COVID-19 Stay-Home Life

Pooh Bear and friends in our window for the children to see as they walk by

Life during a pandemic--you know what it's like. You are living it.

Here is it Palm Sunday, which means it's been twenty years since my mother's passing, but I struggle to keep track of time.

a neighbor's Easter egg tree

Social distancing has broken bonds we need more than ever.

I haven't seen my quilt friends for three weeks. One gifted member has suffered a stroke, another lost a grandchild. Snow Birds are unable to travel home from Florida and other states.

Our library book club was cancelled. We were to Skype with Angie Kim about her book Miracle Creek this month. The spring book sale is cancelled. And the city community center's annual spring rummage sale. Both are major sources of funding.

We had tickets to two concerts for the Detroit Symphony--cancelled. All the arts community will be struggling with lost revenue.

It's been almost a month since I saw my fitness coach. She had a week off and then the fitness center closed. Doctor, dentist, and hair appointments were cancelled. My husband had to put off shoulder replacement surgery.

My entire family last gathered on February 2 to celebrate my husband's 70th birthday. The following day we dined with my husband's brother and sister-in-law.

March 12 we last saw our grandpuppies. A week ago, our son and his girl came by and talked to us from their car in the driveway while we stood on the front steps. He sends me pictures, instant messages, calls once a week.

Our grandpup Ellie with spring flowers

Mid-March we made our last shopping trips. Two weeks ago, my husband did a curbside pickup for flour and yeast at Gordon's Foods. He buys in bulk as he bakes all our bread.

We walk the neighborhood for thirty minutes every morning around 8:30 am. It is still cold and we bundle in heavy coats, hats, scarfs. We rarely see another person at this time, or even cars on the road. This Sunday morning we looked down Main Street and there was not a car to be seen within a half mile either direction.

The rest of the day we stay home, in the house or in the yard. There is spring cleanup to do, the rain barrels to set up, bird baths and lawn furniture and a wind chime to put out.

We read. I write reviews. I play the piano and sew a bit. My masks are quite awful. I will try a new pattern.

We make soups for lunch. We make comfort foods for dinner.

Chicken noodles with dumplings

We watch an hour or two of television in the evening. We found a British YA series that has no doctors or death in the stories. I spend too much time surfing social media, playing iPad puzzles and games.

part of our Imperfect Produce delivery

Our son encouraged us to subscribe to Imperfect Produce last winter. Now we are grateful for weekly orders of fresh produce.

It took days to find an Instacart opening, but I got an order in for delivered groceries and supplies to come next week. Two weeks ago, my husband ordered toilet paper through Amazon; it is to come next week. I ordered new ink cartridges for my printer, and medicine I need, and the eye drops and mouthwash that help my Sjogren's syndrome symptoms, all to be delivered.

I ordered books. Nguyen Phan Que Mai was author host last week for the American Historical Novels Facebook page, talking about her first novel. She was such a lovely person and her story compelling. I ordered her novel The Mountains Sing from Algonquin books.

And with it, Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life by Marta McDowell, to be part of my reading on Dickinson.

The mail lady has only been working three hour days, delivering packages and the rare first class bill or letter. She told us she will use her time off and stay home for three weeks.

We have two police cars that patrol our two-mile square city. One stopped to talk, saying he was impressed by our determination to walk every day so early.

On our walks, when we see the trash and recycling and yard waste collectors we greet them and thank them, hope they stay safe.

Every few days we place a delivery order from one of our local independent restaurants. We don't need the food. We don't want to lose these businesses that make our downtown vibrant. Our favorite restaurant closed weeks ago and is not delivering. The owner, an immigrant, is a wonderful man and the restaurant was always filled to capacity. He recently remodeled; he told us his customers deserved an attractive environment.

The elementary school across the street has been closed for weeks. Even the marquee sign is now dark. The playground, like those in the parks and other schools, and the skate park and stadium and tennis courts and baseball diamonds, is closed. Usually we see children playing all day long and after hours and on weekend. Just before lockdown, the teachers had a parade through town to wave at their students, with the police and fire department escorting them.

Detroit has been hit hard by the virus and the hospitals are struggling. My brother's girlfriend, a nurse, was told to stay home for a week; she works in colonoscopy which is elective and tests have been canceled. The hospitals are losing money without tests and elective surgeries. Supplies are running out. Three Detroit nurses died of COVID-19 last week.

My brother is a Ford engineer and has worked from home for several weeks. He was told to take next week off. He and his girlfriend seek out hidden places to walk as the county and state parks are full of people.

An undisclosed Michigan Lake, photo by my brother

Later in the day, after the temperatures rise, families are out walking or biking, couples walk their dogs, people jog. We watch out the window.

Children leave chalk messages on the sidewalks. Picture windows are filled with signs of support or have Teddy Bears or Christmas candle lights. Yard signs send messages of care.

The grass is green. The robins are back. The sparrows have claimed the bird house for their nesting site. We saw a bunny in the yard. The daffodils will soon bloom. Buds are on the flowering trees.

Spring with its new life and beauty will be a stark contrast to the news filled with human suffering.

In today's Detroit Free Press, Mitch Albom shares his COVID-19 story. He writes,

"...if all we do is swim in those sad waters, we will lose sight of any shore. We will drift into people we don’t recognize, and do things we never thought we would do.
"Our humanity will be what saves us in this pandemic. Small acts. Like the people who leave toilet paper on their porches for delivery workers. Or the sewing machines now humming to stitch masks. Or the folks who serenade one another across apartment house balconies.
"One thing. Find it. The one positive. The one joy you’d forgotten about. The one part of the day that brings you peace. And cling to it..."

Read it at
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/columnists/mitch-albom/2020/04/05/coronavirus-covid-19-mitch-albom-michigan/2947780001/

Stay inside. Stay safe.

Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade

These five women...all pushed the boundaries of scholarship, of literary form, of societal norms: they refused to let their gender hold them back, but were determined to find a different way of living, one in which their creative work would take precedence.~ Francesca Wade, Square Haunting

Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade links writers H.D., Dorothy Sayers, Virginia Woolf, Eileen Power, and Jane Ellen Harrison through their time residing in London's Mecklenburgh Square. They were born in the late 19th c. and by full adulthood saw a changed world that allowed women to vote and the opening of professions to women.They defied the narrow role assigned to women to become masters of their craft.

Each woman's life and career is illuminated through their shared experience in one place. Their time in Mecklenburgh Square was pivotal to their development.

I was familiar with Woolf, knew the work of Sayers and a bit about H.D., but Power and Harrison were unfamiliar. How sad! Harrison broke through the gender barrier to become a professional scholar.  Her research impacted the Imagist writers and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Power was a fashionable and attractive academic of economics. I realized that I had read her book Medieval People several times!

I was fascinated by these women and their stories. Wade delivers a compelling narrative that combines insight and significance and good story-telling.

...real freedom entails the ability to live on one's own terms, not to allow one's identity to be proscribed or limited by anyone else.~ from Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher:

In the early twentieth century, Mecklenburgh Square—a hidden architectural gem in the heart of London—was a radical address. On the outskirts of Bloomsbury known for the eponymous group who “lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles,” the square was home to students, struggling artists, and revolutionaries. 

In the pivotal era between the two world wars, the lives of five remarkable women intertwined at this one address: modernist poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and author and publisher Virginia Woolf. In an era when women’s freedoms were fast expanding, they each sought a space where they could live, love, and—above all—work independently. 

With sparkling insight and a novelistic style, Francesca Wade sheds new light on a group of artists and thinkers whose pioneering work would enrich the possibilities of women’s lives for generations to come.

Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars
by Francesca Wade
Crown Publishing
Tim Duggan Books
Pub Date April 7, 2020
ISBN: 9780451497796
hardcover $28.99 (USD)

Johnny One-Eye : A Tale of the American Revolution by Jerome Charyn

"Where should I begin my unremarkable life?"~Johnny One-Eye

Johnny One-Eye proclaims to have led an unremarkable life.

Don't believe it.

Born John Stocking, age uncertain, as is his sire; son of Gert, madame of Queen's Yard, and raised with her nuns; King's College educated and former classmate of 'Ham' Alec Hamilton; lost an eye serving under Benedict Arnold; employed and threatened by patriots and redcoats alike; a scribbler, a pirate, an innkeeper, prisoner, changeling, divil---and "a man who hid beneath a madrigal of words."

"Are you soldier or civilian?" the general asked John when they first meet. John is bound and with a rifle against his side, caught in the act of adding a purgative to the general's soup.

"Both. I'm a secret agent," Johnny quips.

Major Treat, Washington's chief of intelligence, calls Johnny a frog "who leaps back and forth between the royals and us." Which makes him a brilliant character to bring readers behind the scenes, patriot and British.

Johnny is buffeted by the shifting tides of war, depending on which army is in control of New York. He is only loyal to the people he loves.

John loves the king for his education at King's College. He loves Benedict Arnold, even after his acts of treason. He loves Gert. He loves George Washington who finds solace with his beloved red-haired Gert--and in games vingt-et-un at Queen's Yard. And sometimes he finds solace with Johnny, a tenuous connection to Gert.

Most of all, Johnny loves Clara, a foundling octoroon who is more than a nun for hire, even more than an Aristotle-reading uncommon beauty. Imperious and defiant, Clara dominates unforgettable scenes, including ministering to the African soldiers abandoned by the British after the battle of Yorktown.

Charyn's war novel takes readers through history in the style of the 18th c novels with stories adventurous and bawdy, panoramic in scope. Yes, it is "rollicking" and "picaresque" as the cover contends. Perhaps it is this time of Covid-19, but I also felt the hangman's noose and cold rifle against my ribs, the losses and the desperation.

***

Like so many civilians caught up in times of war, Johnny serves at the pleasure of those in power. He is surrounded by men desperate to gain advantage over the enemy. Everyone can be forced to become a spy--an orphan boy, a desperate widow, an octoroon whore.

I think of my own ancestor conscripted into the Confederate militia although he came from pacifist Swiss Brethren who did not believe in oaths to the state. Or my German nationalist Baptist great-grandfather who left Russia to escape serving in the czar's army. The winds of war drove my husband's Palatine ancestors to leave their once verdant homeland, some to England and America, and some to Poland then Russia and finally to America. My ancestor's grave marks him a Revolutionary War veteran, but he was conscripted. We little people are nothing but chaff buffeted by the wind.

Our true stories are about who we love.

***

This 'tale of the American Revolution' includes all the history I have read, Benedict Arnold despised as a traitor by patriots and loyalists alike, John Andre and Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton and Peggy Shippen and the British generals and admirals appear.

As do the major moments.

George Washington, his leadership threatened, shocks and softens the hearts of men when he dons his spectacles and admits, "I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind..."

I get a lump in my throat. He was not perfect. But he did forgo personal power for an idea--a country ruled by the people and not a monarchy. A republic, if we can keep it.

"But this war cannot go on forever. One side will win," Johnny says to Mrs. Loring, 'war wife' of General Howe of the redcoats. She responds, "I am not so certain. Both sides might also lose." Johnny considers that perhaps both sides had already lost, "with killing and plunder as a permanent language."

George Washington won the war and a nation was born. At the end of the novel he is lionized, his errors overlooked. But he is a ghost after seven years of war, wandering his farm, peacetime "but a sweet deception."

Johnny survives the hurricane. He gains the reward of true love. It is all any of us really want in this life. Survive the battle anyway we can and cleave to those we love. 

The Other Bennett Sister by Janice Hadlow

All any of us want is a little attention, she thought...~from The Other Bennett Sister by Janice Hadlow

Poor Mary Bennett, the 'ugly duckling' sister, the comic foil, the forgotten and ignored child! Portrayed in film as squinting, clueless, socially inept, pseudo-intellectual, and plain.

Her story must be depressing. She watches her older sisters marry well for love, and her silliest, youngest sister at least snags a handsome rake. Even Charlotte Lucas gets her ever after--happy to have a home if not Mr. Collins as a mate.

Janice Hadlow's debut novel The Other Bennett Sister channels Austen's character Mary Bennett, imagining a worthy character who lives into a richer life. The novel shows inspiration from Austen's story and themes yet Hadlow develops the story in an original way, true to the historical time and setting.

Themes of self-realization, self-recreation, learning through error, prejudice and pride, sense and sensibility are all a part of Mary's path.

The first part of the book follows Pride and Prejudice from Mary's perspective. Those of us familiar with Austen's novel must be patient; the best is to come. We do learn that Mary had taken to reading theology and philosophy hoping for her father's approval.

After her sisters, including Kitty, are married and Mr. Bennett has passed, twenty-year-old Mary and Mrs. Bennett are dependent on the rich sisters. Miss Bingley takes out her disappointment on Mary with whispered jabs. And the Darcy household is too happy and perfect to easily allow her room. In desperation, Mary turns to the Gardiners. They offer Mary the example of a happy marriage, value her for herself, and provide good counsel.

When Mary is convinced to select a new wardrobe to better suit London society, I loved the descriptions of spotted and stripped and sprigged muslins, the fad colors of coromandel and jonquil, the green dress that will replace the dull colors that had allowed Mary to previously disappear into the woodwork.

In her simple elegance, Mary takes her place in society and attracts the attention of several men. One combines good sense and steadiness with a love of poetry. The other embraces free-thinking and prefers the pursuit of sensation as life's goal.

She meets men with a love of the novel. I love the many references to the literature and poetry that arises in conversation:

William Godwin's Poetic Justice 
Mary Wollstonecraft 
Lord Byron and Shelley
Tintern Abbey and We Are Seven by William Wordsworth; also his Guide to the Lakes
Evelina by Fanny Burney
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Pamela and Sir Charles Grandison by Samuel Richardson

I loved how the Romantic Era makes its impact on her life with Mary's (unsuitable) beau extolling feeling and sensation and rejecting cultural expectations and values, especially concerning the role of women and marriage as a socio-economic compromise.

Our lives are so brief and yet we spend so much of them obeying rules we did not make.~ from The Other Bennett Sister by Janice Hadlow

Mary early prefers the steady man. But his reticence leaves Mary to be persuaded into unwise decisions.

This landscape gives us a proper sense of perspective. It shows us our smallness in the great scheme of things.~ from The Other Bennett Sister by Janice Hadlow

The Lakes

The Gardiners take that trip to the Lake District they had once planned for Elizabeth; Mary's preferred beau accompanies them while the other just shows up.

Before she came to the Lakes, she had read a great deal about the subline--sights so extraordinary they could not be adequately described, only felt and experienced. She had never expected to feel for herself such an extraordinary consummation.~ from The Other Bennett Sister by Janice Hadlow

...they caught sight of the great lake at Windermere; then they were quiet, for it was a sight magnificent enough to silence anyone.~ from The Other Bennett Sister

The group decides to walk up the second largest mountain in England. It is a rocky climb that will last all day--and threatens Mary's future happiness.

hikers on Scafell

The romance has enough twists and turns for any Austen lover, with the satisfaction of a happy ending. This is not a plot giveaway--any Austen fan fiction must have it's happily ever after.

Hadlow has given us a fantastic read.

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Other Bennet Sister
by Janice Hadlow
Henry Holt & Company
Pub Date 31 Mar 2020 
ISBN 9781250129413
PRICE $27.99 (USD)

Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer

I was so relieved when Benjamin Dreyer confessed. "When I started out as a copy editor, I realized that most of what I knew about grammar I knew instinctively.”  I was not alone!

He won my heart by adding, "Even now I'd be hard-pressed to tell you what a nominative absolute is, I think that the word "genitive" sounds vaguely smutty, and I certainly don't know, or care to know, how to diagram a sentence. I hope I'm not shocking you."

We did diagram sentences in junior high....in 1965... Don't ask me how to do that now.

In school, I often got an A for content and a C for grammar and spelling. I never did learn to touch type with accuracy, and any proficiency I had gained in spelling has disappeared.

I often said that I came out of Temple University knowing how to read intelligently. I was quite unemployable and ended up in customer service and sales.

When I got a job as a copywriter/copyeditor in promotion for a small publishing house (I had worked for a former employee and my new boss thought I had learned her skills through osmosis), I worked hard to correct my errors by reading grammar books. My coworker and I had many heated discussions about how to write; she was a grammar nerd.

Later in life, while schooling our son, my family all were writing and  we would critique each other. I had become a member of the dreaded 'grammar police' and oversensitive to bad writing habits.

I took short-term editing jobs and people hated me. I edited a manuscript for a self-published author who appreciated my insight and gave me double our agreed on price.

Well, that was a long time ago. I had thrown out my ragged grammar books before a move. Now, I needed a refresher course. And hearing so many good things about Dreyer's English, bought an ebook.

What a treasure! So much useful information, shared in such an entertaining way! A joy to read!

I now understand why I never know if I should use gray or grey. My history of reading British writers had me totally confused.

I am very grateful.

Learn more at
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/232363/dreyers-english-by-benjamin-dreyer/

The Story of More by Hope Jahren

Having hope requires courage.~from The Story of More by Hope Jahren

Succinct, well organized, and with a powerful narrative that is engrossing and accessible, The Story of More crunches down what I have read in numerous books into 224 pages.

Author Hope Jahren, author of the best-selling memoir Lab Girl, based the book on her climate change classes.

"All of this has convinced me that it's time to bring global change out of my classroom and into this book," Jahren writes in the introduction. "So if you'll listen, I'll tell you what happened to my world, to your world--to our world. It changed."

She starts at the very beginning--the fact that humans are on this earth and that our population is continually growing. Following a logical narrative, Jahren covers how we get our food and our growing energy use and the changes we have wrought on earth.

Along the way she points out that we have enough of everything but it is not shared equitably. Millions live without enough food, clean water and other things some of us take for granted. And millions of us spend money on things we don't need, wasting the clean water and energy available.

Scientists have been aware for nearly my entire lifetime that our dependence on fossil fuels was a problem. We have seen the environmental damage caused by human activity, including factory farms and our dependence on gasoline fueled cars and air travel. We know that the sea level is rising  and glaciers and the polar ice caps are melting.

Jahren concludes with actions we can all take.

First, we must determine our personal values. Learn what you can about what you value. Are your personal activities in line with those values? What about your personal investments--are they in line with your values? How we spend our money and how we invest our money should reflect what we believe. Share your values with institutions to pressure change.

Americans can make a huge impact. Every step we take to limit our energy use and reduce our consumption makes an impact. We can't give up. We can do with less.

Do not be seduced by lazy nihilism.~ from The Story of More  by Hope Jahren

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read an excerpt or hear an audio excerpt at
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575671/the-story-of-more-by-hope-jahren/

from the publisher

Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet. In concise, highly readable chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions—from electric power to large-scale farming to automobiles—that, even as they help us, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like never before. She explains the current and projected consequences of global warming—from superstorms to rising sea levels—and the actions that we all can take to fight back. At once an explainer on the mechanisms of global change and a lively, personal narrative given to us in Jahren’s inimitable voice, The Story of More is the essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it.

The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here
by Hope Jahren
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pub Date March 3, 2020
ISBN: 9780525563389
$15.00 (USD) hardcover

Deeds Not Words

cover Deeds Not Words

Deeds Not Words features art quilts that appeared in an exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The traveling, juried exhibition included twenty-nine award-winning quilt artists.

Over eighty years, women fought to gain the vote. The title of this book comes from Emmeline Pankhurst who in 1903 used the slogan "Deeds Not Words" for the Women's Social and Political Union. An accompanying essay addresses the history of the movement and another offers insight into the artists at work.

The book includes photos of early and history quilts that incorporated visual references to the movement.

Each quilt is presented with an artist's comment that explains the history behind her chosen theme and a brief bio of the artist. The quilts are presented in large photographs of the whole and in detail. The methods represented are diverse and represent each artist's unique style.

This is art that inspires and educates. From Arturo Alonzo Sandoval, I learned about Detroit suffragist Ethel Willimans Harkless and the racist element of the Sufferage movement. I had no idea that the FBI called Jane Addams "a most dangerous woman" because of her work as a social reformer, feminist, and pacifist. Addams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Laura Wasilowski portraits Addams 'mug shots' in her quilt.

Read more about the artist on her quilt First Ladies 

In the Appendix, there is a list of all the women whose names appear in Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry's quilt First Ladies, women who were the first to accomplish what had only been done by men or who "moved equality forward for others." It is an impressive list! Also is a list of women featured on Sandoval's quilt of Africa-American Suffragists and Colored Women's Clubs.

Deeds Not Words will interest a wide range of readers and will spur an interest in learning more about these brave and inspiring women.

I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Sara Bard Field by Martha Wolfe

Nasty Women Keep Fighting by Sue Bleiweiss

about the authors:

Sandra Sider, a studio quilt artist since the 1980s, has led critique workshops for Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) since 2005. She holds an MA in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Between 2010 and 2013, Sider served as president of SAQA, and today she is editor of SAQA's Art Quilt Quarterly as well as curator of the Texas Quilt Museum. She has written or edited more than a dozen books concerning contemporary quilt art. www.sandrasider.com

Curator of the New England Quilt Museum, Pamela Weeks has been a quilter, fiber artist, quilt historian, and state-juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen. For eight years she was the executive director of ABC Quilts, where the mission was to send handmade quilts to babies and young children born HIV-positive or drug affected, around the world. Weeks lives in New Hampshire.

Deeds Not Words 
by Sandra Sider and Pamela Weeks
Schiffer Publications
March 28, 2020
ISBN 9780764359170, 0764359177
96 pages, softcover
$19.99 USD

What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City by Mona Hanna-Attisha

This is the story of the most important and emblematic environmental and public health disaster of this young century. Most bluntly, it is the story of a government poisoning its own citizens, and then lying about it. [...]this is also a story about the deeper crises we're facing right now in our country: a breakdown in democracy; the disintegration of critical infrastructure due to inequality and austerity; environmental injustice that disproportionately affects the poor and black; the abandonment of civic responsibility and our deep obligations as human beings to care and provide for one another. Along with all that--which is a lot already--it's about a bizarre disavowal of honesty, transparency, good government, and respect for scientific truth. ~from What the Eyes Don't See by  Mona Hanna-Attisha

What the Eyes Don't See is a riveting read. Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician at Hurley Hospital in Flint, MI. Her narrative of how she discovered rising levels of blood in her pediatric patients and her battle to bring justice to the disenfranchised people of Flint is inspiring and maddening.

She describes her anguish and determination to save the children of Flint, how it disrupted her private and family life, and the brick walls and rejection she faced. Thankfully, she was stubborn and determined.

The callousness of political leaders toward the people of Flint as unimportant and expendable is despicable.

Flint falls right into the American narrative of cheapening black life.~from What the Eyes Don't See by Mona Hanna-Attisha

Readers are given a history of Flint's rise as an automotive manufacturing hub, and when jobs left, its decline to becoming one of the state's most impoverished cities.

The budget-cutting changes implemented under an appointed Emergency Manager explains how the lead-poisoned water came to be and how officials lied about the poisoned water.

If I had to locate an exact cause of the crisis, above all others, it would be the ideology of extreme austerity and "all government is bad government".~from What the Eyes Don't See by Mona Hanna-Attisha

Dr. Hanna-Attisha called out Senator Debbie Stabenow as an early and important supporter of her goals. The daughter of a nurse, and a former social worker, Senator Stabenow has a commitment to public health. She was part of a team that brought federal aid to Flint and the availability of premixed infant formula so Flint mothers did not need to use the lead-contaminated water.

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a local heroine. I am proud to say that she was a graduate of Royal Oak Kimball High School, my alma mater. Her family came to Michigan for education but remained in exile from their homeland after the takeover by Saddam Hussein and the Iraq wars. Dr. Hanna-Attisha first became an activist with a Kimball environmental group.

I read an ebook through the local public library.

News, TBR, Quilts

We have been in social isolation but for me it's not been a boon time for reading. It has been hard to concentrate, but I am getting better. Luckily, I read my review books before the last minute.

We have been taking walks around the neighborhood, rarely seeing anyone. There have been dog walkers and some children on bikes, and parents with little ones in strollers. The school across the street is closed down.

But, Spring is showing its face here in S.E. Michigan. The crocus are in bloom, the daylilies and Sedum and daffodils and tulips are growing quickly.

The fitness center is closed, so no working with my coach. The community center is closed and so no visiting with the quilt group. The library is closed so book club is cancelled. The dentist office is closed. The restaurants are closed.

What isn't closed is our kitchen and I have baked a pie and cookies over the last week!

My mother-in-law majored in pie-making and shared this easy recipe with me years ago. Here is the recipe from her recipe book:

I have been making these cookies for close to forty years. I had no chocolate chips in the house so skipped the cocoa powder and substituted butterscotch chips.

I am also practising the piano again. I can almost play as well as I did as a teenager, lol. One music book I pulled out is Herb Alpert songs. I learned them in the summer of 1965, and playing them brings back a lot of memories.

I have finished reading 36 books this year! But of course there are lots more waiting for me.

In the mail:

• The Preserve by Ariel S. Winter. I read the author's novel Barren Cover and my review is quoted in the paperback edition!
• Little Family by Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Home: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Reading Now:

• Pelosi by Molly Ball
• The King of Confidence by Miles Harvey, about the leader of a cult on Michigan's Beaver Island
• Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution by Jerome Charyn
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was the book club read, now cancelled. Since I haven't read it since the 1970s I want to finish it...sometime...

On my NetGalley and Edelweiss shelf:

• The Story of More by Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Sonia Shah
• Chasing Chopin by Annik LaFarge
• The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts
• Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates
• How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers
• American Follies by Norman Lock, author of Feast Day of the Cannibals, The Wreckage of Eden, and A Boy in His Winter
• Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin about Branwell Bronte
• The Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible New England History by Meg Muckenhoupt. (At university, I wrote a paper on the roots of American cooking when colonists had to adapt their traditions to new foods.)  

On my physical bookshelf still to read are review books:

• Simon the Fiddler by Jeanette Jiles
• The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson, author of Dead Wake 
• Country by Michael Hughes

Not a great photo, but I finished my yellow roses sampler and it is at the machine quilter.

I am working on the hand appliqued borders for my Hospital Sketches quilt. So many talented quilter have shared their completed quilts on the Facebook page run by the quilt designer Barbara Brackman.

I have three blocks of my many-faces-of-Emily Dickinson quilt. The one I am working on now was my first idea, Emily in her white dress and half hidden behind a curtain, looking out at the world.

The worst part of social isolation is not seeing our son, his girlfriend, and the grandpuppies! Sunny is getting SO BIG!

They are patterning social isolation for us.

I am sad to think that next month's book club may be cancelled. We are to read Miracle Creek and have a Skype visit with the author, Angie Kim.

But we all must do what we must. 

Stay home. Read good books. Enjoy your hobbies. Love your family. Stay safe.

In Hoboken by Christian Bauman

In Hoboken by Christian Bauman centers on a returning army vet and folksinger "born fifty years too late."

The novel is a study of a group of diverse friends bound by a shared history and a love of music and is informed by Bauman's experience as a vet and "itinerant guitar player." (You can hear the author sing online, including Waiting for the Fun here.)

The novel is set in 1995 in Hoboken, NJ and the city comes alive through the characters and story. I was reminded of Seinfeld or Friends, how the story keeps your interest because you like these characters.

The focus is on Thatcher, army vet and son of a famous mother and secretly the son of a famous folk singer. His old bandmates are forming a new group. They have day jobs so they can live, but music gives them life. Thatcher finds work at a mental health clinic, friending the patient Orris.

Bandmates include Thatcher's old friend James and the older, talented but crippled Marsh. Thatcher has a warm relation with the talented female singer Lou.

Even the supporting characters are terrific such as the landlady Mrs. Quatrone with her memories of Hoboken in the 1970s and 1980s, the decline and resurrection of flowers in the window boxes signifying the economic and social changes.

Bauman has a subtle wit that brought chuckles.

By the time first rounds were drunk and guitars tuned it was 1:30 A.M. They put themselves into a loose circle in the middle of the room, eyeing one another. Thatcher couldn't decide whether it reminded him of Old West gunslingers or lonely hearts at an eighth-grade dance.~ from In Hoboken by Christian Bauman

Crisis moments come to my favorite characters with a death and near death and accident. In the end, Thatcher must face his demons.

Tell me, what part of any of this isn't disturbing?~from In Hoboken by Christian Bauman

Thanks to the 'Net, I was able to find a copy of this 2008 novel. Bauman's other novels include The Ice Beneath You and Voodoo Lounge.

 book description:

The son of a feminist icon and a folk singer whose suicide gained him cult status, Thatcher Smith was born potential royalty in New York’s music scene. Instead, he keeps his parentage secret first by disappearing into the army then by taking his guitar across the river to working class Hoboken, New Jersey to form a band. There, amidst the dive bars and all-night diners of 1995, Thatcher and his friends struggle to make meaningful music in a culture turning away from it. A wicked sense of humor is key for the motley crew: Marsh, the beloved, polio-stricken local rock and roll kingpin; lesbian songwriting chanteuse Lou, to whom Thatcher is both deeply attracted and loves like a sister; James, guitar virtuoso, daytime World Trade Center employee, and owner of the floor Thatcher sleeps on; and locals like Orris, the overweight, half-blind, mad prophet of Hoboken’s west side, and patient at the mental-health clinic where Thatcher is a clerk. As in Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, music is the heart of the story, but in In Hoboken the place and the people are what make it vibrantly come alive.
 
“While the book is a work of fiction, it aptly captures the early music scene—namely the musicians who came to Hoboken with little else but a dream and a guitar strapped over their shoulders.” —Hoboken Reporter

Emily Dickinson III: The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn

The intriguing title and image (or, should I say the provocative title and image) caught my eye before I had read my first Jerome Charyn novel. I knew I had to read it as I developed my Emily Dickinson quilt.

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson is the culmination of Chrayn's life-long love of the poet. "I never quite recovered from reading her," he writes in the "Author's Note".

His portrayal of the poet will shatter your received image of Emily Dickinson. Narrated by Emily herself, the novel imagines the men and women who rocked her world and inspired her explosive output of secret love poetry.

Emily's voice is singular and alive, studded with images from her poems. The poems themselves do not appear, but are clandescently scribbled off-screen, although some were secreted into the public's hands against her wishes. We don't need them much; Emily's voice speaks her poetry.

Solving the mystery of Emily's love life has long baffled her readers. Was she lesbian, her sister-in-law Sue or their friend Kate Scott Turner Anthon her great love? Or was she enthralled by 'her Philadelphia', the Rev. Charles Wadsworth of Arch Street Presbyterian Church? She heard him preach while passing through Philly and corresponded with him. Or was it her mentor Thomas Wentworth Higginson who was a rare chosen recipient of her poetry? Or local newspaperman Sam Bowles?

Or someone lost to history? Like a handsome handyman at Mount Holyoke seminary?

She falls for the lowly orphaned handyman (later turned thief and circus clown). She would have eloped with the Amherst College tutor. She wants to hold the Rev. Wadsworth's hands, scarred from the manual labor that paid his way through school. Society--and the Dickinson patriarch--deem these men unfit for Emily's hand.

In the novel, Emily stalks the objects of her desire. She arranges secret meetings and roams the streets. She is wracked with unfulfilled desire, willing to cross Victorian lines of propriety.

The novel is an amazing marriage of fact and poetry and imagination that might just blow the top of your head off.

I purchased a paperback copy.

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson
by Jerome Charyn
W. W. Norton & Co.
Paperback Price$14.95
ISBN: 978-0-393-33917-8

Up in the Haymow: Lynne O. Ramer Memories of Mifflin County in the Early 20th C.

My grandfather Lynne O. Ramer wrote hundreds of letters which were published in the Lewistown Sentinel by Ben Meyers in his column We Notice That. Many were filled with memories of his boyhood in Milroy, PA.

Today I am sharing his letter which appeared on September 7, 1968, in the Lewistown Sentinel. He recalls boyhood in the haylofts of barns in the early 20th c.

*****

Lots of Work and Fun-Making When Barns Flourished

Up in the Haymow

Being a Blue Hollow lad back in the days when every farm had its great big and roomy barn, filling it was a lot of hard work. But there was something to compensate for it. There was lots of fun-making too.

Up in the haymow there were also sheaves of wheat, oats, and corn stalks. The mow’s floor consisted of scanty, open-face planks where the food for  the livestock had to be handled with tender care or it would be ruined.

To prevent spontaneous combustion and heatings and excess molds, causing fire to break out and perhaps burn the building to the ground, there had to be proper ventilation.

So the kids had to heap the hays and straws and sheaves in the most intricate manner. After those things began to settle down, the puzzle of getting out of it would have challenged the skill of an escape artist like Houdini. The kids had a job trying to untangle the mess.

It was hard on the kids too on a smootheringly hot day. In the haymows the harried youths dragged and tramped the hays until they actually dropped from sheer fatigue.

Remember, it was 100 degrees and more up there beneath the tin roof. Then the kids sweated, but in the winter time they almost froze up there, chutting the feeds down through the mow hole, down to the ever-hungry horses and cows.

Yet, despite all this, it was like a paradise up there next to the cool tin roof on a rainy day. It was pleasant and relaxing, listening to the pitter-patter of the rain. Or the clank-clank of hail stones in sweet music as they descended on the corrugated galvanized roof.

‘Twas no place to linger on sub-zero days, dragging the food supply to the mow holes. It was fully a 50-foot drop from the top of the mows to the barn floor below.

wnt

Knocked Out Cold

So the muscle-power of the cows and horses had to be called on to help. A one-inch hemp rope around the neck of Old Daisy, Old Bessy or Old Dobbin or Old Mary would pull the pitchfork-holding sheaves up to the top.

The arrangement worked real well. But then one day Mary’s colt whinnied at an unguarded moment. The rope was tightened as Mary tried to go to her baby and it caught the farm boy, who was tossed through the air “with the greatest of ease.”

When he hit bottom he bounced off a heap of limestones. Result: The lad was knocked out cold. It was a long sleep for him before he woke up with the help of old Doc Boyer. Unconscious he was from 2 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day.  The youngster had the “ride of his life,” nearly the last ride.

When the thunder rumbled and the lightning flashed and the rain and hail pummeled the galvanized roof, nobody had to worry about being up in the haymow. They felt perfectly safe. No electrical charges landed there. There were four lightening rods. Ben Franklin proved a point with his kite.

If a lad got careless when the mows were being filled he might disappear in the hap, falling through an unfloored section of the floor, reappearing again in the stable below—scaring a horse or cow half out of its wits.

wnt

Thresher Comes Around

The time came when Homer Crissman* brought his threshing rig to separate the chaff from the grain. The thresher was set up. And soon the barn floors were littered with dust and chaff and the wheat and oats sheaves did fly.

The cone-capped stack grew bigger and even bigger in height and width. There the livestock could munch later, but meanwhile the chickens followed the sifting chaff and grains away out into the meadows and fields.

Yes, the kids had lots of useful things to fill their lives. Unlike the youths today, they didn’t need thrills such as some do nowadays—pulling over mailboxes, prowling rural lanes, scaring the people by the noise of their motorcycles.

Gone are the days and gone also are many of the old-fashioned barns which furnished to much work and play, not only for kids, but for all the family.

*Samuel Homer Crissman was born in 1858 in Mifflin County, PA. He was a farmer in 1910. In 1930 he ran a saw mill. He passed in 1940 at age 82.

*****

My grandfather lived with his mother and Ramer grandparents in Milroy. Joseph Sylvester Ramer and Rachel Barbara Reed are shown below with their house and an outbuilding behind them. Joseph ran a saw mill.

After the death of Joseph's first wife Anna Kramer he married Rachel Barbara Reed. Their daughter Esther Mae gave birth to Lynne in 1905. When Joseph died, Esther and Lynne continued to live with Rachel.

When Gramps was nine he lost both his mother and his grandmother. His mother's siblings stepped in to care for him. He lived with his aunt Carrie Ramer Bobb and aunt Annie Ramer Smithers.

Carrie Bobb (52 y.o.) and Lynne Ramer (24 yo.)

Annie and Charles Smithers in the 1940s

Charlie Smithers encouraged my grandfather's academic success. Gramps worked his way through college and seminary at Susquehanna University and Columbia Teachers College. Later, he earned his Masters in Mathematics from University of Buffalo.

*****

My husband's maternal grandfather John Oran O'Dell was a farmer with a thresher in Lynn Township, St. Clair Co., MI.

He had a farm in the upper left corner of Lynn Twsp. almost to Brown City. The 'old homestead' had a large barn.

*****

Although my first home was an 1830s farmhouse, we didn't have a barn, just a series of 'sheds' or 'garages'. But across the street was another 1830s farmhouse with a barn. When my dad was a boy, he would help John Kuhn. Below is John with a load of hay, his barn in the background.

Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

I am a long-time reader of Nicholas Kristof's articles in the New York Times and I have read Half the Sky by Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn. I was interested in their newest book Tightrope. A few weeks ago while waiting for a talk at a local library, I picked up Tightrope from the new books shelf and started reading. The next day, I went out to a local bookstore and bought the book.

Yet those kids ended up riding into a cataclysm, as working-class communities disintegrated across America, felled by lost jobs, broken families and despair.~ from Tightrope by Kristof and WuDunn

Tightrope is a deeply personal book; Kristof writes about the kids who were on the bus he took to school, people who were his neighbors and friends, and what became of them. One of out four died from drugs, suicide, alcohol, recklessness, drugs, and obesity. One is homeless and one is in prison for life. And yet Kristof left that bus and became a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Their stories become the vehicle to ask the hard questions about what has happened in America.

What went wrong? What goes right for the kids who end up successful? Who, or what, is to blame? And most importantly, what can we do prevent people from falling off the narrow tightrope?

After breaking my heart, and reading the lofty goals that could change the lives of Americans, I was pleased the Appendix shared "10 Steps You Can Take in the Next Ten Minutes to Make a Difference." Political and social change takes time. But these steps are within our personal control.

We have blamed the poor for their poverty, criminalized addiction, threw troubled kids out of school, allowed health care and sound education to become an option only for the wealthy, watched children grow up with food insecurity, and punished people rather than give them the tools to be contributing members of society.

Americans need to change their minds and their policies. Kristof and WuDunn share success stories of successful local programs that have changed lives and which could be adopted on a larger scale.

"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps," after all, originally meant "do the impossible."

Some of us were lucky with parents who offered a firm foundation, teachers who took an interest and encouraged us; some of us had opportunities for education, vocational training, or qualified for the military. When a child has none of these advantages--no boots with straps to pull--their chances of success are slim.

Americans need to shrug off the paradigm of blame.

The paramount lesson of our exploration was the need to fix the escalators and create more of them to spread opportunity, restore people's dignity and spark their ingenuity.~from Tightrope by Kristof and WuDunn

from the publisher:

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of the acclaimed, best-selling Half the Sky now issue a plea--deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans--to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. 

With stark poignancy and political dispassion, Tightrope draws us deep into an "other America." The authors tell this story, in part, through the lives of some of the children with whom Kristof grew up, in rural Yamhill, Oregon, an area that prospered for much of the twentieth century but has been devastated in the last few decades as blue-collar jobs disappeared. About one-quarter of the children on Kristof's old school bus died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents. And while these particular stories unfolded in one corner of the country, they are representative of many places the authors write about, ranging from the Dakotas and Oklahoma to New York and Virginia. But here too are stories about resurgence, among them: Annette Dove, who has devoted her life to helping the teenagers of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, as they navigate the chaotic reality of growing up poor; Daniel McDowell, of Baltimore, whose tale of opioid addiction and recovery suggests that there are viable ways to solve our nation's drug epidemic. Taken together, these accounts provide a picture of working-class families needlessly but profoundly damaged as a result of decades of policy mistakes. With their superb, nuanced reportage, Kristof and WuDunn have given us a book that is both riveting and impossible to ignore.

Tightrope:Americans Reaching for Hope
by Nicholas D. Kristof and SHeryl WuDunn
Published January 14th 2020
Knopf Publishing Group
$27.95 hard cover
ISBN0525655085 (ISBN13: 9780525655084)

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler

Foreshadowing began with the opening sentences, narrated in a voice that brought to mind Rod Serling introducing a Twilight Zone episode, setting up the story.

A girl sitting beside a swimming pool behind her newly built home. The neighbor boy welcoming her to the neighborhood. A typical day in a typical good neighborhood, upscale and friendly, a place where women gather for book clubs and teenagers can safely run in the local park.

But underneath the 'tenuous peace' simmers the possibility of fracture, the conflict of class and money and race and values. For some, conspicuous wealth is the goal. For another, environmental concerns are primary.

And probing deeper, there are secret desires and blooming love and the blindness we hold on to for self-protection.

Lives will be destroyed.

"No. Yes. Of course. I am going to be a good neighbor."~from A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler

Xavier was good looking, a National Honor Student. He had won a scholarship to study classical guitar. He was also biracial. His white father died tragically. His mother Valerie was a professor whose hobby was more than 'gardening', it was environmental restoration and preservation. She was especially proud of the towering oak tree in her back yard.

The oak tree whose roots had been harmed when the house behind was torn down and replaced with a showcase McMansion.

New girl Juniper never knew her dad. Her mom Julia struggled before she lucked out, catching the attention of a self-made man with a lucrative business. Brad Whitman set 'his girls' up in a sweet deal of a life. But Brad's easy-going charm hid his motivation of self-interest and sick obsessions.

Valerie includes Julia into the neighborhood while Xavier and Juniper discover friendship is turning into something more.

Valerie cannot allow development to destroy the environment--she must make a stand and decides on a lawsuit. Juniper doubts the Purity Pledge her parents shepherded her into taking and secretly meets Xavier. She knows something is wrong with her dad's attentions but Brad justifies his obsession and plots ways to take action.

I will tell you this: the culmination will make you shudder and you will cry.

A Good Neighborhood is a reflection of the social turmoil of our time.

I had to consider my own 'good neighborhood,' a two-square-mile city highly rated on lists, with quick selling properties, a safe neighborhood. A predominately white neighborhood with a small demographic of foreigners and split in half politically. A city that voted out a mayor who used tax money to dig up dirt on her opponent and fired long-time city workers who would not cooperate with her plans.

And yet...every tree-lined avenue may shade secrets.

I received access to a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read an excerpt here.

A Good Neighborhood
by Therese Anne Fowler
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date 10 Mar 2020 
ISBN 9781250237279
PRICE $27.99 (USD)

John Adams Under Fire; The Founding Father's FIght for Justice in the Boston Massacre Murder Trial by Dan Abrams

250 years ago the Boston Massacre marked the beginning of the American Revolution. The mythos handed down tells how British Redcoats fired into a crowd of Americans, resulting in the death of freeman Crispus Attucks and other men.

The soldiers and their superior were put on trial separately. Samuel Adams wanted to capitalize on the incident to inflame anti-British sentiment and support the Sons of Liberty.

John Adams was part of the team to defend the Redcoats. He wanted to keep politics out of it and to prove the fairness and impartiality of American justice.

I knew it was a pivotal trial in American judicial history and I thought it would be interesting to learn more.

Dan Abrams' book John Adams Under Fire follows the incident and the testimonies at the trials in meticulous detail. The trials set new precedents in the length of the trials, extending over days, and in the judge's warning of 'reasonable' doubt' tending toward a verdict of not guilty.

I have to admit that with pages and pages of testimony reproduced in the book I scanned over many pages without a thorough  reading. It was...frankly, boring...

But I am not a scholar or a lawyer.

I appreciated many aspects of the book including a deeper understanding of the roots of the riot.

British soldiers stationed were in Boston, one lobsterback to every three citizens. Bostonians resented their presence and their conduct toward the colonists. Some soldiers took jobs to supplement their meager income, and some courted young women, but they also pushed their weight around harassing Bostonians and raped women.

Young Bostonian men decided to give the sentries a hard time, taunting them to lash back and fire their guns. The youth threw ice balls and carried clubs and struck the guns. They knew the soldiers could not fire in anger.

Propagandistic rendering of The Boston Massacre
By Henry Pelham (American, 1749–1806) - New York Public Library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12960467

Until they did.

Since Americans did in the end sent the Brits back across the pond, our history is biased. Paul Revere's picture of soldiers firing and citizens dying shows Americans as victims. Crispus has become a hero, even if he was likely one of the men out to stir up trouble in the first place.

A book not for the reader who prefers narrative nonfiction that reads like a novel, I am still pleased to have increased my understanding of this pivotal moment in America history.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

John Adams Under Fire: The Founding Father's Fight for Justice in the Boston Massacre Murder Trial
by Dan Abrams; David Fisher
HARLEQUIN – Trade Publishing
Hanover Square Press
Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 9781335015921
$28.99 (USD) hardcover