Sunday Salon ~ nerds, words, and books

Am I the only one who know what an Oxford comma is?  If you know, please tell me in the comments.  Here's where I found Nerd Quirks.

WORDS

Calvin and Hobbes are among my favorite philosophers, along with Linus and his blanket.  It makes perfectly good sense that we toast with toast.  (Click the cartoon to enlarge it, if it's too small to read.)  Do you remember any words from your childhood that you didn't quite understand?

BOOKS

Mom and Me and Mom ~ by Maya Angelou, 2013, memoir

The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies.  But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life:  her relationship with her mother.  For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence — a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life.  When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas.  The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told.   In this memoir, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them.  Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, this book explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights.

This is my most recent library request.  I read and loved some of Maya Angelou’s books, so I'm really looking forward to this newest one.  Here are some of my favorites:

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ~ by Maya Angelou, 1969
• The Heart of a Woman ~ by Maya Angelou, 1981
• All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes ~ by Maya Angelou, 1986
• Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now ~ by Maya Angelou, 1993

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Caturday ~ thinking cat

Under my profile picture on the sidebar, I say, "I read to explore ideas."  So when I read, I must don my thinking cat.  Yep, in spite of what the cat below has to say about reading.

Beginning ~ with a Non Credo

Non Credo

"I do not believe in Modern Medicine.  I am a medical heretic.  My aim in this book is to persuade you to become a heretic, too. I haven't always been a medical heretic.  I once believed in Modern Medicine" (p. 11).

There are ten pages of this Non Credo in Confessions of a Medical Heretic by Robert S. Mendelsohn, 1979.  I especially like this short paragraph.

"Modern Medicine can't survive without our faith, because Modern Medicine is neither an art nor a science.  It's a religion" (p. 17).

The first chapter, entitled Dangerous Diagnosis, begins this way:

"I don't advise anyone who has no symptoms to go to the doctor for a physical examination.  For people with symptoms, it's not such a good idea, either.  The entire diagnostic procedure — from the moment you enter the office to the moment you leave clutching a prescription or a referral appointment — is a seldom useful ritual" (p. 21).

I hope you noticed the author's M.D. on the book's cover above.  He's a qualified medical doctor, not a quack.  I'm enjoying the book so far, if that's the right word.  Here's more about Dr. Mendelsohn.

From Amazon:  "Robert S. Mendelsohn (1926 – 1988) was an American pediatrician who criticized his profession, inveighing against pediatric practice, obstetric orthodoxy and the effect of the preponderance of male obstetricians, and vaccination.  He also opposed water fluoridation, coronary bypass surgery, licensing of nutritionists, and the routine use of X-rays.  For 12 years, Mendelsohn was an instructor at Northwestern University Medical College, and was associate professor of pediatrics and community health and preventive medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine for another 12 years.  From 1981 to 1982, Mendelsohn was president of the National Health Federation (NHF).  He also served as National Director of Project Head Start's Medical Consultation Service (a position he was later forced to resign after criticizing the public school system), and as Chairman of the Medical Licensing Committee of Illinois."

I have long speculated that a hundred years from now people will be as appalled by our medical procedures as we are about doctors using leeches to bleed people in the 1700s.

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

BTT (#33) ~ spring up

Deb @ Booking Through Thursday asks:

"What’s the last book that made you spring to your feet, eager to spread the word and tell everyone how much you enjoyed it?"

That book would be The Promise of Stardust by Priscille Sibley, a 2013 novel that I rated a 10.  I couldn't put it down and kept turning the pages.

Matt is a doctor, and his wife Elle is an astronaut.  When Elle is declared brain-dead after an accident, Matt is about to let her be removed from life support until doctors discover she is pregnant, making Matt's choice not so clear-cut.

In my review, I explained why I gave this book my highest rating, so click the link to read more about the book there.

Rule ~ "i before e"

I found this on "Grammarly" on Facebook and have no idea how true it is.  So let's think of all the words we can that are spelled with either "ie" or "ei" in them.  According to my source:

The number 923 comes from a BBC quiz show, "QI."  Numbers will vary, however, based on the dictionary used.

How many words can you think of?  Share "ei" and "ie" words in the comments, and I'll add them to our list here:

I before E

alien
alienate
ambient
ancient
audience
befriend
belief
brief
cashier
chief
conceited
conscientious
diesel
efficient
experience
field
fiend
friend
glaciers
grieve
piece
priest
relief
science
shield
society
sufficient
thief
wield
yield

E before I

beige
ceiling
conceited
conceive
deceit
deceive
deign
eight
either
feign
feisty
foreign
forfeit
freight
freighter
height
heir
heist
leisure
neighbor
neighborhood
neither
perceive
receipt
receive
reign
seizure
skein
sleigh
their
veil
vein
weigh
weight
weighty
weird

And now, of course, we have to figure out which ones follow the rule:  "I before E, except after C, or when sounded as ay, as in neighbor or weigh."

Carry on

"I will not carry a gun ... I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will NOT carry a gun!" — Dr. Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H

Cross-posted on my Joyful Noiseletter blog.

Holocaust Remembrance Day ~ April 8, 2013

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah).  I've just finished reading a novel about that time, set in the time when I was a baby.

The Storyteller ~ by Jodi Picoult, 2013, fiction (New Hampshire and Poland), 8/10

Sage Singer is a baker.  She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death.  When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship.  Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t, and they become companions.  Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret — one that nobody else in town would ever suspect — and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor.  If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well.  With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family.  When does a moral choice become a moral imperative?  And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?

This is a difficult book to read, partly because Jodi Picoult is such an excellent writer that I felt I was there.  Too much there.  I truly can't understand how someone can see a starving concentration camp prisoner reaching for a bit of bread lying in muddy water and stomp on the food with his boot, grinding it underfoot so the person can't have even a taste of it.  Not all Germans were like that, however.  This was my favorite quote from the book, after a farmer's wife took care of a de-humanized person from one of the camps.

"Sometimes all it takes to become human again is someone who can see you that way, no matter how you present on the surface" (p. 350).

We must never forget, especially since some people insist the Holocaust never happened.