Bits of Bonnie ~ Sunday Salon

"Great conversation starter," it says in the fine print above.  So let's start a conversation about book titles.  "If there was a book about you, what would the title be?"  I like the question because I already have an answer.  The title for a book about me would be Bits of Bonnie.  As a matter of fact, here's what I've already written about such a book:

"I keep a journal, sort of, in the sense that I collect my thoughts and memories in notebooks like this one.  If I ever write a memoir, I'll call it Bits of Bonnie."

Sprinkle before ironing

Do you know what this empty Coke bottle was used for back in the olden days?  I remember!  It was filled with water to sprinkle on clothes before ironing them.  There's been a discussion on Facebook about clothes sprinkled with water, then rolled up and put into the fridge before ironing them.  One woman on FB asked why anyone would dampen clothes and put them in the fridge.  The last time I looked, there were 6,885 replies to her question!  Yikes!  No, I didn't even try to read them all.

I'm so old that I know the answer, as did several others who may be close to my age.  (I'll be 82 in April.)  When I was young, we didn't have a steam iron and there was no such thing as polyester or permanent press.  Our cotton clothing came out of the washer very, very wrinkled, needing to be ironed.  Damp cotton clothes — especially cold, damp clothes — smoothed out nicely once we ironed them.  Someone on FB remembered a "sprinkler thingy," so I shared this photo.  It made sense back then, and it worked.

Wish You Were Here ~ by Jodi Picoult, 2021, fiction (New York and Galápagos), 325 pages

Diana O’Toole is perfectly on track.  She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world.  She’s an associate specialist at Sotheby’s now, but her boss has hinted at a promotion if she can close a deal with a high-profile client.  She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galápagos — days before her thirtieth birthday.  Right on time.

But then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and on the eve of their departure, Finn breaks the news:  It’s all hands on deck at the hospital.  He has to stay behind.  You should still go, he assures her, since it would be a shame for all of their nonrefundable trip to go to waste.  And so, reluctantly, she goes.

Almost immediately, Diana’s dream vacation goes awry.  Her luggage is lost, the Wi-Fi is nearly nonexistent, and the hotel they’d booked is shut down due to the pandemic.  In fact, the whole island is now under quarantine, and she is stranded until the borders reopen.  Completely isolated, she must venture beyond her comfort zone.  Slowly, she carves out a connection with a local family when a teenager with a secret opens up to Diana, despite her father’s suspicion of outsiders.

In the Galápagos Islands, where Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was formed, Diana finds herself examining her relationships, her choices, and herself — and wondering if when she goes home, she too will have evolved into someone completely different.

Library Loot ~ I've been waiting for this new book from Jodi Picoult, and finally it was my turn on the waiting list at my library.  I got it on Thursday.  Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire of The Captive Reader and Sharlene of Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

Today's PUN-ishment

You've heard of Murphy's Law, but do you know what Cole's Law is?  Oh, come on!  Surely you remember.  It's made of chopped cabbage.

Deb at Readerbuzz hosts Sunday Salon,

a place for us to link up and share what

we have read and done during this week.

Beautiful Blogger Award

Joy @ Joy's Book Blog nominated random bloggers for the Beautiful Blogger Award by saying, "If you’re in the mood for sharing seven random facts, consider yourself nominated!  I’d love to know more about you."  Thank you, Joy, I accept!

Here are the rules for the Beautiful Blogger Award

1.  Link to the blogger who has nominated you.  (Done, see above.)
2.  List seven random facts about you.
3.  Nominate seven creative, beautiful bloggers, and let them know about the nomination.

Seven random facts about me

1.  I drive a Subaru named Emma Sue, whose last name is Baru.  (Yeah, say the whole name now, and you'll get it.)  Emma comes from her dark green, emerald-related color.

2.  Can you tell that I love playing with words?  For weeks, I've been savoring bits of Richard Lederer's A Man of My Words: Reflections on the English Language (2003) and have fewer than 20 pages left to ponder.

3.  I have a cat who's a drama queen.  I didn't know Joy, who nominated me because I'm willing to do this, is allergic to cats.  Thanks for sharing that "random" fact, Joy, so I won't have our Compassionate Sundays meetings in my apartment but elsewhere in the Crown Center.

4.  My home is in the Crown Center for senior living, where we have lots of activities, like exercising, and resources, like the library where I volunteer by reshelving the books.

5.  I've been blogging about books since January of 2007.  The first book I wrote about was The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003), which I rated 8 of 10, "a very good book."

6.  I keep a journal, sort of, in the sense that I collect my thoughts and memories in notebooks like this one.  If I ever write a memoir, I'll call it Bits of Bonnie.

7.  I play a cedar flute, sort of.  I have memorized one song ("Whippoorwill" by R. Carlos Nakai), so that's what I shared with my Religions of the World classes when I got to the chapter on Native American spirituality.  It's a haunting tune, and the librarian at the Lee Highway branch of Chattanooga State would tell me each semester that she'd heard me playing it.

If this video quits working, hear "Whippoorwill" by R. Carlos Nakai at YouTube.  I know only the slow part that Nakai plays at the beginning (0:55 to 2:05) of this video, which is all that's on page 63 of The Art of the Native American Flute by R. Carlos Nakai, 1996.  When he speeds up (2:58 to 3:38), he uses the same notes, but faster.  The version I play is on "Changes," his first recording of Native American flute music.  The cover says he composed "Whippoorwill" after hearing the bird's song in the woods of upstate New York.  I love this piece!  Can you tell?

My seven nominations

1.  Nancy @ Bookfoolery
2.  Wendy @ Caribousmom
3.  Helen @ Helen's Book Blog
4.  Colleen @ Loose Leaf Notes
5.  Alyce @ At Home With Books
6.  Ginnie @ Goldendaze-Ginnie
7.  Maphead @ Maphead's Book Blog
    (No, silly, his folks didn't name him that!  It's his nickname.)

Journals ~ Maisie's, Michelle's, and Bonnie's

Bits of Bonnie ~ by Bonnie Setliffe Jacobs, 2020 portion

As I start this year's journaling, using the two books below, I have decisions to make.  Shall I write in those actual books?  Or shall I use quotes like those below to jump-start "journal" posts on my blog?  Or shall I continue to use Microsoft Word and print it out bit by bit as I've always done, punching holes in each page to put in a notebook that goes on the shelf?  Working on it here allows me to edit, add to, correct, and polish what I write.  Once I apply pen to paper that's bound into a book, it's there forever — unless I rip out the page.  Leave a comment, and tell me what you think.

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What Would Maisie Do?: Inspiration from the Pages of Maisie Dobbs ~ by Jacqueline Winspear, 2019, illustrated journal

"There is no need to fill the page with your response at once, nor is there a requirement to work through the journaling part of What Would Maisie Do? in a linear fashion" (p. 8).

"I wanted her to embody the qualities of endurance, resiliance, empathy, kindness, and perspective" (p. 9).

"Stay with the question.  The more it troubles you, the more it has to teach you.  In time, Maisie, you will find that the larger questions in life share such behavior.  ~ Maisie Dobbs" (p. 10).

"Coincidence is a messenger sent by truth. ~ Maisie Dobbs" (p. 48)

"Maurice had taught her that silencing the mind was a greater task than stilling the body. ~ Maisie Dobbs" (p. 66).

"With an enthusiastic flourish, yards of vibrant purples, yellows, pinks, and reds of Indian silk were pulled out, to be rubbed between finger and thumb, and held against her face in front of the mirror. . . . Thus a day that had seen so many tears ended in the midst of a rainbow. ~ Maisie Dobbs" (p. 84).

Maisie's journal is based on the author's series of books about Maisie Dobbs, psychologist and investigator.  So far, I've read the first book (see a couple of quotes below) and picked up the second in the series from the Crown Center library.  Donna bought the whole series and has donated the ones she has already completed.
==============================================================
Maisie Dobbs (2003, Book 1)

"The library was silent and pitch black as Maisie entered.  Quickly closing the door behind her, she lit the lamps and made her way to the section that held philosophy books.  This was where she would start.  She wasn't quite sure which text to start with, but felt that if she just started somewhere, a plan would develop as she went along" (p. 87).

"And what will you study, Maisie?"
"I am interested in the moral sciences, sir.  When you told me about the different subjects — psychology, ethics, philosophy, logic — that's what I most wanted to study.  I've already done lots of assignments in those subjects, and I like the work.  It's not so — well — definite, is it?  Sometimes it's like a maze, with no answers, only more questions" (p. 124).

==============================================================
Birds of a Feather (2004, Book 2)
Pardonable Lies (2005, Book 3)
Messenger of Truth (2006, Book 4)
An Incomplete Revenge (2008, Book 5)
Among the Mad (2009, Book 6)
The Mapping of Love and Death (2010, Book 7)
A Lesson in Secrets (2011, Book 8)
Elegy for Eddie (2012, Book 9)
Leaving Everything Most Loved (2013, Book 10)
A Dangerous Place (2015, Book 11)
Journey to Munich (2017, Book 12)
In This Grave Hour (2018, Book 13)
To Die But Once (2018, Book 14)
The American Agent (2019, Book 15)
==============================================================

Becoming: A Guided Journal for Discovering Your Voice ~ by Michelle Obama, 2019, journal (unpaged)

"Describe your childhood home.  What are some of the details that stand out the most?  What made your home different from your friends' homes?"

"If you could have a conversation with a loved one who has passed away, what would you ask him or her?"

Where did your name come from and how has it influenced the person you've become?"

"What role has education — whether formal or informal — played in your life?"

==============================================================

Becoming ~ by Michelle Obama, 2018, memoir

"My father, Fraser, taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word.  My mother, Marian, showed me how to think for myself and to use my voice.  Together, in our cramped apartment on the South Side of Chicago, they helped me see the value in our story, in my story, in the larger story of our country" (pp. x-xi).

"Your story is what you have, what you will always have.  It is something to own" (p. xi).

"I was about four when I decided I wanted to learn piano" (p. 8).

"Encyclopedia Britannica ... Any time we had a question about a word, or a concept, or some piece of history, they directed us toward those books.  Dandy, too, was an influence, meticulously correcting our grammar or admonishing us to enunciate our words when we went over for dinner.  The idea was we were to transcend, to get ourselves further.  They'd planned for it.  They encouraged it.  We were expected not just to be smart but to own our smartness — to inhabit it with pride — and this filtered down to how we spoke" (p. 40).

"My mother ... lobbying for the creation of a special multigrade classroom that catered to higher-performing students. ... Dr. Lavizzo ... had studied a new trend in grouping students by ability rather than by age — in essence, putting the brighter kids together so they could learn at a faster pace" (p. 44).

"I liked most of my teachers.  I wasn't afraid to raise my hand in class.  At Whitney Young, it was safe to be smart.  The assumption was that everyone was working toward college, which meant that you never hid your intelligence for fear of someone saying you talked like a white girl" (p. 58).

"I tried not to feel intimidated when classroom conversation was dominated by male students, which it often was.  Hearing them, I realized that they weren't at all smarter than the rest of us.  They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of sureriority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different" (p. 78).

"At this point, I thought of myself basically as tri-lingual.  I knew the relaxed patois of the South Side and the high-minded diction of the Ivy League, and now on top of that I spoke Lawyer, too" (p. 94).

"Anytime a stranger commented that she looked exactly like Michelle Obama's mother, she'd just give a polite shrug and say, 'Yeah, I get that a lot,' before carrying on with her business.  As she always had, my mother did things her own way" (p. 296).

"We were the forty-fourth First Family and only the eleventh family to spend two full terms in the White House.  We were, and would always be, the first black one" (p. 412).

"Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there's more growing to be done" (p. 419).

"There's power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice.   And there's grace in being willing to know and hear others.  This, for me, is how we become" (p. 421).

Two thoughts for TWOsday

I have a tiny booklet for grades 4-8 (dated 2001) that has "journal topics."  Page 199 says, "Write the title and back cover description for the autobiography you hope to write some day."

I have already blogged that if I ever write a memoir, I'll call it Bits of Bonnie.  Click HERE to read more about it.  As for what to say on the back cover, I'll have to give that some thought.  But I can give you "one bit" as an enticement:  I have always enjoyed words:  playing with words, learning new words, writing blog posts about words and ideas, writing poetry (my first national publication was a short poem about a baby playing with her feet up in the air).  Maybe I should pull out my thick "Bits of Bonnie" notebook (shown above) and read stories that I have collected over the years.

Come Pour the Wine ~ by Cynthia Freeman, 1980, Jewish fiction, 517 pages

Cynthia Freeman portrays an insightful and moving story of Janet Stevens, a teenager from Kansas who comes to New York in search of fame and fortune.  The pursuit of her dream leads her into marriage, motherhood, a heart-rending separation, and then divorce.  At the age of forty five, she meets a man who not only gives her a renewed sense of her Jewish heritage, but also offers her the chance for total fulfillment as a woman.

A reviewer on Amazon gave this book five stars and wrote:  "Girl with Jewish background marries a man she falls for like a ton of bricks.  They go through life with a silent problem hovering over their life until one day it's out in the open.  How she and Bill go forward with life is the whole story."

I found this book in our little Crown Center library and brought it home last night to read.

.

When, exactly, did you become an adult?

I was looking for something else on my blog when I came across an old post from January 20, 2012.  It made me laugh, so I'm sharing it again.  Hmm, I just noticed that Beth Kephart, the author, was the first to comment that day:

"Wow. what a story you have lived, Bonnie.  It seems to me there is the stuff of a book here!"

Throwback Thursday

Beth Kephart asked in her post today, "When, exactly, did you become an adult?"  Funny she should ask, I thought, as I dashed out the door before even reading beyond her title, which appears on the sidebar here, under "Blogs I read."  I had places to go and people to see, but now I'm home and have looked up what I wrote in 2006 about becoming an adult.  At the time, I was sixty-six years old, having been born in 1940.  (That's important to know when I mention 1960, okay?)  After reading this, you won't be surprised to hear that I still occasionally wonder what I want to be when I grow up.

Bits of Bonnie

When I started thinking about "becoming an adult," it seemed to me the first thing to consider was what makes a person an adult.  Once there were initiations to pass, as when a boy joined the men on a hunt and killed his first "food."   Once, a girl was considered an adult when she began to menstruate and could have children.  I had my first period when I was twelve; did that make me an adult?  I don't think so!

I married at eighteen; did that make me an adult? Apparently not. When we bought a house in early 1960, I was nineteen and my husband was twenty-five.  He could sign the papers, but I could not ... because I was a minor.  At that time the legal age was twenty-one, but that has fluctuated in my lifetime.  Anyway, I had to go before a judge to get my "minority" removed.  Then I could sign legal papers and be co-owner of our first house.

Did owning a house make me an adult?  Apparently not.  I couldn't vote in the 1960 election between Nixon and Kennedy ... or at least I assumed I couldn't vote ... because I was only twenty.  A few years ago it occurred to me that maybe I could have voted after all, since officially my minority had been removed earlier that same year and I was "legally" an adult.  But I didn't think of that until about 45 years too late.

When I was twenty, my twins were born; did that make me an adult?  When people asked me how I managed, I would tell them, "I didn't know what to do with ONE, and I got TWO."

My father died in a traffic accident when I was twenty-four, and my widowed mother was in shock; so my 21-year-old brother and I had to arrange the funeral.  Did that make me an adult?

Somehow, things keep happening and we keep going, doing whatever is necessary to cope.  Maybe I became an adult at the point I was able to put the pieces together sufficiently to be able to say with confidence that I now knew my own mind and could give a satisfactory answer to the meaning of my life.  If so (I wrote in late 2006), I became an adult only four or five years ago in my early sixties!  And THAT, dear heart, is why my email is "emerging.paradigm" ... because I am emerging into my new way of being.

Am I an adult now?  Maybe it depends on the day.  Some days I feel like I'm in my second childhood.

Okay, it's your turn to ask yourself, "When did YOU become an adult?"

Art, synchronicity, books, and calendar

In one of my old blogs (where I posted only three times, all dated 2008) I apparently had taken one of those silly "tests" that tells you all about yourself:  "What Famous Work of Art Are You?"  The answer I got was "Under the Wave Off Kanagawa" by Katsushika Hokusai.  They say this masterpiece is the one that "best describes" me.  I don't click on stuff like that anymore, but I do like this piece of art.  What I posted on the blog also says:

• You are very open.  You communicate well, and you connect with other people easily.

Well, I certainly hope so.  I did, after all, spend years teaching communication skills.  Then there's this in the very same post:

• You tend to travel often, to fairly random locations. You're most comfortable when you're far away from home.

Not me at all.  Most people would say I'm a homebody.  I travel via Google, looking at my friend's house in the Netherlands, for instance.  Nope, I'm done with silly "tests."

Word of the Day #1

home·bod·y /ˈhōmˌbädē / noun = Informal (North American) = a person who likes to stay at home.  Example:  "Since she's gotten older, Bonnie is definitely even more of a homebody."

One thing that IS very much me is my interest in synchronicity. (click this link to see what I've written about "synchronicity").  While putting together this post, with the "Wave Off Kanagawa" already up there at the top, I came across this fascinating illustration on a NYTimes page about books.  Look closely, and you can see those waves in the background.  What's that kind of synchronicity mean?  Nothing?  Anything?  That I've picked the right subject for today's post, maybe?  Anyway, it's fun to see it pop up in something totally unrelated while I am actually posting about it.  Now back to the books I've been reading and looking up online.

Word of the Day #2

syn·chro·nic·i·ty /ˌsiNGkrəˈnisədē / noun = the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related, but have no discernible causal connection.  Example:  "It's synchronicity when I run across an illustration with waves from a famous piece of art just as I'm writing about that artwork."

Quotes

Happy Now: Let Playfulness Lift Your Load and Renew Your Spirit ~ by Courtney Ellis, 2021, psychology, 213 pages:

"The paradox of play is this:  we engage in whimsy not because life is easy, but because life is difficult" (p. 9).

"...the more advanced the species, the more it plays" (p. 11).

"Playfulness is essential to human flourishing" (p. 12).

"Play is anything that brings us joy and connection" (p. 13).

"...sometimes acting how we want to feel can help us get there..." (p. 46).

"Our world is filled with useless activities that can fill us with absolute delight.  And many of them are so very simple.  Take a breath, take a pause, take a taste.  Smell the herbs.  Look into the eyes of the friend.  Snuggle the baby.  Watch the snow fall.  Each of these things serves no grand purpose.  But each one changes us, incrementally transforming overly serious minds into open ones and stubborn hearts into joy-filled ones" (p. 115).

Write for Your Life ~ by Anna Quindlen, 2022, writing, 240 pages:

Quindlen writes about a blind woman with a guide dog and how she manages to get around in their shared NYC neighborhood, when it's hard enough for those of us who can see what's coming at us.  There was a taped-off area with the tape high enough for the dog to easily go under it, and the dog did go under it.  But the woman hit the tape and stopped.  Quindlen explained to the woman about the mistake the dog had made and offered her arm, which the woman took as they went onto the street around the taped area.  For Quindlen, it was "nothing but an interior anecdote, passing eventually, as these things do, into memory.  But written down, it lives.  It's there, it's real.  That's the important thing.  That's why we write things down, to give them life" (pp. 169-172).

"Writing can make memory concrete, and memory is such a hard thing to hold on to, like a Jell-O mold, all wiggly but with solid bits embedded clearly" (p. 184).

Folks may have missed my usual calendar at the first of the month because I posted twice on Friday:

1. The July calendar from Action for Happiness, scheduled to post itself at 12:01 a.m.  It has a month's worth of suggested daily actions for more happiness in our lives.
2. The Book Beginnings that I post most Fridays, this week from one of my favorite authors:  Anna Quindlen.  (See quotes from her book above.)

And that means the second post may have caused you to miss what I posted a few hours earlier.  This month, it's Jump Back Up July, if you'd like to see it.  Here's a Nelson Mandela quote from the Action for Happiness people, who provide the calendar:

Bloggers gather in the Sunday Salon — at separate computers in different time

zones — to share what we have been doing during the week.  

Other Sunday Salon musings are linked at the bottom of Deb's Readerbuzz post.

P.S.  As I looked over this post after setting it to post itself, I noticed how much blue and yellow is in the illustrations.  Seeing the colors reminded me of the Ukrainian flag, so I came back to say that I am still praying for the people of Ukraine.

When, exactly, did you become an adult?

Beth Kephart asked in her post today, "When, exactly, did you become an adult?"  Funny she should ask, I thought, as I dashed out the door before even reading beyond her title, which appears on the sidebar here, under "Blogs I read."  I had places to go and people to see, but now I'm home and have looked up what I wrote in 2006 about becoming an adult.  At the time, I was sixty-six years old, having been born in 1940.  (That's important to know when I mention 1960, okay?)  After reading this, you won't be surprised to hear that I still occasionally wonder what I want to be when I grow up.

Bits of Bonnie

When I started thinking about "becoming an adult," it seemed to me the first thing to consider was what makes a person an adult. Once there were initiations to pass, as when a boy joined the men on a hunt and killed his first "food." Once, a girl was considered an adult when she began to menstruate and could have children. I had my first period when I was twelve; did that make me an adult? I don't think so!

I married at eighteen; did that make me an adult? Apparently not. When we bought a house in early 1960, I was nineteen and my husband was twenty-five. He could sign the papers, but I could not ... because I was a minor. At that time the legal age was twenty-one, but that has fluctuated in my lifetime. Anyway, I had to go before a judge to get my "minority" removed. Then I could sign legal papers and be co-owner of our first house.

Did owning a house make me an adult? Apparently not. I couldn't vote in the 1960 election between Nixon and Kennedy ... or at least I assumed I couldn't vote ... because I was only twenty. A few years ago it occurred to me that maybe I could have voted after all, since officially my minority had been removed earlier that same year and I was "legally" an adult. But I didn't think of that until about 45 years too late.

When I was twenty, my twins were born; did that make me an adult? When people asked me how I managed, I would tell them, "I didn't know what to do with ONE, and I got TWO."

My father died in a traffic accident when I was twenty-four, and my widowed mother was in shock; so my 21-year-old brother and I had to arrange the funeral. Did that make me an adult?

Somehow, things keep happening and we keep going, doing whatever is necessary to cope. Maybe I became an adult at the point I was able to put the pieces together sufficiently to be able to say with confidence that I now knew my own mind and could give a satisfactory answer to the meaning of my life. If so (I wrote in late 2006), I became an adult only four or five years ago in my early sixties! And THAT, dear heart, is why my email is "emerging.paradigm" ... because I am emerging into my new way of being.

Am I an adult now? Maybe it depends on the day. Some days I feel like I'm in my second childhood.

Your turn

How would you answer the question?  When, exactly, did you become an adult?

Caturday ~ my first kitty cat

Clawdia was so happy when it warmed up enough Thursday to open the windows to the sunny day.  She jumped up into her favorite window to bathe herself.  And that, dear readers, is my perfect segue into what I want to share today.

Word of the Day

se·gue / ˈseˌɡwā,ˈsāˌɡwā / Used as a verb = (in music and film) move without interruption from one piece of music or scene to another.  Example:  "It segued into another subject."  Used as a noun = an uninterrupted transition from one piece of music or film scene to another.  (Or in this case, from one subject to a similar one in my blog post.)

Among the things I brought back from my storage unit in Chattanooga last year was my Baby Book, the one my mother had so carefully kept about me, her first child.  This is what she wrote (see photo at top) about my first pets (plural, as she kept adding to the list):

• Her first pet is a kitty cat named "Tiger."  She got him July 1942.
• She had a dog named "Scrappy" but he either ran away or someone took him when Bitsy was two and a half.
• She got a white Bunny for easter when her birthday was the day after easter and she was three years old.  We didn't have a proper place to keep it so her daddy took it back to it mother on Mother's day.  We kept it about three weeks.  Bitsy called it "Bunny."

So I had a kitty cat when I was two, a dog when I was two-and-a-half, and a bunny when I was three.  And I guess you figured out that my nickname was Bitsy, huh?  And that is why, when a high school English teacher had us write our autobiographies in high school, I chose the title Bits of Bonnie.  And I still love animals, like little Miss Clawdia.