Plaid Cats Librarian: January 2020

A Sin By Any Other Name by Robert W. Lee

When I first heard about this book I was interested, but I wasn't familiar with Robert W. Lee and his speaking out against white supremacy as a descendant of the Civil War general Robert E. Lee. Lee talks about growing up in Statesville, NC (which is only about an hour from where I grew up) and how as was age-appropriate his family told him about his famous ancestor. Lee's family didn't idolize General Lee, but his grandmother did have a portrait of him in her home and often told Lee and his brother stories about the famous Lee and many of their ancestors. When Lee went to high school he was exposed to more diversity and became friends with many African-American peers in the marching band. As he got older, he also became more uncomfortable with how his ancestor General Lee was so revered by many white Southerners. Having always felt called to ministry, Lee attended the Duke Divinity School and racial justice became part of his ministry focus. He had just started pastoring a church in Statesville when the Charlottesville, VA "Unite the Right" rally took place leading to violence and a few deaths. Because of a previous article he had written about the need to take down Confederate statues, NPR reached out to Lee for an interview. After the interview aired, MTV asked him to come and speak at the VMAs. Both of these events led to Lee being asked to resign as pastor of his church. While he was incredibly saddened to be asked to resign, he did and now speaks and writes about how the Church can play an important role in racial justice. While Lee is still pretty young, he has obviously been called to speak about this issue and has the family connection that might make some give his words more weight. His main message is that the Church should accept everyone and churches shouldn't be racially segregated and that for white Southerners speaking out against racism is the only way things will ever improve.

In my opinion, as a white Southerner, too many people put their faith in their comfort zone instead of God. Jesus was very radical, but the Church often shies away from truly being radically loving and challenging the status quo as Jesus did. In order for things to get better we need to focus more on God and less on South/North, White/Black, Democrat/Republican, Male/Female, etc.

Some quotes I liked:

"Michael Korda, in his biography of Lee, includes an observation about Lee and his legacy that's stuck with me: 'As the Confederacy shrank, [Lee] grew, symbolizing the unshakable spirit of resistance, stubborn hope, courage, and honor - beyond criticism, perhaps even beyond reason.' It's true. As the old ways of life in the South are rightfully challenged, people resistant to change cling ever tighter to Lee and what he represented." (p. 88)

[When he started getting hate mail and threats after speaking out against white supremacy and Confederate statues] "Then, several emails arrived. 'You need to be quiet,' one said. 'You're treading on dangerous grounds,' read another. The messages were vaguely threatening, but in an oddly Southern way. The words almost sounded kind, as if the senders were worried about the trouble I'd face if I kept making noise about these issues. But peel back that veneer of politeness and the message was clear: If you're gonna keep it up, watch out." (p. 123)

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (Books & Banter book club)

** spoiler alert ** Kya and her family are "marsh people" in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. People on the fringes of society who want to be left alone. In 1952 when Kya is six, her mother walks away from the family and never comes back. A few years later her closest sibling, Jodie, leaves as well leaving Kya with their abusive, alcoholic father. By the time she's ten her father is gone too and she's all alone. She knows the marsh like the back of her hand and can evade truant officers or anyone else who might come snooping around. Fast forward to 1969 and Kya is accused of murder. Over the years townspeople have speculated about the "Marsh Girl" and what she might be like. Is she capable of murder?

I honestly wasn't looking forward to reading this one because I had not heard good things about it. While parts of the story were good, the overall storyline was like a Lifetime TV movie - very overwrought and unrealistic. And I'm from the South, my family is from backwater beach areas and NO ONE in my family talked like the characters in this book. I was actually offended by the dialect, it felt like it was mocking. And the dialect was all over the place, in the same paragraph or sentence you would have a character speaking normal English then suddenly break into crazy phonetic fake deep-South dialect. It was also completely unrealistic that Kya would have not only survived her childhood alone, but even more unrealistic that she would become a published scientific author - get real. It was also super obvious that she killed Chase or at least tricked him into the accidental death. That was foretold by the scene when she attacks the boys harassing Jumpin'. Not that Chase didn't deserve killing, but she did a good job of faking that she didn't do it. Also, the ending felt totally rushed and weird. And how convenient that she couldn't have kids because there is NO WAY she wouldn't have gotten pregnant during her relationship with Chase. This book reminded me a lot of The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah - EVERYONE loved it and it was very similarly overwrought and unrealistic storyline, but at least without the terrible mocking Southern dialect.

Some particularly terrible quotes:

[On finding Chase's body] "Now, he sprawled alone, less dignified than the slough. Death's crude pluck, as always, stealing the show." (p. 25)

"'Ya gotta watch out for folks 'round here,' he said. 'Woods're full a' white trash. Pert near ever'body out here's a no-'count.'" (p. 57)

"'...more skeeters than the whole state of Jawja.'" (p. 81)

"Toting the bag of jam jars, she turned back toward her boat and motored home. Thought she's probably never go viztin' again." (p. 102)

"She hesitated; touching someone meant giving part of herself away, a piece she never got back." (p. 158) WTF, this is the stupidest line EVER. Shaking hands with someone takes a piece of yourself away forever. *rolling my eyes here*

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See (Evening Edition book club)

The Island of Sea Women follows the friendship and lives of Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls from very different backgrounds who begin working with their village's all female divers, the haenyeo, on the island of Jeju. Starting in the 1930's during the Japanese occupation of Korea, through World War II, the Korean War, and all the way to the present, Mi-ja and Young-sook grow into their roles as haenyeo and also wives and mothers. During a violent incident during the Korean war Mi-ja and Young-sook's friendship is tested and Young-sook vows to never forgive Mi-ja for what happened. But, forgiveness is not for the other person, it's for yourself. Young-sook in looking back over her life realizes how much her hate has cost her, but will she finally be ready to forgive Mi-ja and herself? The Island of Sea Women is the story of one of the hardest parts of Korea's history, but also the story of friendship and forgiveness. It also highlights the brutality of war, which is often worse for the innocent people just trying to live their lives.

I've really liked all the books I've read by Lisa See and I was excited to read this story about this unique haenyeo culture in Korea. But, unlike her other books I felt like this one kind of dragged. And there was a LOT more violence than I was expecting. I didn't like this one as much as some of her others, but the ending was powerful and really showed the importance of forgiveness.

Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on life, love, liberty, and law by Jeffrey Rosen

Jeffrey Rosen had a chance encounter with Ruth Bader Ginsburg when they were both working on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That encounter turned into a genuine friendship and over the years Rosen and Ginsburg discussed all kinds of personal and professional issues. This book is a collection of their conversations divided into topics like "Her Landmark Cases" and "Marriage Between Equals." The book is unique in that these conversations are between friends and colleagues, not just an interview with a semi-stranger. Each chapter has a few pages of Rosen writing about the topic of that chapter, the the second half of the chapter is an interview style between Rosen and Ginsburg. It's a pretty quick read, but it does give you a lot of insight into not only Ginsburg, but the Supreme Court and it's inner workings. It was really a very interesting book and I would highly recommend it.

Some quotes I liked:

[In an interview for The Docket Sheet, a newsletter for Court employees] "...asked her why she had agreed to a flexible schedule for one of her law clerks, David Post. Ginsburg replied that when Post applied for a clerkship, he was caring for his two small children during the day, so that his wife could sustain a demanding job as an economist. 'I thought, 'This is my dream of the way the world should be,' ' Ginsburg enthused. 'When fathers take equal responsibility for the care of their children, that's when women will be truly liberated.'" (p. 13)

"As co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union's Women's Rights Project, Ruth Bader Ginsburg sought from 1972 to 1980 to persuade the Supreme Court that legislation apparently designed to benefit or protect women could often have the opposite effect. For this reason, she chose to represent a series of male plaintiffs who had been denied legal benefits designed for women. This visionary strategy forced the Court to articulate a standard of scrutiny for gender discrimination that could be applied neutrally to either sex...She represented plaintiffs with whom the male judges of the 1970s were most likely to identify." (p. 19-20)

"It was not so long ago that most of the social clubs in New York and Washington, DC, were men only. So whenever I was asked to speak at those clubs, I said, 'I'm not going to speak at a place that wouldn't welcome me as a member.'...My first encounter with men-only social clubs happened when my husband was working for a law firm in New York. The firm had a holiday party at a club that did not admit women. The women associates let it be known that that was improper. They weren't listened to. So the next year, none of the women associates showed up at the holiday party. The year after that, the holiday party was held at a place that welcomed women as well as men." (p. 128)

"We have in DC the first person to be given flexible time at a law firm. It was at Arnold and Porter, and the woman is Brooksley Born. When her second child was born, she elected to have a three-day schedule. She was told, 'That's okay, but you'll never make partner.' It turned out that she produced more in three days than the average associate produced in a full week, so she became the first full-time [female] partner...[what feminism still needs to work on] The two big areas are unconscious bias and what is called work-life balance. If we could fix those two, we would see women all over doing everything. Unconscious bias and facilitating a work life and a family life." (p. 207-8)

Hope in the Dark: believing God is good when life is not by Craig Groeschel

Hope in the Dark is written for Christians who are dealing with a hard time, an illness, or an on-going unanswered prayer. As Groeschel says in A Letter to the Reader, "If you're living the dream and you're on a spiritual high, stop and praise God for his goodness. I celebrate with you. But, honestly, this book probably isn't for you, at least not in this season of your life." (p. 11) My opinion is if you live long enough you will experience something that makes you question God and often that's discouraged or glossed over in church, but it shouldn't be. If you read the Bible you can see how so many of the people we admire as Biblical leaders struggled daily with doubt and fears. Groeschel models the book after the book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament by have three sections to the book. The first section deals with doubting or not understanding why God chooses to answer some prayers and not others. The second section deals with waiting on God and the third covers embracing the goodness of God despite whatever circumstances you're in. While I didn't find this book life-changing, I think it is good for new Christians to see that it's OK to struggle and question things and God is still good throughout whatever we're going through.

Some quotes I liked:

"Few people just sit and watch TV anymore. Most watch TV and look at Instagram and text friends and respond to email and update calendars and pretend they're listening when someone tries to engage them. Be honest with yourself: when was the last time you sat and just had a real, live conversation with someone else, in which you took turns and genuinely listened to what they said? No devices. No TV. No music. No distractions. No wonder it's so hard for us to listen to God." (p. 70)

"As basic and obvious as this may seem, sometimes the reason we're not getting answers to our questions is that we're not willing to pause and wait long enough for God to reveal himself to us." (p. 71)

Burn the Place by Iliana Regan

I love chef memoirs even if I'm not familiar with the chef, but this one was not great. Iliana Regan grew up in rural Indiana and always felt out of place. She was gay before she really understood what that meant. She grew up on a farm and was raised growing vegetables, canning food, hunting, foraging, and cooking. While her family was super dysfunctional, she did inherit a love of food and inherent cooking skills. Alcoholism and addiction ran in her family and she was an alcoholic by high school. Unfortunately restaurants and alcoholics/addiction tend to go together so it was well into adulthood before she finally got sober. Eventually she was able to open her own restaurants and tap into the food and cooking of her childhood just in time for foraging and farm to table to become trendy in the food world.

While her story was interesting to me the book was kind of all over the place and there was a LOT of vulgarity. Even though she's very successful now, the book was pretty depressing and I just didn't like it very much.

She Came to Slay: the life and times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Born as a third-generation slave in Maryland, Araminta Ross (who later became Harriet Tubman) knew from an early age that "...there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other..." She was fortunate in that her parents stayed together for over fifty years and kept almost all of their children. When Tubman managed to escape slavery she did the unthinkable - she went back to the South to help other slaves escape. And she went back over and over and over again. Rescuing almost her entire immediate family and dozens of others along the way. She was so skilled at her work on the Underground Railroad that the Union Army actually sought her out as a spy - but they never paid her and tried to stiff her out of her salary, she only was finally compensated for her work when she was in her 70's. But, even once out of slavery, life was incredibly hard for African-Americans and despite her celebrity Tubman's life was hard and she mostly lived hand to mouth. But, until her death at age 91 (which is miraculous for that time period, let alone a former slave) she was still fighting for the rights of women and black people. Tubman is truly a role model and an incredible historical figure that we should all look up to.

Some quotes I liked:

"His owner had promised to set him free at the age of forty-five and miraculously, this promise was kept. Ben Ross [Harriet's father] became a free man in 1841. It's natural to assume that Ben Ross's emancipation gave him reason to celebrate, but what did it mean to live as a free person surrounded by slavery? Yes, he was free, but his wife and children were not...While his freedom offered advantages, it would never give him the same privileges of white men. Paradoxically, Ben Ross's free status highlighted his powerlessness. His freedom was a reminder of his family's enslavement." (p. 25-26)

[Worried about being sold away from her family Harriet prayed that God would keep her owner from selling her or her family members] "She altered the tenor and directives of her prayers [after hearing about further financial issues of her owner]. 'I changed my prayer, and I said, 'Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way, so he won't do no more mischief.'" (p. 32)

"Harriet's raid on the Combahee dealt a devastating blow to the Confederacy. Causing nearly two millions dollars in property damage and the loss of hundreds of slaves, Harriet became the first woman, black or white, to plan and lead an armed military expedition during the Civil War." (p. 94)

"Although freedom had come [in the end of the Civil War], Harriet knew that racism and bigotry would not evaporate overnight; in fact, like most black people, she assumed that she would have to fight against oppression for the rest of her life. Time would prove Harriet right." (p. 103)

When Less Becomes More by Emily Ley

Our lives feel increasingly busy with work, chores, errands, social media, family, friends - the list never ends. And while many of these areas of life are great, sometimes too much of something great can turn not-so-great. In When Less Becomes More Emily Ley explores what it might mean to create a life where less can become more - more rest, more connection, more unscheduled time. While that sounds great it can be hard to actually implement. Ley covers various aspects of life in each chapter - technology, noise, social media, home, etc. and how to reevaluate and downsize in those areas. Some chapters like rest, wellness, and faith explore how to make room for these areas once you've downsized some other aspects of your life. I liked that the tone of the book was approachable and realistic, not another impossible goal to strive toward. Ley also gives plenty of examples of her own life and how she still struggles to not get caught up in all the rushing and hustling that society demands. Definitely good timing to pick this up to read during all the craziness of the holiday season and right before New Years.

Some quotes I liked:

"I decided that I would take the reins on what information I allow into my head and my heart [through social media]. If you are my personal friend on Facebook, that means you get a Christmas card from me. That's my litmus test." (p. 45)

"I've learned, as I continue to walk out the topics of this book in my own life, that the following truth is the fundamental part of learning that less is truly more. Jesus didn't pick and choose the most confident, well-read, best-behaved people to join His table. He didn't surround Himself only with the best Scripture memorizers or the ones whose church attendance was the most stellar. He chose the broken ones. The imperfect ones. The ones who doubted and asked questions. He chose the ones with histories, and stories, and struggles. He chose you and me." (p. 122)

"Why is contentment so hard to realize in today's world? Because our world doesn't want us to be content. Our chase for more has added to our discontent in more ways than one, which is exactly what marketing agencies and corporations want. How can one be full and content when 'full' is never quite 'full' enough?" (p. 162)

The Cider Revival: dispatches from the orchard by Jason Wilson

Cider was the beverage of choice in early America until Prohibition caused many cider orchards to be abandoned or chopped down. Then dessert or eating apples took over in agriculture and many heritage cider apple varieties were lost. In the last few years cider has come back with dozens of small orchards and cider mills have popped up all over the country - mostly in Northern areas where apples grow well like the Northeast, Michigan, and the Pacific Northwest. Jason Wilson has written extensively about wine and other spirits, so he turns to cider in Cider Revival. While the book was interesting and I definitely learned some things, the description says "following the seasons" Wilson explores the cider industry, but he didn't really get into detail about what the cider industry seasons look like. It was mostly him traveling all over the place drinking cider and talking about it, so toward the second half of the book it felt somewhat repetitive. There were also a few very random anti-Trump sections in the book that just seemed randomly thrown in for no reason. Overall, it was interesting, but not amazing.

Some quotes I liked:

"I'm interested in cider makers who are revivalists, committed to hard work in the orchard, and whose ciders tell the story of a specific place and time. Whose cider have, dare we say it, terroir." (p. 13)

"Apples, similar to humans, are heterozygous. That means that they produce offspring that are unique from their parents. Every seed inside every apple has different genetic content, and each seed will grow a completely new variety of apple, distinctly different from its parents...That's why the only way an orchardist can cultivate the same apple over and over again is to graft the scion wood from that variety onto existing rootstock." (p. 28)

[Andy Brennan of Aaron Burr Cidery]...clomped straight into the thickest patch [of poison ivy], saying, 'Poison ivy is just part of it. If harvesting these [wild] apples means I get a terrible poison ivy rash, well, that's just part of the experience. I feel like the fruit from this place needs to be represented in my ciders.' Brennan also says that he gets E. coli about once a year from tasting apples that have fallen to the ground - also part of the experience." (p. 41)

"So for whatever reason, most ciders from the West Coast would be categorized as modern because of the apples used. This means that, in the cider world, the divide between modern and heritage ciders is quickly becoming a West Coast - East Coast schism." (p. 106)

The Honey Bus: a memoir of loss, courage and a girl saved by bees by Meredith May

Meredith was five when her parents split up and her mom moved Meredith and her two-year-old brother Matthew back to California to live with their grandparents. As soon as they got to California Meredith's mother got in bed and rarely got out. She left Meredith and Matthew in the care of their grandparents and they quickly learned not to disturb her. Meredith's grandfather was a beekeeper and she became fascinated with the bees and helping her grandfather. Meredith didn't understand what was going on with her family and why she couldn't see her father, but she instinctively knew that her grandfather was the only reliable, caring adult in her life. Throughout the rest of her dysfunctional childhood Meredith was saved by her grandfather and the bees. Eventually as an adult she would come back to beekeeping and try to keep her grandfather's beekeeping legacy alive.

I understand why Meredith didn't go live with her father when she had the chance. She didn't want to leave her brother behind or lose the relationship with her grandfather. But, there is no more mention of him in the rest of the book once she's an adult on her own. Did she continue to have a relationship with him? Did she ever tell him how terrible her mother was? I wish there had been more about that at the end of the book. While this book was no Glass Castle, I liked the aspect of how learning about the bees and beekeeping helped Meredith survive her dysfunctional family.

Some quotes I liked:

"As I got older, I detected a more serious undertone to his hive lessons - a gentle prodding to think beyond Via Contenta and to consider what we wanted, instead of what Mom needed. He spoke in metaphors, using the bees as examples of the proper way to behave." (p. 269)

"I could continue to define my life by all that it lacked, as my mother had done. Or I could be thankful that I had been rescued in the most profound way. Grandpa and his bees had guided me through a rudderless childhood, keeping me safe and teaching me how to be a good person. He showed me how bees are loyal and brave, how they cooperate and strive, all the things I'd need to be when it was my time to navigate solo. Grandpa had been quietly teaching me that family is a natural resource all around me." (p. 305)

Behold the Lamb of God by Russ Ramsey

I've had this book for several years and every year I tell myself I'm going to read this book during Advent and this year I finally did. It's based on the Behold the Lamb of God Christmas album by Andrew Peterson that tells the Christmas story all the way from the Old Testament to the birth of Christ. The book is the perfect thing to read during the Advent/Christmas season and it further fleshes out what is covered in the Behold the Lamb songs. We tend to divide the Bible into the Old Testament and New Testament and focus more on Jesus and the New Testament, but the prophecies and foretelling of Jesus is all through the Old Testament and really what the Old Testament is all about. Russ Ramsey does a great job with this book and each chapter is short enough to read in the morning during your devotional time. I think this will be a new Advent tradition for me to read this book and remember how the Old Testament foretells the coming of Jesus that is manifested in Christmas.

Good Husbandry: growing food, love, and family on Essex Farm by Kristin Kimball

Good Husbandry picks up a few years after where Kimball's previous book, The Dirty Life ended. Kimball and her husband Mark now have a three-year-old and another baby on the way. Their farm has grown and they now have several seasonal employees. And while things are mostly good, farming is hard and often unpredictable work. In a few years the Kimball's farm experiences injuries, weather issues, and the strain of living and working with employees and their growing family. Kimball works through what does is mean to raise children on a working farm, how do you make a marriage work when you are both working on the same farm, and the continuous struggle of farm finances. Kimball shows both the beauty of the farm and the darker side of the continuous hard work and stress of this type of lifestyle. This book definitely makes me appreciate even more the local, lunatic farmers that I support.

Some quotes I liked:

"Our farm kept trying to separate Mark and me into traditional gender roles, and I wasn't sure how to feel about it. I had been raised in a family with a full-time homemaking mother right at the end of the era when that was default normal. But I was the cultural product of third-wave feminism and had assimilated all the ideas. I had married someone who was enlightened enough to take my last name. I never doubted that I was a full and equal partner in our business. And yet I was the one who was mostly in the house, at the stove, taking care of the children, while he was running the business, managing the employees." (p. 176)

"In the beginning, when Mark and I started the farm, the past was the image that got me out of bed to do chores every morning. I thought we could create happiness by reinventing the farm of our grandparents' generation - by working hard together on something that made sense to us and fed us on all levels. After the children came, it was the future that motivated me, the hope that we could make a good and modestly prosperous life for them out of the sun and the dirt. I wanted to build something beautiful and secure enough that they would want to inherit it and continue." (p. 197)

Unfollow: a memoir of loving and leaving the Westboro Baptist Church by Megan Phelps-Roper

Megan Phelps-Roper was born into the Westboro Baptist Church family. The church was founded by her grandfather and the majority of members were family. Her grandparents had 13 children and Megan was one of 11 children herself, so the church was a vast network of aunts, uncles, and cousins with a few other members who had made the cut to join the church. When Megan was 5 the church began it's constant protesting which would eventually make it famous. The church's protests grew along with the internet - which provided information about events they might want to protest, social media as a platform, and how much of the world came to know and hate the name Westboro Baptist Church. As a young adult Megan managed much of the church's social media, especially Twitter. It was through Twitter that she eventually began to doubt the church and her family's beliefs.

The first half of the book is Megan recounting her childhood in Westboro and just how rigid and extreme the beliefs she grew up with were. The second half is her struggling with her doubts and eventually leaving and trying to figure out life outside of Westboro. She does a great job with her writing because you really feel the stress she's under once she starts doubting. While the book was really interesting, I would have liked a little bit more of her life after Westboro. The book ends just a few months after she leaves and I'm sure there were years of struggling to figure out her life. I definitely applaud her for being strong enough to walk away from her whole life and even more so for now trying to be a voice for compassion and love instead of hate.

Some quotes I liked:

"There were no chores at school, no crying babies, no laundry, no vacuuming. We only had to learn. It was the freest time we had, and became the portal to my favorite place: books." (p. 23)

"Voice dripping with disdain, my grandfather railed against 'Christians' so often in his weekly sermons that I spent my elementary school years believing the term to be synonymous with 'evil' and denying that it applied to me." (p. 41)

[In response to a lawsuit against Westboro for protesting military funerals] "The men took turns making elaborate prayers to God to kill these men that very weekend, before they had the opportunity to attack the Lord's church in this way...Our enemies did not die over the weekend, but this pervasive doctrinal shift would affect the church for years to come, pushing us ever more to the extreme." (p. 87)

"By visceral instinct more than conscious deliberation, I understood that no force silences doubt as effectively as zeal - a passionate clinging to familiar and reliable truths that quiets dissonance and snuffs out uncertainty in an avalanche of action." (p. 147)

"I couldn't believe how our love within the church had been warped beyond recognition by the elders' unscriptural will to punish. By their implacable demands for unquestioning obedience. By their pernicious need for superiority and control. They had developed a toxic sense of certainty in their own righteousness, seizing for themselves the role of the ultimate arbiter of divine truth - and they now seemed willing to lay waste to anyone who disagreed with them. It was a heinous arrogance and sinfulness that could not be denied. And in a moment of horrifying clarity, I finally saw what had eluded me for so long: We had all been behaving in the exact same way toward outsiders. It was as if we were finally doing to ourselves what we had been doing to others - for over twenty years." (p. 158-9)

"Though their ideologies manifested in vastly different ways, it was fundamentalist religious groups, from Jehovah's Witnesses to members of the Islamic State, that first permitted me to recognize the patterns of my upbringing. But as I watch the human tribal instinct play out in the era of Donald Trump, the echoes of Westboro are undeniable: the division of the world into Us and Them; the vilification of compromise; the knee-jerk expulsion of insiders who violate group orthodoxy; and the demonization of outsiders and the inability to substantively engage with their ideas, because we simply cannot step outside of our own. In this environment, there is a growing insistence that opposing views must be silenced, whether by the powers of government, the self-regulation of social media companies, or the self-censorship of individuals. At the heart of this insistence lie several false assumptions, including a sentiment that Westboro members would readily recognize: We have nothing to learn from these people. This sentiment was troubling to witness even among our tiny fringe movement, and I was relieved to abandon it when I left the church - but watching it spread among a vast and growing populace has been altogether more alarming, filling me with a growing sense of unease." (p. 276)

Plaid Cats Librarian

Friday, January 24, 2020

2019 Year in Reading

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

December 2019 Cookbook Reviews

December 2019