This Week's Schedule

Woke up sometime after 3 a.m.  Read a bit, tried to sleep again, finally gave up at 5 a.m.  Of course my head was full of all the details of the coming week.  This is one reason why I am so happy not to be in school anymore.  I had to add hours of reading and homework to schedules like this.

Monday - 11/28
Take S to his classes by 9 a.m.
Grocery shop for week
Put groceries away/shower
In meantime make sure B is up and working at the tons of work she always has to do on Monday because she procrastinates doing her schoolwork over the weekend.
Clean some bathrooms
Pick up S from his classes
home again - maybe nap???  I'll need one today.
AHG meeting/S has physical training
home again - what's for dinner?
Trash to curb

Tuesday - 11/29
Take B to her Biology class
Home again - shower and make sure S is doing a minimum of homework for this class which always seems to be an afterthought for him
Take S to class
Return library books
P/u S and B from class
Need to squeeze in a little bit of Latin and religion - not sure how
S has drs appt at 2:45
Back again at what time?
Dinner?
S to chamber orchestra practice at 7
B goes to youth group or maybe she should stay home and do math homework
V to English class - I watch D

Wednesday - 11/30
Religion and Latin
B works on math homework
D has doctors appt at 10:45?
Bake chicken for homeless shelter
Must prep for Latin class
B has math tutor @ 1:45 and then voice lessons @ 3:30
S has work @ 5
I have Family PASS meeting @ 7 or 7:30? - take chicken to parish kitchen on the way there.

Thursday - 12/1
S to classes by 9
Go to Latin co-op
11 - 12 teach Latin
Lunch with Ioana?
p/u S at 1:45 (B has lit class on line)
I have Dentist appt at what time?  2:30???
Dinner?
Does S work?
V to English class - I watch D
B does math
Compost bin out - trash to the curb
One nice thing about Thursdays is while I am out most of the day, V tidies and vacuums the main floor and scrubs up the kitchen for me.  It is very nice!

Friday - 12/2
Latin and Religion
B works on math
12 noon Mass
B to math tutor
Adoration at 5
Dinner?
S to work?
Laundry day for me

Somehow I have to get S registered for community college classes for next semester.  I need to do it sooner rather than later because we are trying to keep the same schedule as this semester but the honors program is requiring the honors students to take a sociology class in conjunction with the English class..  S can't take on Sociology on top of Government, so he's just going to switch to a regular English class.  We need to get one that meets MR and doesn't conflict with his music theory class at 9 on those days.

Saturday - 12/3
This was the day I was supposed to take the Latin students to a certamen in DC but I don't think we are registered or enough kids will be able to make it.  So I doubt that will happen, though you never know!  If this happens this is from about 9 to 2.

I'd like us all to go to confession in the evening since Advent has now started.  We haven't been in months.

Sunday - 12/4
Have to remember to stay hydrated - Parish blood drive.

Medicus - Book 34

I decided to read something light after Hillbilly Elegy.  I've felt a bit like I'm on vacation, since the end of the Theology term.  A friend on Facebook suggested this series and it looked interesting so I downloaded the first book.  I gobbled it up in a few days and am now reading the second book in this series.  I am really enjoying these reads!

Medicus is Latin for doctor.  The author seems to know a lot about Ancient Rome in Britain, but she also seems to take a lot of artistic license.  Somehow she carries it off well.  The main character is Gaius Petreius Ruso, a military doctor, who is dedicated to his work and a bit of bumbler in every other aspect of his life.  He's recently divorced because his wife Claudia didn't like the fact that he wasn't an ambitious social climber.  His father has died leaving the family in debt, and now he is the paterfamilias so he must help to get things settled for his brother Lucius and his family, his step-mother and his step sisters.  This means he's always broke because he sends back what pay he has to them.  He's gotten himself transferred from Africa to a British outpost.  Out in the street he comes across a slave girl whose been beaten and has a broken arm.  His first instinct is to rescue her (by buying her) and then try to set the arm.  The girl, Tilla, turns out to be a very pretty native of Britain and she brings a wake of trouble with her.  She's being keep in a room above a bar where 'dancing girls' or rather prostitute-slaves are forced to work.  Two of the girls have recently turned up dead.  Ruso unwillingly is forced into investigating the murders.  Meanwhile, he has to deal with the Type A, controlling, manipulative hospital administrator.

It's an entertaining, intelligent story.  Ruso is a great character and the author tells the story with a sense of humor.  There isn't too much gore and sex is just alluded to - no lurid descriptions.

Two thumbs up!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Advent and Plans

Almost Thanksgiving!  We aren't actually celebrating on Thursday.  We are going to have the big family  get together on Saturday instead.  Tomorrow I hope to work on decluttering and cleaning.  I know that sounds dreary but we finally finished our renovations and now we can get rid of stuff and put the stuff back that we want.  Also I need to go through closets and drawers and give the still good used clothing to our parish's clothing drive.

I can't believe Advent starts this Sunday.  I am feeling so relieved about my Theology term being over, that I, for once, feel relaxed going into the Christmas season.  I have made a big decision.  I am not going to pursue a Theology degree.  I just found that I didn't have enough time to keep up with it and do all the other things in my life that I need/feel called to do.  As I said to the kids, I already have proven that I can do the academic thing.  I have a B.A. and J.D.  I don't need to prove that I can do it.  It was just a dream I had which turned out not to be worth the stress.  I will continue to take Latin courses though.  But Theology I will just pursue on my own.  For instance, since I am not going to take Theology courses this winter, I can relax and participate in a twitter read-along, lead by a Catholic professor of Theology on Augustine's City of God.  It is a 15 week long discussion on this classic.  I am excited!  This to me is a low pressure, fun way to explore Theology.

I am also going to read Jacques Maritain's book Man and the State.  I inherited a copy of this book from my grandfather.  Someone in the American Solidarity Party is a professor who teaches this book, so I can turn to him to ask questions as I read.  Isn't that cool!  I'd rather learn things that way then worry about having time to write a paper (I had to write one this past terms and it messed with both going away for the weekend with Rick for our anniversary, as well as taking me away from spending time with Eli who was visiting.  Bah, humbug, I don't need that!)

I also want to get more involved in working with the homeless in this area and I can't do that, plus teach Latin, drive my kids all over the place for their classes, activities, etc and go to school at the same time.  If I were working toward a degree for employment reasons or to prove to myself that I could stick it out, well, then it would be wrong to give up.  But I was doing it for the enjoyment of it, and that means it does not take priority over other things in my life.

Random list of things to do:
Register for Latin class
Get involved in certamen with the Aquinas Learning group
Register Sean for his community college classes for next semester
Give blood at church Dec. 4th
Focus on Christmas gifts and decorations
December 17th is the Family PASS Christmas dinner for their clients.  We are volunteering for that.
December 22nd is Sean's birthday!  How to celebrate it?  He'll be 18, omg!
December 24th - Mass - it is also the first day of Chanukah
December 25th - Christmas!
Between Christmas and New Years I usually go to an annual lunch out with all my sisters.
New Years day - Is this when we should celebrate Chanukah with extended family?
But when is my family's big Christmas get together?  Better find that out.

There's other stuff to do too.  But that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Hillbilly Elegy - Book 33

Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance is a memoir about growing up in a transplanted Appalachian, poor white trash family.  The author's people come from deep in the Appalachian hills of Kentucky.  As a boy he spent summers and holidays there playing in the hollers with his kinfolk.  But his grandparents had migrated to Ohio right after World War II to work in the steel mills.  This was a big migration where whole extended families moved taking their culture with them.  When the factories started shutting down and the economy crashed, these people were left stuck.  They'd bought houses they could not sell.  The towns began to deteriorate; crime rose as booze and drugs became more commonplace.

According to the author though, who loves his family in spite of the fact that it is and was so painfully dysfunctional, there are also other factors at play.  The Scotch-Irish clannishness of the hillbilly and the long years of poverty in one of the poorest areas in the U.S. developed a culture that had both good and bad qualities, but the bad qualities are extremely destructive.  A misplaced sense of honor that would rather seek violent revenge than do any self-reflection, the idea that one's loyalty is above and beyond to one's kin, even if they might kill you in a drunken rage, the suspicion of anyone who is an outsider, the degrading effect on being on the government dole from generation to generation all have taken its toll on the white working class in the rust belt.  This is where heroin use has skyrocketed, where the white men and women's life span has been decreasing even as the country around them has people living longer lives.  These are the people that turned out to vote for Donald Trump.  They are dying and are desperate for change.  They feel forgotten by the rest of the nation.

The story is told in a very absorbing, emotional way.  Vance recalls all the beatings, the fights, the trauma, the many husbands and boyfriends of his mother (who eventually winds up a heroin addict).  It is a harrowing story, but he is saved by some elements of the very culture he realizes is working to destroy him.  This book is him trying to sort things out.  The fierce clan loyalty means he has a big network of people who loved him and who were there to rescue him when he needed it.  His grandparents, Papaw and Mamaw were especially instrumental in this.  They gave his life some stability.  His older half-sister tried to protect him from his mother's rages and outrageous selfishness.  Even his mother, when she was going through periods of stability, helped.  She got him a library card and encouraged him to read, she taught him about strategy when they both became huge football fans.  His Papaw played math games and puzzles with him which helped Vance in school.  In high school, when he was beginning to drift, skipping classes, drinking and dabbling in drugs, his grandmother took him in and gave him a regular home.  He found this to be such a help in being able to focus on schoolwork.  Almost every year of his life he was moving from one place to another, depending on his mother's husbands and boyfriends and whether she was starting a relationship or breaking up one.  Just the fact that for the last three years of high school he could come home to the same safe haven where he knew he was not going to have to confront any fighting or violence, made him do better in school.

He didn't know what he wanted to do when he graduated.  He did just well enough to get into Ohio State, but he was afraid of going off to college.  So he joined the Marines instead.  This was a great decision for him, as it really forced him to become disciplined and to see what life was like outside his hillbilly culture.  He loved it.  After serving for four years though, he had the courage to attend college.  But after being out in the world, fighting in Iraq, he couldn't quite get into the younger culture of college, so he completed his 4 year degree in less than two years, barely sleeping.  On a fluke he decided to apply to Yale Law School, not thinking he'd get in, but he did!  That was another cultural shock, going from the working class rust belt to the Ivy League.

This book is really full of love and soul-searching.  The author is trying to be fair to his family while at the same time trying to pinpoint what the hillbilly culture gets very wrong.  He hardly talks about racism, which I found to maybe be a bit of a blind spot.  But he does talk about how similar the dysfunctions of inner city black families are to the dysfunctions of the rust belt/hillbilly transplants.  The author calls himself a conservative, but he notes the different government programs that really do help the poor and that he is grateful for since they did give him a boost up.  He decries the children's protective services which really don't function in reality and often cause more damage and trauma than not.  I was impressed at how honest and fair the author was striving to be.

I read this book in a couple of days, it was that absorbing.  Lots of traumatic childhood violence and bad language, but also lots of love, compassion and gratitude as well.

I highly recommend this book!

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Processing the Election

God was so good to me when he let me find the American Solidarity Party before this election.  I am afraid I might sound like I've been brainwashed or part of a cult, but far from that!  It is just so nice to be in with a group of people who are like minded in this unsettled time of divisiveness and worry.  Being back on facebook really intensifies it.  I have to figure out how to be engaged there but not too much.  Hard balancing act!

I was prepared to be upset no matter who won the election.  But with Clinton I was prepared to be upset in the same old way I've been upset the last eight years.  With Trump I am just terrified by his personality and how he seems to bring out the worst in a lot of people.  We'll see how it goes.

I am happy my representative Barbara Comstock won.  I am happy that the Senate and House are Republican enough that they should be able to pass prolife things.  I will be happy if they defund Planned Parenthood.  I do hope that they take that money and give it to crisis pregnancy centers and community health centers.  What are the chances, do you think?

While I understand the reaction to Trump's election given all the hysteria during the election season, I do think the losers are behaving really badly.  Of course the winners are gloating and making them feel worse.  But so many on the left really are intolerant.  I remember being so freaked out about the cult of personality surrounding Obama.  Many of his supporters really seemed to think he was some kind of god.  But nobody was out protesting or burning flags that I recall.  You know what they were doing instead?  Many went to church and prayed.  The left (or at least the media show of the left) goes out into the street, disrupts traffic, burns flags, smashes windows, chants violent obscenities.  I said to Rick last night, either they stage an actual coup or they take it like a man!  None of these hissy fits, please.

I had a conversation with someone who voted for Trump yesterday.  She is a smart person who I have admired for a long time.  She is completely convinced of the rightness of her vote.  She is far from being bigoted.  She is an immigrant herself.  But she is prolife and that is the factor that the left has a huge blind spot about.  It doesn't even calculate for them.  I think they are really paying big for this blind spot.  People were terrified by the aggressive push for abortion, the whole taking Americans to court because they don't want to fund contraception,  forcing the Little Sisters of the Poor into court, or driving people out of business because they don't believe in same sex marriage.  There is a lot of thuggery on the left.  Think about it.  People have been marching for 43 years against Roe v. Wade but the media by and large ignores it every year.  43 years!  These are dedicated people.  Many Americans were terrified of 4 more years of aggressive secularism.  They really don't want the president forcing their kids to share showers with members of the opposite sex.  That's what it comes down to.  And then the left has so little regard for anyone who thinks differently from them.  The minute you object you are painted with the most vitriolic, demeaning  language.  These people were painted into a corner and they reacted.  A lot of people didn't want Trump.  He was not their first choice but given the two they had to choose from, he at least appears to be someone who will stop the anti-religious fervor of the left; they held their noses and voted.

There are already some positive firsts.  Trump's campaign had the first woman to head a successful, presidential campaign.  Melania is the first non native First Lady.  Trump picked an African American Republican to lead his domestic transition team.  Also, reports are coming in that African-Americans and immigrants voted for Trump.  It is good to know that groups are not monoliths the way the media likes to portray everyone.    Viviane was in her ESL class last night and she said the woman from Mexico sitting next to her admitted she had voted for Trump even as the English teacher was in front of the class inappropriately clutching her pearls over it all.

I am, though, worried about immigrants, and the economy, and terrorism.  I am worried about foreign relations and tensions. I am worried about jobs and the poor.  I am worried that in the end Trump won't come through on his prolife promises.  I am worried the whole 4 years will be eaten up with scandal and incompetence.   I think the Democrats will be vicious and unprincipled.  They will foment chaos and violence.  The media will aid them.  I think Trump is way too thin-skinned and unstable to take it.  I think he'll lash out.  I think we are in for very troubled times because we have two sides that refuse to cooperate, to see the best in each other.

I hate the fact that the same man pro-lifers have pinned all their hopes to is also a man that white nationalists openly support.  Of course the racial division wounds were reopened or became front page news under Obama.  But, dear Lord send us a leader, someone in the culture, who can heal this wound!  The one thing I was happy about when Obama was elected was the fact that he was a man of color.  I felt like the U.S. had finally put that evil behind us.  And it is true, we must have made strides for him to be elected.  The white men in middle America voted for Obama!  But apparently, getting rid of racism is a very tortured and long journey.

I just find Trump odious in every regard.  I really do, but I hope for the best and I want to be clearsighted and not be clouded by emotion.

I happily voted for Mike Maturen and Juan Munoz.  I took off my #nevertrump bumpersticker.  Why be negative?  I've got my American Solidarity bumpersticker up now. I'm looking to build a reasonable 3rd party to maybe replace one of the two corrupt and crumbling parties.  Before the election, everyone thought that party would be the Republicans.  Now it looks more like the Democrats.  Though maybe after a term of Trump, the Republicans will be vulnerable as well.  But even if that doesn't happen, we can at least be a force that can temper the national conversation.

Books 30, 31 and 32!

Catching up on my reading here.

Book 30:

The Size of Chesterton's Catholicism by David W. Fagerberg.  I had to write a paper on this for my Theology class.  I won't go on for 8 pages like I did there, but I will say if you want to get a marvelous introduction to both Chesterton's wit and his reasons for converting to Catholicism, this a brilliant book that would serve you well.  The wonderful thing about the book is that it basically is a introduction to Catholic theology.  It tracked our Revelation and Faith class (basically a how-to be a theologian course) pretty strongly.  By reading this book you will learn some real theology.  Fagerberg also is brilliant in that he so gets Chesterton's brilliance, he can sum it up (an enormous enterprise) in an easy to read concise way in under 200 pages.

A definite two thumbs up!



Book 31:

America Moved: Booth Tarkington's Memoirs of Time and Place 1869-1928.  Edited by Jeremy Beers. This is really a collection of long magazine articles that Tarkington wrote for the likes of Colliers, the Saturday Evening Post and such.  These are deeply autobiographical.  Booth Tarkington is a forgotten American author.  He actually won the Pulitzer Prize in 1919 for his novel The Magnificent Ambersons.  That and other novels were adapted to the screen.  He was very prolific and also wrote plays.  Alas, he is of a conservative bent and fell out of popularity.  He is indeed very nostalgic for the golden years of the past.  He has a keen sense of the cost of change.  He writes really well with a lot of insight.  I enjoyed the first part of the book the most, the middle got duller because he goes on a rant about theater in the 1920s.  It sounded exactly like people bemoaning the sordidness of the culture today.  But then the end of the book picked up again (for me anyway) and ended rather magically.

Book 32:

A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer.  I felt like reading something light after reading the above two books (not that either of them was especially heavy!).  This Georgette Heyer novel struck me as a more mature and more subtle story.  I liked its quiet nature.  There were no kidnappings or rakish, sardonic handsome rich men boxing adversaries or outsmarting evil enemies.  This was a delicately rendered story of the first year of a marriage of convenience.  Lord Lynton passes away suddenly and so his son, Adam Deveril, must come back from the Napoleonic wars (he's been in the army for years) to rescue his inherited, heavily indebted estate.  In order to save his mother and sisters from poverty and to save the family seat, Fontley, he realizes he must marry for money even though he is in love with the beautiful Julia.  There is a magnificently rich 'tradesman' who has a plain daughter, Jenny, whom he is trying to marry off to one of the nobility.  She's plump and plain and full of common sense.  Adam fights down his revulsion and marries her.  He is a decent man who does wants to do right by his new wife, but he still longs for Julia, and he rankles under his father-in-law's domineering vulgarity and his tactless, overwhelming conspicuous consumption.   The story really is a quiet one, where Adam slowly falls out of romantic love with Julia and into a companionable and satisfying love for Jenny.  It is completely believable and even though it is a quiet story of ordinary things, it never is dull.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

I fell off the face of the earth!

Not really!  But I got back on facebook because I wanted to get involved in the American Solidarity Party.  I only have so much time to be on line each day, so this blog has been ignored for a bit.

I am so excited about the A.S.P!  I have never fit comfortably into the Democrat/Republican binary and as they've gotten more extreme, I've felt less and less comfortable.  I look back at the political posts on this blog recently and I can trace my own journey to 3rd partydom as I try to sort out my perspective on important issues.  All I can say is I love the discussion, the intelligence, the worldview of the Solidarity party people.  They come from both the left and the right and they are disgusted but instead of doing nothing, they are trying to do something to change the tenor of our national political debate which has gotten so absurd and squalid to a frightening degree.

An awful lot of A.S.P. folks seem to be prolife Democrats.  The goal to rescind Hyde is just a bridge too far for them.  Apparently there are about 1/3 of Democrats who say they are prolife but can never vote prolife because of the Democratic party's hardline commitment to Planned Parenthood.  Millenials are tending to be more prolife.  So there is a growing disconnect there.  Many are also disgusted Republicans who can not stomach Trump.  Then there are independents like me who have been homeless for so long and have finally landed somewhere that feels right.  What I love about the party is that it is centrist so it looks to pull from both the left and the right for practical solutions.  It does not force things into an ideology but rather sees what fits into Catholic social teaching. The party is itself secular and has people from all and no faiths but its focus is on the common good, the natural law that allows for human flourishing.

The strategy right now is to get some public recognition.  Mike Maturen/Juan Munoz are running for president/vice-president.  So far he has ballot access in Colorado and write in access (where the write-in will actually be counted) in 27 states, including my own of Virginia.  Party chapters are starting up all over the country.  The one is VA is headed by some incredibly capable, excited YOUNG people, who are completely disgusted with how us older folks screwed everything up.  And there are some older folks like me of course.  It runs the age spectrum.  But it was really heartening to see the younger 20 somethings getting involved.

Again, the American Solidarity Party is a centrist party that looks for common ground.  It also is consistently pro-life from conception to natural death.  That means that we think there ought to be a workable safety net there for women so they can have their babies instead of choosing abortion.  We need policies that help the poor, the disabled, the sick. We are against the death penalty, we are pro-environment, pro-family, pro- worker.  We are for solidarity - that we should attempt to unify and not divide and conquer as the current parties love to do, and we believe in subsidiarity as well.  That means we don't always resort to top down solutions but we try to sensibly go for local or state solutions when appropriate.

After the election, we are going to focus on developing the platform more, organizing ourselves so we can do fundraising, get folks into local offices, and spread the word that there is an alternative party that makes sense.    It seems to me both parties are vulnerable and shaky.  Maybe the American Solidarity Party can rise to take one of their places.  We'd actually like to see an expansion of parties so that we don't have to always fall into a 2 party binary.  Even if we don't ever get to be a major party (never say never!) we can build enough momentum to bring some sanity to the process.  We can influence in a healthy way.  And honestly it is so refreshing and rejuvenating to be talking to like-minded people and not feel so freaking alienated by politics!  I love it!

An excellent, hour long interview with our presidential candidate, Mike Maturen.