived to this part of Pennsylvania. Forsythia is in bloom. Tulips and daffodils are up but not yet blooming. We didn't see any wild flowers and we got mud all over our shoes and jeans. We had a good hike though. Often we could see no signs of human activity so that is always a plus.

An Honest Mistake

 Today I went to the West Shores YMCA where I have been a member since last winter. After exercising on the second floor I came back down to the locker room. Normally I would take a shower after a workout but this Y has had an issue with the hot water ever since I got here nearly a month ago. It takes a month to replace a water heater? This is seriously disappointing. Anyway, instead of finding my lock on my locker I find a different lock and a note that asks me to go to the front desk. At the front desk I learn that another woman came to the front desk claiming her key didn't work in her locker. So they cut my lock. She opened the door to find my stuff instead of her stuff. She immediately shut the locker and found her key two rows down. She was very apologetic. The Y staff were very apologetic. I didn't care. I was not emotionally invested in that lock that I bought in Duluth four years ago. The Y gave me a new lock. None of my stuff was stolen. She made an honest mistake. No biggie.

Black Butterflies

Priscilla Morris is the author of the historical fiction book called Black Butterflies. The black butterflies are what she sees when her art classroom in Sarajevo is bombed and burned to the ground. Priceless books and documents and paintings are burned and the remains flutter to the earth in black, butterfly shaped forms. The story is about Zora, an art professor in 1992. With her mother ill, she sends her husband and her mother to England to stay with her daughter. Zora stays behind to protect their apartment and her mother's apartment. Day by day the conditions in Sarajevo worsen. Snipers are on rooftops. Bombs drop on the city. The electricity is turned off. When it comes back on, about once a week, everyone gets busy baking or vacuuming no matter what time of day or night. Food become expensive and non-existent. People make soup from nettles and dandelions. Zora looses weight. She sells her precious belongings. She tries to continue doing art. She helps a young neighbor girl with an art project. When the paints run out she incorporates feathers and broken glass and other objects. Zora sees dead bodies in the streets. No one comes to take the body of an old woman away so the neighbors pile wildflowers on the deceased. This was a gripping tale. The author is British and she lives in Ireland. Her mother was from Bosnia. The author spent summers in Sarajevo.

 

 

The Truth According To Ember

 Danica Nava is the author of the fiction novel called The Truth According To Ember. This is a contemporary novel set in Oklahoma in current time. Ember is a high school graduate with a few years of community college under her belt. Her education is cut short by her younger brother's need for bail money. Ember and her younger brother were raised by her aunt, her mother's sister, after being abandoned as children. Their father is in jail and has no relationship with either of his children. Ember moved to town because of the many job opportunities available. Ember wants to be an accountant but is currently working at a bowling alley cleaning shoes, cleaning toilets, and delivering food and drinks. She has a party girl as a roommate. Ember finally earns a corporate job by bending the truth. She claims to be white instead of native and she is half white. She claims to have accounting experience and she has some working at the bowling alley but that is not her main job. She claims to have an accounting certificate when all she really has is a course credit in accounting. Ember is a hard-working creative problem solver which quickly makes her rise to the top in the corporate world. Her success angers others. Ember finally has to decide whether to keep bending the truth (a path which leads to larger and larger bends) or come clean which could undo all her success. I enjoyed reading about Ember. I could totally relate to her decisions. On another note, have you noticed the book covers on recent books? All seem to be saturated with color and feature faces on the cover.

Follow The Yellow Brick Road

 This afternoon we attended the matinee performance of "The Wizard Of Oz" at the Mechanicsburg High School theater. Wow, theater performances in high schools have really improved or else this high school has an outstanding theater department. This theater has an orchestra pit in front of the stage but they also had a sturdy walkway around the orchestra pit for extra effect. Grand girl #2 went dressed as Dorothy and brought along a stuffed dog to stand in for Toto. The play had an actual dog on stage today. This was a very placid dog. When the Wizard of Oz was speaking they had what appeared to be XL Roman candles standing beside his image. They used strobe lights  during the Wicked Witch scenes. Throughout the entire performance I never noticed a flat note nor a misstep. The kids did an incredible job.

On Call: A Doctor's Journey In Public Service

I really enjoyed reading Anthony Fauci's autobiography called On Call: A Doctor's Journey In Public Service. He starts out in childhood in New York City growing up with parents of Italian heritage. His father was a pharmacist who never made a lot of money because he was too forgiving of poor folk who couldn't pay their bills. His mother was a house wife until her early death from liver cancer. Anthony attended Catholic school and excelled in school and in sports. As he got to high school he realized he would never make it as a basketball star. In his words, you can't fix short. He went on to medical school. His first project as a public health administrator was the AIDS epidemic that was largely ignored by the Reagan administration. Dr. Fauci had kind words to say about the efforts to relieve illness by both Bush presidents. He had a way of getting along with people like activists. He realizes that activists are at the edge of their patience and cut them some slack. He dealt with the Ebola crisis as well. His thoughts about working with Trump were as I expected. This was an excellent read.