Sunday Salon: Everybody Talks About the Weather

Time for Sunday Salon, hosted by Readerbuzz.   

The weather has been in the news this week, for sure!  I have friends all over the area hit by the storm, and am waiting to find that they are all okay.  Here in Florida, we dodged that nasty storm.  It does get cold here in northeast Florida, and I've seen snow several times in the 70 years I've lived here.  

We had an ice storm when I was in high school, in 1962.  My best friend's family were all from New York, so it was not so much a surprise when she called me and said her mom was going to take us bowling.  Yes, there was a bowling alley open, though there weren't many people there.  We had a great time.  The results of the storm were pretty spectacular, with ice hanging from tree branches in crystalline beauty.

 In 1979 or thereabouts, we had a snowfall that left our daughters' swing set sprinkled with sparkling white.  In 1956 we had one in which we made a snowball.  Mom put it in the freezer, where it turned into an iceball.  

In 1989, we had another very cold experience, where my car, a Plymouth station wagon, ended up encased in ice!  Our grass was also sheathed in ice, and when our poor dog had to go out, he would take a step, stop, and pick up a paw and inspect it to see if he'd been stabbed by an icy blade of grass.  Poor Diamond.  He had never experienced anything like that.

Tonight it's getting down to 22 here in northeast Florida.  The faucets are dripping, a light bulb is switched on under the cover of our well pump, so we still have running water.  

It's a good night to curl up with a blanket and the cat, a cup of tea, and a book.

 

2026 Nonficiton Reader Challenge: You Went to Emergency for WHAT?

Number two among my posts in the  the 2026 Nonfiction Reader Challenge.  My category is that of a Nonfiction Grazer, the description of which is: "Read & review any nonfiction book. Set your own goal, or none at all, just share the nonfiction you read through the year." This best fits my nonconformist style. 

This next choice was You Went to Emergency for WHAT?: Bizarre, Bloody and Baffling True Stories from the Hospital ED, by Tim Booth, an Australian paramedic.  His tales of the oddball, the weird, and the unfortunately too mundane calls he and his colleagues receive rang all too familiar with me.  I spent time as a registered nurse, working in the emergency department of a large-city teaching hospital.  You might be examining a hangnail one minute and, right after that, you could be going into an exam room to take blood from a very large, muscular crime suspect.  It didn't take long for me to figure out that the ER was not the place for me.  I was much happier as a plain old medical-surgical floor nurse.  I also enjoyed my rotations in OB-GYN.  When the author comments on the stress of being in any part of emergency medicine, I am in total empathy with him.  Been there, done that, had a punching bag in my garage so I could unload my stress before being with my family.  It was highly therapeutic!

Author Booth uses two people in the emergency department he served as carriers of his stories.  One, a female doctor, has to deal with the unfortunate lack of trust many patients have, based not always on the skill, technique, personality, bedside manner -- or gender -- of the doctor, but rather in their own non-compliance with their doctors' instructions for medication, exercise, and/or diet once they return home.  This all to often brings the patients back to the ER, many times in worse shape than in their original visit.  The other cast member in these stories is a rather cynical technician who makes acerbic observations on medicine as it is practiced, on the particular circumstances of the emergency department, and on the patients whose behavior is not conducive to good relations.  

The description of some cases may be too much for some readers.  On the front lines as first responders, paramedics come into contact with some truly heartbreaking and often unpleasant incidents.  Emergency rooms are often places of desperation, suffering, and sadness.  I can heartily recommend this book to readers who are in or who have been in the medical profession, especially those with emergency-room experience.  Reader discretion is advised.

 

Sunday Salon: Bleeding Minnesota

It's time for Sunday Salon.  Usually this is space to talk about what we're reading.  This time, my post is related to something I have had college courses in, and have read more than once: The Constitution of the United States.  Most especially, this relates to some of the best words ever written in any document establishing a government:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

These rights are being threatened in the United States as they have seldom been threatened before, most recently by incidents in Minnesota, the shooting of American citizens in American streets by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) troops.  I want to call ICE "brown shirts," after Hitler's Sturmabteilung (SA), but Cezary Jan Strusiewicz says ICE is not like the SA.  

"And when ICE agents aren’t wearing their vest-and-hat starter kit, they dress up as civilians. They’ve been known to pretend to be utility workers (electric company, gas, even delivery drivers) to trick people into letting them into their houses. Do you think the Brownshirts ever bothered with ruses? Hell no. They were proud of being fascists." 

So with these tricks and ruses, maybe ICE is more like the KGB. 

 Anne at My Head is Full of Books wrote this Sunday on the recent incidents in Minnesota.  She charges each of us:  

Now I urge you: to find out what your church, synagogue, temple, mosque, or other community centers are doing to end the trouble with ICE and how you can send financial or physical support. Figure it out and publish your actions on your blog. It is time for us behind the scenes book-bloggers to get activated! We can't sit this one out.

She describes the latest pronouncement on the incident by her denomination, the Presbyterian Church.  Though I am off my feed about organized religion as an old woman, I was raised Episcopalian and am proud to say so with their stands on a number of issues in our nation today.  Here's what Episcopal leadership has to say: 

In an evening letter to the church, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe referenced Matthew 4:12-23, the Jan. 25 Gospel reading, saying Jesus understood the divisions sewn “when earthly powers persuade human beings to fear one another, regard one another as strangers, and believe that there is not enough to go around.”

“In our time, the deadly power of those divisions is on display on the streets of Minneapolis, in other places across the United States, and in other countries around the world,” he said. “As has too often been the case throughout history, the most vulnerable among us are bearing the burden, shouldering the greatest share of risk and loss, and enduring the violation of their very humanity.”

And not unlike vulnerable communities, Episcopalians can no longer expect to practice their faith without risk; the Constitutional right to peaceful protest comes with deadly risk, he continued.

“In the coming years, our church will continue to be tested in every conceivable way as we insist that death and despair do not have the last word, and as we stand with immigrants and the most vulnerable among us who reside at the heart of God. We will be required to hold fast to God’s promise to make all things new, because our call to follow God’s law surpasses any earthly power or principality that might seek to silence our witness.”

I have communicated my horror and disgust at these incidents in Minnesota to my senators and representative, to the governor and legislature of my state.  This is no time for "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot."  These are indeed "times that try men's souls," and women's souls, too.

I served my country in the United States Coast Guard, in which I took an oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."  I hold myself still bound by that oath. 

RESIST! 

A New Challenge: Mount TBR

 I have decided to participate in the Mount TBR challenge -- I'll commit to reading a certain number of books from my TBR or my TBRR (To Be Re-Read) piles.  The challenge is hosted by Bev Hankins at  My Reader's Block.  As I am new to this, and am doing other challenges as well, I'm going to sign up for the lowest level, Pike's Peak, to read 12 books off my TBR or TBRR lists.  If I feel I can do 12 more, I can switch to the next level, Mont Blanc.

I'm going to read

From my TBR pile: 

The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen.

The Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War by Nathaniel Philbrick.

All That Remains: A Renowned Forensic Scientist on Death, Mortality, and Solving Crimes by Sue Black.

A Feminist's Guide to ADHD: How Women Can Thrive and Find Focus in a World Built for Men by Dr. Janina Maschke.

Being Mortal:  Medicine and What Counts in the End by Atul Gawande.

The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano that Darkened the World and Changed History by William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman. 

The Lost Family:  How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are, by Libby Copeland.

The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman.

 Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell.

 From my TBRR pile:

The Green-Sky Trilogy (separately published), by Zilpha Keatley Snyder:

    Below the Root (1975)

    And All Between (1976)

    Until the Celebration (1977)

 

Sunday Salon: My Favorite Little-known Series, the Green-Sky Trilogy

                                 

In the mid-1980s, when our daughters were in middle school, we came upon an enchanting computer game called "Below the Root."  Little did we know at the time that it was based on a children's trilogy known collectively as The Green-Sky Trilogy.  We loved the game, all four of us.  Take two children and two adults who could be child-like, add a charming game, and there's a sale for someone!

Learning about the game's basis in a three-book series, I sought that series out and finally found all three in paperback.  We all read it, and I still have it, as I treasure the books I enjoy most.  I read to my grandson from this series when he was a wee one, as a way of getting him used to the rhythm of stories and as a way of letting him bond with me through my voice.  He became an avid reader.

The story involves the Kindar, an ethereal people who live in the high boughs of a forest, a place called Green-Sky.  The key to the story is their relationship to the Erdlings, underground dwellers who live below the root of a holy tree that has great spiritual significance to the Kindar.  It was the Kindar who imprisoned the Erdlings.  Difficulties begin when the Kindar discover that their Holy Root is withering, threatening their existence.  Then an Erdling child who flees when she is told her pet rabbit must be sacrificed to feed her people finds her way onto the surface, and then into Green-Sky.  She develops a friendship with a Kindar child, and the Erdlings are released.  However, there exists a high level of distrust between the Kindar and the Erdlings.  

The author, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, was a schoolteacher.  During her writing career, spanning from 1964 to 2011, she wrote some 46 books, three of which were Newbery Honors books, meaning that they fell short of being awarded a Newbery Medal, one of the most prestigious awards in children's literature, but qualified for the recognition of Newbery Honors.

 The first pages of the first book in the series, Below the Root, introduce Raamo, the young male protagonist of the series.  He has, to his great surprise, been appointed to the temple of the Ol-Zhaan, the spiritual leaders of Green-Sky.  And thus, the reader is drawn into the story.  Beyond that, I found it hard to put down, and read it through in a short time.  It is time for me to re-read this trilogy.  I just wish we still had the game and a computer that would play it.

Recommended for middle-school-age children, and for adults who haven't totally forgotten how good children's literature can be. 

#Sunday Salon 

 

2026 Nonfiction Reader Challenge: Hillbilly Highway -- a 20th century migration

 Number one among my posts in the  the 2026 Nonfiction Reader Challenge.  My category is that of a Nonfiction Grazer, the description of which is: "Read & review any nonfiction book. Set your own goal, or none at all, just share the nonfiction you read through the year." This best fits my nonconformist style.

A new cousin with whom I share eastern Tennesee/western Virginia roots recommended Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class by Max Fraser (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2023) when I told her that my great-grandfather and great-grandmother Nave moved from eastern Tennessee to South Bend, Indiana.  I didn't give any details; I just mentioned in passing one of the links between her family and mine.

The "Hillbilly Highway" is a series of routes from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia to cities in the upper midwest: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana figure largely in the destinations of this migration.  The author, Max Fraser, attributes this migration to the changing economic conditions in the upper south, including the shrinking of family farmland, which was being bought up by mining, transportation, and government interests (the latter being mainly the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority for the purposes of rural electrification).  The migrants looked for factory work and mining in the upper midwest, where they could make a great deal more money than on hardscrabble farming. 

This phenomenon of forced migration due to economics took place in the years encompassing World War II, according to Fraser, and lasted into the 1960s.  In that, this theory covers a time period fifty years too late to include my family.  My great-grandparents Nave were in South Bend, Indiana, by 1892, which is when my grandmother was born in that city.  Fraser sees the people affected by the changing economy of the southern areas as farmers, suffering the loss of farmlands to the interests mentioned above.  My great-grandfather and many men in the Nave family were merchants.  Great-grandpa was a grocer.  He was one in Tennessee and in Indiana.

Fraser sees a pattern in that the people, mostly men, who made this change from the south to the upper midwest did not stay permanently there.  Many returned to their southern homes for planting season or harvest, or for family celebrations.  I have found no indication that my great-grandfather and great-grandmother ever made any return trips to Tennessee.  That raises a question of whether their hegira to Indiana might have been motivated by personal reasons, some sort of difficulty within the family.  Once in Indiana, they stayed there, first in South Bend and then in Logansport.

 While this particular theory does not appear to apply to my family, it is an interesting look at the middle of the 20th century.  The Dust Bowl was not, apparently, the only motivation that put people on the road from one section of the country to another.  Fraser's research supports his theory.  He includes some individual histories of some who found themselves in this migration.  Some of the people involved, either as migrants or as entrepreneurs who provided the transportation for these migrants along the "Hillbilly Highway" routes delineated by Fraser, were indeed colorful characters.  That gives an engaging leavening to the statistics and dates and facts that makes the book readable.  It is an excellent example of the trend away from the Great Man sort of history to history of ordinary people who really build the United States.

The author is a former journalist and currently is an assistant professor of history at the University of Miami. 

Recommended to readers with an interest in History and fans of the 20th Century.

 

 

My Life in Books 2025

 

 

This is a fun little exercise devised by Shellyrae at Book'd Out

Here are the instructions:  

Complete the prompts using titles from the books you have read in 2025 to complete the sentence to describe your life in the past year.   NB Some of these statements aren’t true. The prompts are bold; my responses in plain text.  It isn't as easy as it seems . . .  We're asked to tag others.  Nah.  Participate if you wish to.  

2025 was the year of  Straight Shooting by Robert Stack.

In 2025 I wanted to be What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy, by Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack.

In 2025 I was Making It So: A Memoir, by Sir Patrick Stewart.

In 2025 I gained Ten Percent of Nothing: The Case of the Literary Agent from Hell, by Jim Fisher.

In 2025 I lost Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, by Sheri Fink.

In 2025 I loved my Puritan Pedigrees: the Deep Roots of the Great Migration to New England, by Robert Charles Anderson. 

In 2025 I hated Jack Ruby: the Many Faces of Oswald's Assassin, by Danny Fingeroth. (Actually, I liked the book; I can't say I have any positive feelings for the subject person.)

In 2025 I learned We Carry Their Bones: the Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys, by Erin Kimmerle.

In 2025 I was surprised by What Really Happened to the Class of '65, by Michael Medved and David Wallechinsky.

 In 2025 I went to Secret Jacksonville: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure, by Bill Delaney.

In 2025 I missed out on It All Makes Sense Now: Embrace Your ADHD Brain to Live a Creative and Colorful Life, by Meredith Carder.

In 2025, my family were Wild Things Are Happening: the Art of Maurice Sendak, edited by Jonathan Weinberg. 

In 2026, I hope it will be The Honeycomb, by Adela Rogers St. Johns.

We are what we read!