In the middle of the night on April 15, 1848, Emily Edmonson and five of her thirteen siblings, sneaked out of their masters' homes in Washington, D.CIn the middle of the night on April 15, 1848, Emily Edmonson and five of her thirteen siblings, sneaked out of their masters' homes in Washington, D.C., and boarded the Pearl. If all went well, they and 70 other slaves would disembark three to five days later at Frenchtown Wharf, Maryland and then travel the 16 miles to Philadelphia, where they would be free.
Unfortunately, when their absence was discovered the next morning, a disgruntled free black man named Judson Diggs, angry that two of the women escapees had not paid him for a carriage ride, pointed the search party in the right direction. Bad weather had forced the Pearl to weigh anchor at the end of Chesapeake Bay and the search party, in a steamboat, was able to catch up despite their head start...
Winifred Conkling condensed an enormous amount of information regarding the Pearl incident; political, social, cultural, economic, and historical context; the specifics of slavery in Washington, D.C.; and the life of slaves in general into this short middle-grade book. Sidebars cover topics like yellow fever, the Fugitive Slave Act, the American Anti-Slavery Society, terminology, and sorrow songs in greater detail. I especially appreciate the tie-ins to Harriet Beecher Stowe (Rev. Henry Beecher's sister) and how Emily's story influenced the ground-breaking novel Uncle Tom's Cabin...
Brown Girl Dreaming has racked up an impressive list of awards since its release last summer - National Book Award, Coretta Scott King Award, Newbery Brown Girl Dreaming has racked up an impressive list of awards since its release last summer - National Book Award, Coretta Scott King Award, Newbery Honor Medal, to name a few - and all well deserved.
This middle grade memoir is written in flowing free verse and follows the author's childhood growing up between South Carolina and New York. An absent father, a long-distance mother, a religious grandmother, a cheerful aunt, a loving and independent grandfather, friends, teachers, siblings, all come to life in few, carefully chosen words. Tragedy, too, is simply and movingly expressed. The aunt who dies unexpectedly from a fall, the brother stunted mentally and physically by exposure to lead, the inevitable decline of loved ones due to old age. Events from the wider world creep in as well, filtered through a child's memory. She describes hearing about marching on the radio, avoiding downtown because of sit-ins, Black Panthers and Angela Davis.
Early in the book Jacqueline directly addresses the unreliability of memory - an interesting choice for a memoir - with the story of her birth.
You were born in the morning, Grandma Georgiana said. I remember the sound of the birds... You came in the late afternoon, my mother said. Two days after I turned twenty-two.Your father was at work.Took a rush hour bustryingto get to you. Butby the time he arrived,you were already here... You're the one that was born near night, my father says. When I saw you, I said, She's the unlucky onecome out looking just like her daddy... My time of birth wasn't listed on the certificate, then got lost again amid other people's bad memory.
Often times, small moments in childhood take on a disproportional influence on our future selves. Living with her grandmother in South Carolina, Jacqueline remembers getting on the bus and her grandmother walking them to the back, even after the laws changed.
I look around and see the ones who walk straight to the back. See The ones who take a seat up front, daring anyone to make them move. And know this is who I want to be. Not scared like that. Brave like that.
Berthoud and Elderkin have compiled a delightful reference for those in need of greater direction in their reading. Or thAnd I thought I knew books...
Berthoud and Elderkin have compiled a delightful reference for those in need of greater direction in their reading. Or those who may be in a reading rut and want some new ideas. Or those who don't know where to start reading. Or those who have any of the hundreds of specific ailments they list.
The cure for claustrophobia? Little House on the Prairie with its wide open Kansas skies.
The cure for hypochondria? The Secret Garden with its tale of Colin's surety he's dying and fear of life.
The cure for regret? These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine and the title character's determination to move forward with pluck and resilience from sorrow and hardship.
The "illnesses" listed range from the physical (Hay Fever, Headache, and Hemorrhoids - all on the same page) to the financial (Broke, Being; Tax Return, Fear of Doing) to the emotional and spiritual (Angst, Existential; Left Out, Feeling). They cover the serious (both Cancer, Caring for Someone with and Cancer, Having) and the less so (Tea, Unable to Find a Cup of)...
I will never believe anything I read on the internet ever again.
So maybe that's a little overboard, and I've always been, let's say, a skeptical readeI will never believe anything I read on the internet ever again.
So maybe that's a little overboard, and I've always been, let's say, a skeptical reader of online sources, but I was floored at the deliberate and blatant manipulation Ryan Holiday describes in Trust Me, I'm Lying.
As Holiday puts it, "what rules over the media...rules over the country." How many times have you seen a single sensational story practically take over the media cycle, shunting dozens of other more worthy, more fundamentally-vital-to-life-on-this-planet stories to the side?
Follow the money, Holiday says. It's all about the clicks, the pageviews, the number of eyeballs that will see a story. The more sensational a story, the higher the views and the more money advertisers can charge. Holiday derisively calls this "pageview journalism" - though I quibble with using the term "journalism" to describe it at all - blogging with little regard for facts or accuracy just to get people on the site.
Pageview journalism puffs blogs up and fattens them on a steady diet of guaranteed traffic pullers of a mediocre variety that require little effort to produce. It pulls writers and publishers to the extremes, and only to the extremes--the shocking and the already known...Pageview journalism treats people by what they appear to want--from data that is unrepresentative to say the least--and gives them this and only this until they have forgotten that there could be anything else. It takes the audience at their worst and makes them worse.
Holiday also brings up what makes a post go viral. Virality is, of course, what media manipulators are shooting for. And he quotes research that confirms my observations on social media: "the most powerful predictor of virality is how much anger an article evokes." No wonder we see so much outrage all over the interwebs! It's what sells! It's what moves people to action! (But most often only the very limited action of clicking the "share" button, not actual action that would change the world in a positive direction. Hence, the rise of the term "clicktivist." But I digress.)
Of course, anger isn't the only emotion that prompts people to share:
A powerful predictor of whether content will spread online is valence, or the degree of positive or negative emotion a person is made to feel. Both extremes are more desirable than anything in the middle...No marketer is ever going to push something with the stink of reasonableness, complexity, or mixed emotions.
As a marketer, Holiday's job is straightforward. "Behind the scenes I work to crank up the valence of articles, relying on scandal, conflict, triviality, titillation, and dogmatism. Whatever will ensure transmission." In this field, "Nuance is a weakness."
Which is why the "reasonableness [and] complexity" I crave are so often missing in online discussions. When the extremes are what sells, when heightened emotions pay the bills, calm, reasoned discourse isn't high on the priority list.
The ease with which people can make up "news stories" out of the flimsiest of "facts" is disturbing. Careful, manipulative editing, mischaracterization and subtly misleading phrasing, and manufactured urgency are all basic tactics to get a "story" on a small blog. It then gets passed "upward to bigger and more credible outlets, which simply link to the previous report and don't bother to verify it." Once even a non-story gets enough online buzz, the buzz itself becomes the story and more legit outlets feel justified in picking it up. Doing real, deep, difficult investigative journalism is hard and time-consuming. "Getting it right is expensive, getting it first is cheap." And getting it first gets you lots and lots of pageviews, even if you get every detail wrong.
In this slim but important volume, first published in 1973, the inestimable Carol Lynn Pearson gathers dozens of accounts of women in the early ChurchIn this slim but important volume, first published in 1973, the inestimable Carol Lynn Pearson gathers dozens of accounts of women in the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints using their spiritual gifts. What a powerful spiritual heritage we have!
Each chapter focuses on a single gift - the gift of tongues and the gift of interpretation of tongues, the gift of prophecy, the gift of revelation, the gift of faith to heal, the gift of faith to be healed, and the gift of power over evil spirits - some of which will be familiar to those of us in the Church today and some may seem strange because they are no longer prevalent. The perspective this provides is helpful to me; the way things are done now is not the only way they have ever been done. And by extension, the way things are done now is not, or at least should not be, a straitjacket restricting change.
Body Image Breakthrough is a short but powerful exploration of the concept and real-life implications of good and bad body image, communicated in the Body Image Breakthrough is a short but powerful exploration of the concept and real-life implications of good and bad body image, communicated in the language of LDS Church doctrine and faith.
Wightman uses scriptural stories from Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego's refusal to bow down to Nebuchadnezzer's statue to the Fall of Adam and Eve to illustrate how our modern culture sets us all up, though women and girls in particular, to worship the idol of outward appearance and to feel destructive shame when we don't measure up. The book is full of quotes from General Authorities and other Church leaders, Christian speakers and authors, and scientific experts that point out the emptiness of that almost ubiquitous idolatry.
Wightman ties in the money-making motivations that drive the fad diets, fashion magazines, beauty products, weight loss companies, supplements, and specialty foods. She points out the unrealistic nature of the photoshopped images presented to us everyday and the vast efforts made to get us to feel we need to look that way as well. At best, all this emphasis on outer appearances is a huge distraction; at worst, it can lead to life-threatening medical and emotional conditions.
Stripping away all the noise, Wightman boils it down to the most essential truths.
Our ultimate goal is to stop heeding all the voices shouting at us to eat this way or that way, and to turn to the Lord for the truth we need most...One of the most important things I learned is that there's a sacred middle ground that exists between the extremes of body obsession and body neglect. It's a place of peace, a place of balance, and a place of incredible freedom...The only way I can be free is to embrace the real me.
Unlike many well-intentioned books or articles that address this topic, there is not a single word in this book about the hemline or neckline version of "modesty." Not a single one! Instead, modesty is demonstrated to be a characteristic that comes from the heart and follows naturally from a healthy sense of self-worth and value. Rather than using our body "as currency to win people over" by dressing a certain way - seeking approval or acceptance from others either by deliberately flaunting our bodies or by strictly following "modesty" guidelines - we should be glorying in the natural beauty and diversity of our bodies and finding our value in our intrinsic worth...
Life with three young boys is rarely calm and quiet. More often than not, their waking hours are filled with hollering, yelling, whoops of joy, cries Life with three young boys is rarely calm and quiet. More often than not, their waking hours are filled with hollering, yelling, whoops of joy, cries of "It's not fair!" and lots of ambient noise. Sometimes it seems that their default volume is LOUD and escalates to REALLY LOUD without much effort at all.
On top of that, one of my boys has been diagnosed with ADHD, though I wouldn't be surprised if at least one more ended up with the same diagnosis down the road. All three have had trouble falling asleep at one time or another during their lives, sometimes for an extended period of months, with the resulting sleep deprivation affecting their personality, school work, and exacerbating the aforementioned ADHD symptoms. Anxiety also runs in the family and I've seen it take its toll on my kids already - "Mom, my head is never quiet!" one of them told me - so I'm constantly looking for ways to help them draw strength from within themselves, calm their over-active brains, and deal with the world around them.
After seeing Sitting Still Like a Frog recommended by a friend, I thought it was worth a shot. I've dabbled in meditation off and on for a few years and have appreciated the benefits; maybe, I thought, it'd work for my kids, too.
The book itself is short, and addresses basic mindfulness lessons in simple language that children, or beginners, can easily grasp. Snel quotes scientific studies and her own experience to show that after participating in a pattern of mindfulness exercises at school, "students and teachers...noticed positive changes, such as a calmer atmosphere in the classroom, better concentration, and more openness. The kids became kinder to themselves and others, more confident, and less judgmental." Who couldn't use that?...
One summer during college my cousin Mike and I traveled home together when school was done. It's three long days of driving from Utah to Virginia and One summer during college my cousin Mike and I traveled home together when school was done. It's three long days of driving from Utah to Virginia and by that third day we'd covered an impressive array of topics of conversation. One of us, I can't remember which, had the brilliant idea that recounting the entire movie of The Princess Bride would take at least an hour or so and help pass the time.
And it was truly brilliant.
From the opening video game sound effects to the closing credits song, we did everything: every voice, every facial expression, every hand gesture. We took turns playing different roles and rarely stopped to quibble over getting the wording exactly right. As we finished out the final verse of "Storybook Love" our sides ached from laughing so hard, we were another hour closer to home, and we'd made a fun memory together while reliving other fun memories.
Having seen and read a few interviews with Cary Elwes about this book, I knew it wasn't going to be an expose' airing dirty laundry. But I love how much this book gushes and oozes love and friendship and joy. Ok, so that sounded hokey, but really! The fact that my favorite movie of all time, which has brought me so much joy and happiness and laughter, was a highlight of the actors' lives only enhances the film for me. Everyone got along and had a good time. Everyone admired each other and worked hard to make the best movie possible. Everyone was supportive and helpful. No "diva" behavior, no tantrums, just fun and talent and work.
Peeking "behind the curtain" of a movie set is always fun, but I loved the little tidbits Cary shared about...
History is endlessly fascinating to me. Learning about how real people lived decades, centuries, even millennia ago - so different in so many ways to History is endlessly fascinating to me. Learning about how real people lived decades, centuries, even millennia ago - so different in so many ways to our lives today, yet so similar in others - makes me feel connected to those who have gone before.
I'm also fascinated by the process historians go through to better understand the past. It seems obvious to me that whether in science or history or any other area of study, as new information is discovered, as new data is gathered, as new connections are made, as distance provides broader perspective, our understanding will change, sometimes radically. I've seen the phrase "revisionist history" thrown around as a condescending epithet to describe new interpretations of historical events that challenge the traditional interpretation, but shouldn't we constantly be revising our understanding of history? Shouldn't it be a goal to replace our mistaken assumptions or misunderstandings with a better picture of how it really was, or to try to fill in the gaps a little more, even if that challenges previous conclusions?
Early on in her introduction to the Pulitzer-Prize-winning A Midwife's Tale, historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich mentions that several other historians have been aware of Martha Ballard's diary and even quoted parts of it in their histories of Augusta, Maine, but "those few historians who have known about the diary have not known quite what to do with it." The repetitive structure, the rhythm of domestic chores and seasonal planting, growing, and harvesting cycles of life on a farm, were dismissed as unimportant "trivia". "Yet," Ulrich claims, "it is in the vary dailiness, the exhaustive, repetitious dailiness, that the real power of Martha Ballard's book lies." She goes on to explain :
The problem is not that the diary is trivial but that it introduces more stories than can easily be recovered and absorbed...Taken alone, such stories tell us too much and not enough, teasing us with glimpses of intimate life, repelling us with a reticence we cannot decode. Yet, read in the broader context of the diary and in relation to larger themes in eighteenth-century history, they can be extraordinarily revealing.
Martha kept her diary for more than twenty-seven years, "9,965 days to be exact,"...
It's alarmingly appropriate to review this book at Thanksgiving time.
Mary Roach has yet again approached a topic considered by many (most?) people to It's alarmingly appropriate to review this book at Thanksgiving time.
Mary Roach has yet again approached a topic considered by many (most?) people to be, well, pretty gross and through her trademark sparkling wit and groan-worthy puns transformed it into an intriguing and hilarious read.
Starting with our sense of smell and traveling through every aspect of digestion to the *ahem* end, Roach consults with varied experts in each field, observes experiments, participates in unique experiences, and brings a child-like fascination with her wherever she goes. From taste-testing dozens of olive oils to reverse-engineering flatulence, every chapter contained some new revelation.
Roach takes great delight in meeting people whose names match their professions to perfection. For example, her glee at discovering two individuals employed at the Soap and Detergent Association named Dr. Spitz and Mr. Grime practically jumped off the page. A man named Colin Leakey carried out a "flatus research project" in the 1970s. A physician named Dr. Crapo identified that the fumes that exist in manure pits and sewage tanks can cause paralysis and suffocation and coined the phrase "dung lung". It goes on and on. And her despair when someone named Alvine ("of or relating to the belly or intestines") missed his calling - well, I'll let her tell it in her own words:
With crushing disappointment, I learned that Dr. Gregory Alvine is an orthopedist. Staff at the oxymoronic Alvine Foot & Ankle Center did not respond to a request for comment...In a more perfect world, Whitehead would be a dermatologist, just as my gastroenterologist is Dr. Terdiman, and the author of the journal article "Gastrointestinal Gas" is J. Fardy, and the headquarters of the International Academy of Proctology was Flushing, New York.
When this book first came out, I snagged a copy to give my niece for her birthday, only to find out that her mom had the same idea and had already purWhen this book first came out, I snagged a copy to give my niece for her birthday, only to find out that her mom had the same idea and had already purchased one for her.
I was thrilled. Because that meant I got to keep it!
Girls Who Choose God: Stories of Courageous Women from the Bible is exquisite. I love how each woman's story is given full attention, from well-known women like Eve and Mary to unnamed women like the Samaritan woman at the well. For each woman, the authors lay out her dilemma, and present the reader with the same options as the woman faced. The next page explains what the woman chose and again asks the reader to consider how he or she can be like this admirable woman.
Deborah has long been a heroine of mine, but too often in Sunday School she is presented as little more than Barak's sidekick which annoys me to no end...
Loading...
