It's true: this is a super finicky type of project. My first star, the green star being inspected by Watson at Orr Springs below, took me two days to complete. The next star took half that time. I experimented with spray start, pins and all sorts of things:
I really enjoyed reading this book about the author's journey to find a path forward with her daughter's very young diagnosis of mental health issues at the age of 8 years old.
The key recommendations are sound: listen to your intuition, listen to your child, listen to your family, learn to be resilient and find comfort, strength and courage in modalities that feel right to you (within reason).
The book repeated a lot of information and I felt as though the author perpetuated some negative stereotypes or information even as she extolled the value of her own personal spiritual journey. While she relates the story of a shift in her daughter at age 14 after being sent off to an in-patient clinical setting as having blossomed and grown into a highly sensitive empath, she still continues to refer to her daughter as having mental health issues.
I felt like the author should choose -- is this a person with a mental health issue -- or is this a misunderstood sensitive empath? Sure, it can be both - but it seems to me that if she's quit all her medications, quit therapy and is using crystals and flower essences and coping mechanisms for resilience, maybe she isn't and never was suffering a mental health issue?
The author relates a story about how a social worker sent to her home interviewed her and said "I think that it's your parenting that is causing these issues." The author was destroyed by this assessment - but then goes on to describe how her husband's more structured parenting style and her own laissez-faire style created confusion for her daughter and resulted in some of the behavior that was observed. So, maybe, yes -- this was the result of contradictory parenting styles. It's better to find out sooner than later -- and, I should imagine, if she's so self-aware and open minded that she's willing to seek out a medium and the advice of angels or ghosts, she might also be willing to examine how her own behavior and choices had an impact on her daughter.
REVIEW: The Sensitive Ones: Healing and Understanding Your Child's Mental Health by Heather Nardi
RATING: 2-stars
© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.
Bowl 1 - Sift together
Bowl 2 - wet
Thoroughly blend each bowl then add wet to dry.
Plum was processed through the Vittorio food mill which results in a much messier process in the kitchen but plum skins don’t shred very well in the blender in my experience.
I processed the apricots in the blender to make the purée.
I used 2 part tart pans, so I don’t want the batter to be so thin that it’s going to leak out the bottom.
I read "Tropic of Cancer" because it's one of those books on all the "Best" lists. I was not expecting hundreds of pages of drunken, lecherous misogyny. The first half of the book makes it clear that the protagonist is not supposed to be likable -- it's the mostly internal ramblings of a 30-something young man who is let off the leash in a big, attractive European city.
Not just any city - but Paris! Things are always different, better and more fun in some other big city. Around the time the events in the novel take place, there was a huge shift in norms and mores. Not just in terms of sexuality but the idea of "single" people or unattached people having recreational sex and living alone or with roommates (not family of origin nor their own family).
Miller and his friends live in hotels because what was available for single people. He spends the first half of the book getting drunk and getting laid, or thinking about getting laid -- and not thinking very highly of himself or all the people around him.
About midway through, he gets a job as a proofreader. He starts to figure out how to fake it, and realizes that there are advantages to his position there:
"The world is brought right under my nose and all that is requested of me is to punctuate the calamities."(page 146)
"It is the reality of a swamp and they are the frogs who have nothing better to do than to croak. The more they croak the more real life becomes." (page 146)
"They have a wonderful therapeutic effect upon me, these catastrophes which I proofread. Imagine a state of perfect immunity, a charmed existence, a life of absolute security in the midst of poison bacilli. Nothing touches me, neither earthquakes nor explosions nor riots nor famine nor collisions nor wars nor revolutions." (page 147)
"I am inoculated against every disease, every calamity, every sorrow and misery. It's the culmination of a life of fortitude." (page 147)
"A good proofreader is a little like God Almighty, he's in the world but not of it. He's for Sundays only. Sunday is his night off. On Sundays he steps down from his pedestal and shows his ass to the faithful." (page 147)
"It doesn't matter what the nature of the calamity is, only whether it is spelled right. Everything is on one level, whether it be the latest fashion for evening gowns, a new battleship, a plague, a high explosive, an astronomic discovery, a bank run, a railroad wreck, a bull market, a hundred-to-one shot, an execution, a stick-up, an assassination, or what. " (page 148)
"Nothing escapes the proofreader's eye, but nothing penetrates his bulletproof vest" (page 148)
If you haven't figured it out yet -- the entire book is satirical and meant to be goddamned funny, so laugh, goddammit! It's dark, certainly, and ghastly but it's meant to be comedy.
"But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here. Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows." (page 150)
"Above all, never despair. Il ne faut jamais désespérer."
"A world without hope, but no despair. It's though I had been converted to a new religion..." (page 151)
This distance from the world around him makes him feel as though he's above all the things that are going on in the world around him -- he builds up his armor against the injustices of the world.
"I'm not American any more, nor a New Yorker, and even less a European, or a Parisian. I haven't any allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I'm neither for nor against. I'm a neutral." (page 153)
The income, and the wee bit of distance, have begun to have an effect on the young debauched author. He's not just railing against consumerism and peasantry and pedantry like he did earlier in the book -- but now it's the cities that are part of the predatory process of capitalism:
"I am speaking naturally of that world which is peculiar to the big cities, the world of men and women whose last drop of juice has been squeezed out by the machine -- the martyrs of modern progress. " (page 162)
Nonetheless, he tries to find a balance, and even makes himself vomit after a night of drinking so he can still do his job passably:
“It requires more concentration to detect a missing comma than to epitomize Nietzsche’s philosophy. You can be brilliant sometimes, when you’re drunk, but brilliance is out of place in the proofreading department.” (page 175)
"Dates, fractions, semicolons — these are the things that count. And these are the things that are most difficult to track down when your mind is all ablaze. Now and then I made some bad lenders, and if it weren’t that I had learned how to kiss the bosses ass, I would have been fired, that’s certain." (page 175)
Our protagonist shuffles around to stay with other friends, finds himself in a more sedate neighborhood, where the street scenes beg the comparison to capitalism to the military barracks:
"When the sun comes out, any spot in Paris can look beautiful; and if there is a bistro with an awning rolled down, a few tables on the sidewalk and colored drinks in the glasses, then people look altogether human. and they are human -- the finest people in the world when the sun shines! So intelligent, so indolent, so carefree. It's a crime to herd such people into barracks, to put them through exercises..." (page 222)
Just before he accepts a boring, unpaid job for room and board teaching English in the suburb of Dijon, he reflects on writing and offers the following as an excuse for the book the reader holds in their hands:
"What is called their "over-elaboration" is my meat: it is the sign of struggle, it is struggle itself with all the fibers clinging to it, the very aura and ambiance of the discordant spirit." (page 253)
"When I reflect the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears."(page 253)
"I see that behind the daily annoyances and intrusions, behind the cheap, glittering malice of the feeble and inert, there stands the symbol of life's frustrating power, and that he who would create order, he would sow strife and discord, because he is imbued with will, such a man must go again and again to the stake and the gibbet. " (page 253)
"I see that behind the nobility of his gestures there lurks the specter of the ridiculousness of it all - that he is not only sublime, but absurd." (page 253)
On Christmas Eve, he goes out drinking with a friend and they crash a midnight mass -- never having done so before -- and is in awe of the impact that the experience has on him. While admitting that he felt a bit of the power that might lure people in, he has low regard for priests who live well above the standards of their parishioners (there's a story about being broke and asking for a handout from a priest who told him to go back to Paris):
"In the street one meets with all forms of dementia and the priest is by no means the most striking. Two thousand years of it has deadened us to the idiocy of it."
The late part of the book is devoted to two final stories: the boredom of being stuck in Dijon and escaping when he heard there was a room available. Then, the story of his poor friend Fillmore who hit rock bottom, spent some time in "the bug house" and agreed to marry a woman he may have impregnated and who may have given him a dose of the clap.
The whole comedy of Fillmore and Ginette's interactions seen through the lens of our protagonist is like an Abbott & Costello or "The Three Stooges" skit. In the end, our "hero" helps his friend make a break back to the US, pockets a wad of his friend's cash and then takes a taxi ride around Paris, never intending to deliver the cash to the pregnant girlfriend. The end.
Is it deserving of the best novel list? Maybe to some people, sure, I could see why if you take into consideration the historical context and don't take Miller's grandiose and surreal "over-elaborations" too seriously. It's a picaresque -- which is defined by a repugnant cast of characters who live their lives in a way that is not "proper" and against most conventions or morals. They aren't even really having fun, most of the time, and neither are the readers of such novels.
REVIEW: Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
RATING: 4-stars
I have 6 adult cats -- here's our system:
Sustainably Yours litter from PetFood Express
Clumps SUPER hard
Can be sifted with standard wire mesh sieve to get any small bits (like this one )
I scoop morning & night, and in between as needed. I do not dump unless there's really a lot of little bits in the litter that I can't sift out with the wire mess sifter. I clean the litterboxes monthly with hot boiling water and bleach.
I use "biodegradable" bags (box of 1000 bags) and they go in the trash but I keep thinking about digging a hole to create a pet waste digester in the backyard
In the last 30 years as an adult living on my own - I have gone through MANY many kinds of cat litter.
Clay is bad - mountain top removal and all that
Large pellets are a PITA and a mess, they fall apart
Never flush unless you have a septic system; else the risk is that organisms from cat poop end up leaving water treatment plants where they go to rivers and oceans and KILL OTTERS. You don't want to kill otters, right? Didn't think so.
Corn & Wheat have had variable results for me over the years - not clumping hard enough, powdery mess tracked everywhere, fermented smell that develops.
In 2011, I bought this book (with CD!) and pre-cut fabric for 12 stars from a quilt store in SE Oregon - and have sat on it for 10 years. I have never done paper piecing and it seemed like it would be too fussy and a PITA. I've just picked it up again and I'm really glad that I did because: the software to read the patterns on the CD is obsolete! I had to export them all as PDFs but a couple of them didn't want to behave - so I had help from a friend who had a lot of older operating systems and now I have a full set of 50 PDFs for each star in the book.
I'm starting this project as a travel project - so follow along on the tag "50FPPS" for details.
"Democracy in Chains" is a thorough examination of 20th century efforts to undermine democratic systems through slow, methodical and intentional erosion and manipulation of the democratic system. Their interests are to maintain property for the wealthy -- and to reduce access to education and intergenerational mobility to the many. Having been a child in the Reagan years - I saw the message clearly: plan now for things that most people think are a right or you will never have them. I have chosen not to have children. I have worked my ass off but now at middle age -- it seems unlikely that I will avoid poverty in old age. At least now it's clear that's part of a larger design out of my control.
VOTE.
© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.
Humans have always been resourceful – they find ways to increase power and status, even when it means inventing and convincing others of the validity of something. For example – at a time when France’s relative power and strength was troubled, Louis XIV basically invented “luxury” lifestyle and merchandise – fabrics, clothing, perfumes and furniture – in the 16th century, and his ambassadors became marketing managers, selling an idea that possessions of a certain quality meant something and inspiring the earliest fear of missing out that we see in modern marketing.
Michael Eric Dyson dives into the “art of hustle” in the first chapter – describing the ways that people, particularly African Americans in poor neighborhoods, have sought to find such niches to improve their circumstances and achieve financial and social success. He talks about facets of types of hustle based on poverty and opportunity of location as integral to the black experience in the US.
Dyson’s writing works on many levels, skillfully interweaving biographical information about Jay-Z, biographical portraits of other artists, politicians and historical figures, social history, and literary analysis of the lyrics of Jay-Z and other artists.
Throughout, there are references to conversations that Jay-Z and other artists have through the lyrics of their music – some are serious and some are light-hearted play acting or “dues.”
Dyson also does a deep dive into masculinity and blackness – analyzing the Hegelian dynamics of Jay-Z and Beyonce’s musical conversations around the complexities of relationships between women and men.
As a former language major – I really enjoyed Dyson’s analysis of Jay-Z’s lyrics in literary terms, summarized as an “extremely sophisticated romp on poetry’s playground of metaphor and metonymy, simile and synecdoche.” Dyson dives into all the references to philosophy, history, politics and satire and summarizes as “Jay’s lyrical cleverness masks his deeper intellectual reflections on the world and on black culture itself.”
“Jay’s openness to a variety of art forms and his understanding that common themes of existential struggle unite disparate genres of music. Thus one of his most successful songs, at a critical point in his career, features a sample from a Broadway musical that highlights the plight of poor, socially invisible children.”
Jay-Z is a poet, a philosopher and has a strong political voice – which does not lessen as his popularity and success continue. He’s the first rap artist to become a billionaire, and throughout his career – one where he never writes down his lyrics -- “Jay has also mastered a sneak-and-speak approach to political commentary, He laces his lyrics with pieces of social and political insight, from entire blocs of songs through extended metaphor to just a word or two.”
As Ken Burns highlighted in his documentary of country music in the US -- which featured mostly white artists -- the non-white artists he included stressed repeatedly "it's about the stories." Hip-hop and rap are also about the stories, and shifting from stereotyped masculine swagger, avoidance of commitment and personal consumption. There are women calling BS on men treating them poorly and even a young (gay) black artist whose "country trap" song quickly went up the Billboard charts as the most popular song in Billboard history.
Hip-hop / rap artists are not just telling their stories and shining light into the dark corners of our cultural consciousness, but they are working into the general conceptions of many concepts, such as who gets to enjoy "luxury" goods? (See https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/the-new-kings-and-queens-of-fashion-kanye-west-asap-rocky-cardi-b ) -- and importantly, they are changing the rules around power and status.
One of the most appealing traits of Dyson's writing is his passionate enthusiasm for Jay-Z's oeuvre -- his contextualization and analysis of Jay-Z’s music, achievements and life flows in a way that seems clear and almost obvious (as in "Of course it happened that way!"). Dyson provides a fantastic annotated discography at the end of this lovely synthesis of popular culture, history, capitalism and social class. Or, as my friend Andre says – “Just listen to the music.”
REVIEW: Jay-Z: Made in America by Michael Eric Dyson
RATING: 5-stars
© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.
Clearly, there is something wrong with my brain. So many people rave about this book and despite having my birthday as the title - it's not something I can get excited about.
The first story is weirdly disjointed -- venturing inside the brain of a teenage girl who seems to have ADHD, and a teenage boy who has strict disciplinarian parents. The girl is abducted from her home and the boy goes to her rescue, bashing in the head of the abductor. It's mostly told through internal dialogue of the characters and not an enjoyable read.
Another story about a mother who visits a "white trash" home to look at a puppy with her kids - and discovers a child being kept on a leash in the muddy backyard, decides to "not contribute" to what's going on there (which contributes to the death of the puppy).
A long story about human experimentation on prisoners -- who are injected with trademarked name products to heighten their perception of attractiveness of the other person, their ability to communicate and their awareness ... or the opposite direction results in a group of two women and 3 men having a ridiculous amount of sex, and a suicide. It was creepy and sad to say the least.
I tried to read through the remaining stories but didn't find them to be very interesting. They were drawn out in a way that was just not natural flow of communication. The epilogue is an interview between David Sedaris and the author -- cooing over each other and the alleged skewering of class in the US (apparently through repeatedly referring to "white trash").
Your mileage may vary - this presents a distorted reality, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.
REVIEW: Tenth of December by George Saunders
RATING: 2-stars
© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.
