Your vote is your voice

Thanks to Left Bank Books for this photo.

National Black Cat Day ~ for Clawdia

Oh, no!!!  I almost missed National Black Cat Day!  This Caturday post celebrates my very favorite black cat ... CLAWDIA ... yay!

Beginning ~ in an old building

The Center squatted on the corner of Juniper and Montfort behind a wrought-iron gate, like an old building used to guarding its territory.  At one point, there had been many like it in Mississippi —  nondescript, unassuming buildings where services were provided and needs were met.  Then came the restrictions that were designed to make these places go away.

A Spark of Light ~ by Jodi Picoult, 2018, fiction (Mississippi)

The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center — a women’s reproductive health services clinic — its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors.  Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage.  After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman.  As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages he glances at it and, to his horror, finds out that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic.

But Wren is not alone.  She will share the next and tensest few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters:  A nurse who calms her own panic in order to save the life of a wounded woman.  A doctor who does his work not in spite of his faith but because of it, and who will find that faith tested as never before.  A pro-life protester, disguised as a patient, who now stands in the crosshairs of the same rage she herself has felt.  A young woman who has come to terminate her pregnancy.  And the disturbed individual himself, vowing to be heard.

This is a story that traces its way back to what brought each of these very different individuals to the same place on this fateful day.  How do we balance the rights of pregnant women with the rights of the unborn they carry?  What does it mean to be a good parent?  This novel will inspire debate, conversation ... and, hopefully, understanding.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Linky.

Photography

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but you know I'll add lots of words anyway, don't you?  I went down to the Circle@Crown Café for brunch this morning and had the breakfast special of pancakes and a fruit cup.  And tea, of course.  Always tea.  And nearly always iced tea.  After eating with another Crown Center resident, I refreshed my iced tea and went to sit off in the corner, facing the hallway.  I was sipping tea and reading Not Quite a Scot by Janice Maynard (2016) on my Kindle when I came across these passages:

"Mealt Falls at Kilt Rock sounded like an auspicious place to start my month of Scottish photography" (p. 64).

"The waterfall over the Kilt Rock formation was breathtaking. It plunged at least fifty feet into the ocean below. Beyond the falls, dramatic headlands carved by centuries of wind and water jutted against the sky" (p. 65).

That's when I took out my flip-phone camera and took a picture of my own surroundings.  Okay, even on a nice sunny morning, the inside of a cafe is not on a par with seeing a breathtaking waterfall.  So here I am, back in my apartment, typing up a blog post and googling that waterfall in Scotland to see what the protagonist of this novel is seeing, hoping it's an actual place in Scotland.  Yes!  I found a photo of Mealt Falls (see above).

I've done this before, using my electronic devices to be able to see the locale of a novel I'm reading.  Here's one example, taking a leap to Nantucket via Google.

Cute as a button

I've been helping an Iranian American man learned more about our English idioms and words that don't always make sense, if you didn't grow up hearing them.  Does anyone think buttons are cute?  A few months ago, he asked about "follow your nose."  Recently, I printed out the idiomatic fridge for him, showing idioms like "top banana" and "bad apples."  I keep running across interesting things to share, like these from my wordsmith friend Colleen Redman on her blog Loose Leaf Notes on October 10, 2018:

• "Spot on or on the spot?"
• "Snopes (fact checking site) has the word nope right in it."

Aren't words fun?  Can you think of any fun (or funny) words or phrases to share?

Remembering Mom

Today is my mother's 101st birthday.  I took this picture of her in 1987, when we moved into my first parsonage after seminary.  The bishop wanted to know the people living in parsonages in Holston Conference, so I had her stand at the end of the driveway on Avalon Circle with that beautiful old oak tree over her shoulder.  It's my favorite photo of her, framed and given to me by my best friend Donna when mother died in 2004 at the age of 87.

Gyn/Ecology ~ by Mary Daly

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism ~ by Mary Daly, 1978, 1990, women's studies

Daly argues that men throughout history have sought to oppress women.  In this book she moves beyond her previous thoughts on the history of patriarchy to the focus on the actual practices that, in her view, perpetuate patriarchy, which she calls a religion.  Daly's "New Intergalactic Introduction" to this edition explores her process of writing Gyn/Ecology, "this Thunderbolt of Rage" that she hurled against the patriarchs in 1978 and again in the re-surging movement of radical feminism in the 1990s.

I read Daly's Beyond God the Father in the 1970s, but I don't think I ever got around to reading this book.  It looks intriguing, so I bought it for my Kindle today.  Read more about the author in this short piece:  Feminist Theologian Mary Daly Remembered.  (After posting, I finished reading the article and apologize for posting something about Mary Daly that concludes with the opinion of a MAN who disapproves of her and says she'll be "only a footnote."  Good grief!)