Taking a probing look at our world

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis ~ by J. D. Vance, 2018, memoir, 264 pages

Part memoir, part historical and social analysis, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a consideration of class, culture, and the American dream.  Vance's grandparents were "dirt poor and in love."  They got married and moved north from Kentucky to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them.

Their grandchild (the author) graduated from Yale Law School, which is a conventional marker of their success in achieving upward mobility for their family.  That's the short version.  The slightly longer version is that his grandparents, aunt, uncle, and mother struggled to varying degrees with the demands of their new middle class life.  According to this summary I found on Amazon, his family and Vance himself still carry around the demons of their chaotic family history.

Delving into his own personal story and drawing on a wide array of sociological studies, Vance takes us deep into working class life in the Appalachian region.  This demographic of the United States has been slowly disintegrating over the years, and Vance provides an attempt to understand when and how "hillbillies" lost faith in any hope of upward mobility.

With the announcement yesterday that J. D. Vance was former President Trump's choice for his vice-presidential running mate, I immediately called the nearest bookstore and put a copy of Vance's book on hold so I could pick it up in a few minutes.  I got it and started reading it last night.  Have you read this memoir?  What did you think of it?

Face masks and social distancing

Here's a photo Betty took wearing her mask.  I think she must have had her computer snap this shot.  She sent it to me when I checked to see if she needed one of the masks being made by two of the volunteers in our Circle@Crown Café (when it was open before our stay-at-home orders).  Since the Crown Center is now discouraging visitors in the building, Linda Goldstein had brought about a dozen for me to distribute.  Laurie Dyche tells me, "Linda and I are making face shields next."  Here's what we should know about Coronavirus face masks, according to WebMD.

Click to enlarge the images.

Here are a couple of photos from my sixth floor apartment, showing how people are social distancing themselves by walking to the drive-up pharmacy window at Walgreens across the street.  This shows one person with a cart, standing in line between two cars on Saturday.

There were no cars on Sunday, when two people together walked up to the window.  I also had seen one man waiting in a long line of cars several days earlier, but didn't think to snap a picture.  Apparently he was told to "wait over there," because the car behind him rolled up to be served while he waited patiently over by the parked cars across the lot.  Then he went back up to the window, got his stuff (presumably a prescription), and left.

I found a new meme today, found it on Colleen's blog and followed it to Our World Tuesday.  There I discovered I'm not the only one posting pictures of face masks and social distancing.  Here's one (scroll to the bottom to see him wearing his mask), and here's another who is literally social distancing by carrying a sign that's shows how far apart to stay.  Find others by clicking on the home page of Our World Tuesday, where the goal is "to look at and think about our world as a gift to share with our friends around the world."  I decided to join the 61 others who have already added their blog links.