calypso72 | Reading

Well, I slept 9 hours last night, which wasn’t enough to catch me up, but I was alert enough to go do errands and eventually felt normal enough. I went to the Holiday Market for the Authors & Artists fair (which happens on only one of the Holiday Market days), and I bought two books from two of my favorite local authors and a county almanac from another author. Then I went and picked up J’s birthday cake and some groceries. After I got home, the two of us did a walk in the dark (and cold), then we cleaned his house for tomorrow’s party, then we ordered Christmas gifts online for our nephews, and finally we watched four episodes of One Piece.

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This morning I took Ajani to the vet at 8 am for his ultrasound echocardiogram; we’ll get the results on Monday or so. My sleep situation was even worse than Tuesday – I only got 45 minutes of sleep last night, thanks to adrenaline – and then this afternoon I only got 3.5 hours more of sleep, thanks to my sinuses. Or my body clock, thinking 1 pm is a fine time to wake up.

I did nap another hour and a half after this week’s movie night, which was Jim Henson’s The Christmas Toy. I had never heard of this movie (which I assume started off as a TV special, back in 1986). The storyline was clearly an “inspiration” for Toy Story, though. Last year’s best Christmas gift discovers he’s about to be replaced by this year’s best Christmas gift, who, like Buzz Lightyear, is also a science fiction person who doesn’t know they’re a toy, in this case a “Queen of the Asteroids” named Meteora. The horror element is different from in Toy Story, though – if a human sees a toy out of place, it becomes “frozen” and can no longer come to life and play when the humans aren’t around. (Or at least that’s what they understand to be the case.)

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Dragon Keepers’ Cotillion, by Maria Grace. Jane Austen’s Dragons #8. The unwinding of all the conspiracies and political issues promised in the last few books is underway, but not fully resolved in this book. In this one, the drama gradually builds up until we have two major events to resolve them – the cotillion promised in the title, and a legal challenge between two dragons. We meet a lovely new character: a woman artist who is part Indian and dresses accordingly. We also have one of Austen’s originally characters becoming surprisingly difficult, which I found somewhat regretful, but I can see that it would be logical for plot reasons. It’s nice to see the other characters continue to develop and evolve, though.

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Today I attended a retirement party on Zoom, for our facilities manager at work. It’s hard to believe that I’m so old that I was on the hiring committee for someone who is now retiring after 30 years! (Most people were there in the room; only four of us were on Zoom.)

In the evening, I attended the symphony’s performance of Handel’s Messiah, the Goossens orchestration. Same notes, more or less, but different instruments than the original. Handel actually had multiple versions as well. I was “leveling up” my cultural literacy, as I hadn’t heard the Messiah before. It’s usually abbreviated, and this was too, just two hours. Some of it was beautiful and some of it was rather boring, but none of it was irritating, which is a big plus! However… At the end there’s a “forever and ever, amen” that had a nicely stirring “forever and ever,” but they started on the “amen” and it kept going and going and going. I wish I’d been timing it. My best estimate is that they stretched that “amen” out to be about 12 minutes. A bit much.

Tomorrow I have to take Ajani to the vet again on maybe three hours of sleep. We’ll see how that goes.

ofearthandstars

From

thefridayfive

1. Did you get an allowance as a kid, and if so, how much was it?
I think my allowance started around $2-$2.50 a week. This also seemed to be around middle school time, so I would guess early 90s, for time/inflation reference. Needless to say, it was not a lot. I made more money by doing yard work or doing well in school, and was rewarded based on report cards.

2. How old were you when you had your first job, and what was it?
Probably 12-13, and probably baby-sitting. I was not good at it, but I was paid around $15-20 to watch 3 young children for a single mom at the time, and she would leave us alone for 7-8 hours at a time. Man, they were something.

3. Which do you do better: save money or spend money?
I am a saver. After many many years of living paycheck to paycheck and practicing "simple living", I do not have a desire to own many things or a high inclination to spend.

4. Are people more likely to borrow money from you, or are you more likely to borrow from them?
The only people who borrow from me are my children, and then only people I borrow from are banks and the occasional credit card purchase (usually dental or vet coverage).

5. What's the most expensive thing you've ever bought?
By far, a house, but technically we don't actually own that outright yet? So after that, my education/school loans, and then a septic tank for this house we don't yet own.

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The Story of America: Essays on Origins, by Jill Lepore. The back cover promises “a meditation on storytelling itself,” but I didn’t find so much of that. Most of the essays were pretty interesting, though – they ranged from the John Smith of “did Pocahontas save him?” fame to the real Honolulu detective on whom Charlie Chan was based.

The essay I liked best was the one that opened my eyes to the details of debtor’s prisons. The people in debt had to provide their own food, clothing, and heat, unlike the actual criminals, and they mostly had no way to earn a living while locked up (with the exception of perhaps a few writers). The thing that most shocked me was how small the debts often were. One British guy inherited a fortune and decided to buy the freedom of as many small debtors as he could – 25,000 of them who owed, on average, less than 3 pounds each. In New York in 1787 and 1788, there were 1162 debtors in prison, and 716 of them owed less than 20 shillings. And naturally, when the idea of bankruptcy was introduced, you had to be a man of property to benefit – it was far easier to get large debts dismissed than these tiny debts.

Lepore focuses her story on one man in debtor’s prison, John Pintard. He was in for more than a year and used his time to read a lot of law books. Once he got out, he bought and sold a single share of stock, for a profit of 58 cents, which he donated to charity, and thus he was finally qualified to declare bankruptcy on the rest. He then became an upstanding citizen, founding several charitable organizations, including two state historical societies, and was very much involved in starting the New York public school system and the Erie Canal.

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I’ve been dreading today – Ajani had to go to the vet for dental surgery. Normally this would be okay, but today is the one-year anniversary of Sorin’s dental surgery, our last big attempt to save him. And about 20 years ago, I did lose a cat during dental surgery. Meanwhile, the ECG they did last week indicated that Ajani might have heart issues, so they were going to start today with a blood test for that, called “proBNP.”

It's always a pain to take the cats to the vet for surgery, because I have to get up on three hours of sleep and drive them there, then while they’re doing whatever they do I’m supposed to sleep another four or five hours. So I did that today and dropped him off, then eventually managed to sleep some more.

Then, once I was fully awake for the day, Dr Leduc called. The blood test showed that Ajani does have heart disease: cardiomyopathy. The next step will be for me to bring him in early again (this time thankfully not until Friday), and there’s a vet who travels around the city, visiting veterinary practices as needed with the ultrasound echocardiogram machine. They’ll do that with Ajani, and then we’ll know more details.

From what I found on the internet today, if he has congestive heart disease, he could be expected to live another 3-20 months, and if he also has arterial thromboembolism that could be 2-6 months instead. On the other hand, if it’s early enough that he doesn’t have those things, then he could take beta blockers or other drugs and live a normal lifespan. Since he doesn’t seem at all sick, I’d think the latter is more likely? However, going under anesthesia (like for dental surgery) can cause congestive heart failure, so he may have to live with a sore mouth.

It's possible that the broken tooth was a good thing, because otherwise we would have gone at least six more months before they discovered he has the heart disease. With his autoimmune disorder in January and the hyperthyroidism in the summer, early diagnosis definitely helped.

ofearthandstars

From

thefridayfive

1. What were some of the smells and tastes of your childhood?
The smell of the chlorine from the spa my mother worked at, and later, the smells of the craft store (Old America) that she managed. Tastes would be Velveeta cheese and Vienna sausages.

2. What did you have as a child that you do not think children today have?
The ability to have your own thoughts without 1,000 things vying for your attention; freedom to roam without being under a microscope.

3. What elementary grade was your favorite?
Probably 5th. I was a stinker in the early grades, often acting out and getting into trouble. We moved around a lot due to the recession and I went to 5 different elementary schools. I think by 5th we had found a stable spot to land and I was able to relax a little. That was when a teacher first began to encourage my writing.

4. What summer do you remember the best as a child?
Probably 7th grade, the summer I broke my foot at my aunt's pool and spent the rest of the summer hanging out of our own pool with one leg in a hot pink cast hanging over the side.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to your younger self, and at what age?
I'd warn my younger self at 6 or 7 that they are worth more than their young body, and worthy as they are emotionally and mentally and intellectually, without need for perfection, and that they should never accept being told they are less than, especially by those who would profess to love them.

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I’ve been watching PBS pledge specials. Yesterday I learned that for the actor Michael Keaton, one of his very first jobs was working backstage at Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood! Meanwhile, when he was in his early 20s, the composer John Williams played the piano for the Peter Gunn theme song!

ofearthandstars

From

thefridayfive, but from a few weeks ago, and doing now because the questions felt important enough to me to reflect on.

1. What's one of the nicest things a friend has ever done for you?
I have been given so much love by so many friends over my life, which occasionally contributes to my "I'm a bad friend" complex in that I feel I can't adequately return it, but notable memories: (1) A friend on here showed up with me on a court date for support when I was a demoralized shell of a person, to which I remain grateful to this day, (2) when my house was broken into many years ago (I don't exactly remember when, but it was during my single-parenting period, so between 2006-2011) and my laptop and savings jar stolen (we didn't have a lot of stuff to steal), a group of friends fundraised to help me purchase a new laptop, which was a lifeline for my work and my writing; (3) other lovely friends have sent gifts over the years, including homemade scarves, hats, trinkets, and otherwise, which are ways of letting me know I am loved. I am a sucker for handmade things because I know the labor that goes into them (and I'm really bad/unpracticed at such crafts!)

2. What's one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for you?
Once in 1998 I was very pregnant and car-free and took the bus everywhere. One time I boarded the wrong bus and ended up in a rural backwoods area not knowing how to get back to the right route/stop for the right bus. I started walking down the two lane to try to get myself headed in the right direction for town, but was wearing a cheap pair of sandals and was moving slow. I don't remember why, but I didn't call my partner at the time, probably because he would have berated me for getting off the bus. A gentleman in a white van found me walking on the side of the road in the heat and offered me a ride. I was extremely suspect of the van, but his vibe seemed safe, and he took me back into town to the right area and dropped me off without issue. I don't remember much about our conversation, but he was a country boy with a young wife/family and could tell I was miserable in the heat, and he was honestly being kind.

3. What is a trait in another person that you instantly admire, and that draws you to them?
Someone who demonstrates thoughtfulness to the idea of diversity among circumstances and perspectives and is generous in the emotional, mental, and physical sense.

4. What is a trait in another person that instantly repels you, and prevents you from forming a close relationship with them?
Self-centeredness, close-mindedness, and especially behavoir that exhibits racist/xenophobic or homophobic/transphobic ideas.

5. Time to vent: tell us about something rotten someone has done to you.
I doubt there is much I'd feel comfortable putting in a public post. I had a falling out with a friend a few years ago that was painful, but I let it lie. I found out later that the former friend had been bad-mouthing me (and their incorrect assumptions about me) to others. I had really worked hard to not talk ill of this person, even though the breakup and loss of friendship was painful, recognizing that we grew in different directions, and coming to a place where I just wanted the best for them. I guess I'd thought they they would do the same, but I suppose I was wrong.

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Jesus and the Disinherited, by Howard Thurman. I cannot overstate how impressed I am with the insights in this book, which was apparently a favorite of MLK. Thurman was a civil rights theologian with a deep and sophisticated understanding of the psychological value of the teachings of Jesus to those who are systemically oppressed. I had assumed that he was going to talk about the idea of salvation as a hope for the future. Not at all – he sets that aside entirely and explains how Jesus wanted his fellow Jews to shift their way of thinking such that the quality of their own everyday inner lives could be better. Thurman follows his grandmother’s lead in mostly ignoring the thinking of Paul, whose perspective as a Roman citizen was altogether different from Jesus’s. How can you live your life with integrity and inner well-being when you have, basically, no rights?

As I read this book, I was reminded of the class I took in modern Japanese literature, years ago. Our professor had been one of the translators of Endō Shūsaku, a Japanese Catholic novelist; he told us that when Catholic missionaries first came to Japan, they found an eager audience among the least powerful, because they were offering a God who actually cares about every individual. (Shinto gods do not.) Thurman includes this idea and much more.

He begins by telling us that Christians understand that they have a responsibility to the needy and supposedly backward, but that it often takes place via self-righteousness, contempt, and a sense of innate superiority, racial or otherwise. Rather than learning from Christians, it is better to turn directly to the teachings of Jesus. As with the Japanese missionaries, he shows that Jesus taught the value of each individual to God. With an innate sense of personal worth, it is much easier to live in a system of economic and social insecurity, overcoming one’s natural fear of oppression. The hypocrisy of others can also be addressed and overcome with an attitude of full sincerity, which addresses others not as advantaged due to birth or position but as equally a human being. The third important inner experience to overcome is hatred. The situation in which hatred arises is when we have contact with others without fellowship, but rather with, at best, patronizing sympathy. Hatred can be a source of validation, a sense of significance, that energizes us – but it is self-destructive and starves our ability to express ourselves creatively.

Finally, he takes on the challenges of loving our neighbors and forgiving our claims against them. He notes that this can happen in three contexts, and that most Christians focus on the first, which is those individuals we know well, against whom we will benefit by forgiving our specific grievances. There are two other categories, however – loving and recognizing the basic humanity of those who are members of our group but seem to be traitors to it (which can be especially hard to do), and members of the group that is oppressing our people. He noted that for Jesus to love Romans meant being a traitor to Israel, and likewise for Black people today it can be easier to dismiss white people as oppressors rather than seeing them as equally human.

Thus he considers segregation evil – we need our encounters to be ordinary and natural. Where can this happen? He notes that very few Protestant churches in the United States are racially integrated, which would be an obvious place. Other times and places for seeing each other as human first include war and natural disaster, but we need to work to make this happen more in everyday life. If we’re part of an oppressed group, we also have to work to see that there’s more to the members of the oppressing group than the injury that group has done to us. However, it is worth it to do so, and Thurman holds up Jesus himself as an example of someone who succeeded.

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This afternoon I went to the Holiday Market, which is the pre-holidays version of our local craftspeople’s Saturday Market. I was focusing entirely on gifts for S, which made it easy to avoid looking at a great many otherwise interesting things, since she’s particular about colors. I was happy to find my new friend CH, who sews amusing little things from pretty fabrics, and she was eager for conversation, so I spent something like 20-30 minutes with her. She had recently learned that our mutual friend BH, who used to be the development director for the youth orchestras, has moved to a new position at the university. Since BH was the organizer for the Oregon Bach Festival Book Club, maybe it’s not happening this year? Their website says it’s on hiatus. If I want to read more about music, I guess that will be up to me!

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Legalist, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Grand Illusion #4. This book takes place some 450 years before the trilogy about Steffan Dekkard and his partner Avraal Ysella, and it’s about Dominic Ysella, one of Avraal’s ancestors. He’s an elected representative of his district, a legalist (attorney) specializing in water rights, and the grandson of the last king of a country that was conquered and integrated into his current country. This series is categorized as “gaslamp political fantasy,” but this prequel is only technically “gaslamp” because the steam engine has just been invented. The entire series is only marginally fantasy, too – there’s no magic, but it’s not set on Earth, and some people have apparently genetically endowed abilities to influence others’ emotions. Some people, too, are extra susceptible to that, and a few people are immune (including both Dominic and Steffan).

However, the series is clearly and indisputably political fiction, as we are following politicians throughout their daily lives as they work to serve their countries and their districts. Our protagonists spend a lot of time reading mail from constituents and drafting replies, discussing draft policies with their colleagues, and so on. Over the course of the book, we see the transition of their country from a monarchy with a democratic component to a fully constitutional monarchy. I enjoy reading about the things that are happening, but I find myself waiting rather impatiently for the next letter from the woman Dominic is courting. To be fair, he is also waiting rather impatiently for them. We don’t hear quite as much about the meals as we often do in Modesitt’s books (especially the first three in this series), but there’s some, and it’s fun.

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The Echo Wife, by Sarah Gailey. Not a book I probably would have chosen to read on my own, but I’m reading it with friends. Evelyn is a very career-oriented scientist in the field of human cloning, but she recently discovered that her husband had used her research to clone a version of her that suited him better. She’s our narrator and seems reasonable enough, much of the time – except her research practices seem highly problematic, and we readers are left in suspense as to whether she will begin to realize this herself. I was reminded too often of the mentality of some of the people doing research with animals whom I’ve had to encounter. I was glad to have planned ahead so that I could read the book all in one go, without having it hanging over me unfinished for several days. In their acknowledgments at the end of the book, the author credits some horrific experiences in their childhood as part of the inspiration for the book, leaving me glad that my own upbringing was much less fraught.

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Today I got my flu shot – the nurse who did the injection was the best ever! I didn’t even know when he was doing it, exactly; I just saw his arm move away when he was done. I suggested to J that he come with me, since they accept walk-ins, and he was busy with work, but he did shower and meet me as I came back, and we went back together. He got both his flu shot and his Covid booster. Our friend DG agreed that it sounded like a great plan, so he left work early and drove to the store and got whatever shots he wanted too. Great!

However… I was sleepy today and spaced out and left my rice coming to a boil without turning it down and covering it. Yes, I burned the rice yet again. The livingroom was filled with smoke when I came back out. I turned on the fans, opened the windows, etc., and it was cold outside. The smoke did dissipate, but the smell remains. Eventually I had to wash my clothes and shampoo my hair, and it’s still not ideal. If I could search this blog without downloading it first I could find how long I’d managed to go without burning the rice – it’s possible it was more than three years! Nevertheless…

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The Analects of Confucius, Translated and Annotated by Arthur Waley, by Kong Qiu (Confucius). This book, of course, basically amounts to a religious text, in this case sayings of Master Kong and many of his students, so there’s little point in commenting on the merits of reading it. My comments are instead on the quality of the annotation by Arthur Waley. At the beginning, he does offer his thoughts on many of the key terms, which I found useful, and he does provide cross-referencing between the different Books of the Analects and some interpretation of the verses. However, it would have been great if he’d done more to put the work into context. For one thing, it’s very hard to keep track of the various rulers and domains within the land that would later be united as China – more explanation and a map would have helped. For another thing, there would have been merit to listing the main disciples who were quoted or mentioned and summarizing their traits and Kong’s attitudes toward them. Since much of what he said was encouraging people (or rather, gentlemen who could become court administrators, his target audience) to take a middle path and avoid extremes, it would have been quite valuable to help the reader distinguish between his teachings and the Taoist traditional teachings. What’s the difference? Is he just pointing out how to implement Taoism if you’re a gentleman who wants to help rulers rule? Also, he mentioned a few times that later trends within Confucianism would differ to some extent from what was described here – a summary of that would also have helped. Also, maybe legal issues prevented this, or maybe it was just laziness, but pinyin has become the standard way to write Chinese with an alphabet, and although pinyin wasn’t invented when Waley originally published the book, it was certainly available when this edition was published, and I would have appreciated it.

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Dragons Beyond the Pale, by Maria Grace. Jane Austen’s Dragons #7. Having retold both Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion with dragons, the author now tells us what happens next. There’s a great deal going on in the world of humans and dragons – much of it hinted at in the earlier books – and our characters are well placed to investigate the problems and try to put things to rights. We have wicked humans trying to smuggle dragons and their body parts, major dragons behaving abusively toward the minor dragons in their domains, and whole categories of dragons wishing they too could be covered by the Pendragon Accords. Some species of dragons get very little respect, from humans or from the more powerful dragon species. Meanwhile, certain key society women are determined to see Elizabeth Darcy and Anne Wentworth put in their place. In the middle of all this, Elizabeth finds herself having an unexpected and very stressful adventure. The story is great fun, and it’s clear that there are many more stories to be told as the humans and dragons work through all of these issues.

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I had a pretty good day! I got two books at the bookstore (two different book clubs) and made an attempt to order J’s preferred birthday cake (I suppose they’ll tell me what they think tomorrow). Then I attended a panel on various aspects of attention, at the university, via livestream – I usually attend this sort of thing in person but simply didn’t have the time.

After that I went to the youth symphony concert. In a delightful change of format, they performed all of the works straight through, without an intermission, and without lots of speechifying. That is, the executive director spoke briefly, then they had a Wagner piece, a piano concerto piece by C.P.E. Bach, a Mozart piece, and then the three non-concerto works they’d played with the symphony several weeks ago – Elgar, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky. And it was all done in 56 minutes! I am accustomed to the youth symphony performances lasting more than two hours, with way too much talking.

Before the concert, I chatted with two of the Board members: P (from whom I bought some cookie cutters in musical shapes) and LLM (who it turns out is a coworker and now a good friend of my good friend Z!). Afterwards, the current Board president A introduced me to a new board member (YY), then I said hi to two other former Board members (SC and JH). Then I saw my neighbor JL and her boyfriend B, who probably didn’t know many others there, so we chatted a while too. Then I was enthusiastically greeted by a pair of sisters who are graduates of the program, so I talked with them a bit, and then the concerto pianist joined us so I got to talk to him too! (Obviously these notes are entirely for my sake; none of you will care in the least.)

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In November, I read both of my “bonus resolutions” books: Scott Slovic’s Going Away to Think and Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave. I have a lot of other reading lined up for December, but I’m still going to try one of the books from my backlog that I wanted to consider reading this year: Jesus and the Disinherited, by Howard Thurman. The back cover describes it as “a reading of the Gospel as a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised.” I figure that’s a good one for Christmas, and it’s short!

I didn’t do anything with my Steam games this month, but I finally did something with the lentils! I discovered that Progresso has several flavors of lentil soup, and they don’t include carrots. I tried both the regular lentil soup and the Mediterranean lentil soup. The latter had a nicer flavor but may have bothered my digestion. Too much fiber? I’ll try it again.

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I was quite pleased with myself today when I made it to the 4 pm Motet Singers concert with 7 minutes to spare, having managed to write a lengthy blog post, taken my shower (could have done it later), and visited the library to pick up a book they had on hold for J (originally planned for tomorrow). I count that a success!

The concert was lovely: Christmas music in Latin, English, German, and Spanish. At the end they have three audience singalong songs, and I found myself singing carols all the way home afterwards.

Tomorrow I will aspire to getting organized again, since so many things have piled up. I missed the leaf pickup for November, unfortunately – I had thought it was this coming week, but the piles of leaves that have been obstructing the nearby streets were gone yesterday. Also this week: dinner downtown tomorrow and ideally finish watching that documentary about the American revolution, concert Tuesday, maybe a university panel Tuesday also… maybe my flu shot?

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calypso72

December 2025

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Rapture of the Deep

Truth is Stranger than Fishin'

Reading

Saturday, finally

No sleep, and The Christmas Toy

Book completed

Some special events

Friday Five (12 December edition)

Book completed

Ajani - yet more health issues

Friday Five (Nov 28 Edition)

When they were young

Friday Five: Old (Nov 14) Edition

Book completed

Holiday Market

Book completed

Book completed

The good, and the not-so-good

Book completed

Book completed

Pretty good!

Resolutions: November report

A success!

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December 2025

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