February 2022 Books

 It is an 8-book month for me. I could probably push my way through another one, but nope. I will read at a normal speed, and call it good at 8 books, 5 fiction and 3 non-fiction.

1. Super Fake Love Song by David Yoon. His books sit right beside those by his wife, Nicola Yoon, on the library shelf, so I decided to give him a try. (He also did some drawings for a couple of her books.) This book was written during the pandemic, and he wanted to write something light and fun, and this mostly was. Sunny Dae and his friends Milo and Jamal create a fake rock band to impress the girl that Sunny likes. They base the band on the real band of Sunny's older brother, Gray Dae. (Gray Dae, Sunny Dae. Ahahaha.) Turns out Cirrus Soh, and oh, every girl, really, prefers the truth to falsehoods. So there is some learning taking place, though this is a fun read, but not completely fluff.

2. The Italian Quarter by Domenica De Rosa. If you remember from other lists of books I have read, Domenica De Rosa is the actual, true name of Elly Griffiths. I decided that I should try one of her books that are linked to her real name. It was slow going for me--started it in January--but since I had asked for it through ILL, I felt some obligation to finish it. It did hook me eventually. The Italian quarter was a part of London, actual name Clerkenwell, and the story is about the main character, Sophie's, grandfather and his growing up, reaction to WW2, and how that conflict affected this Italian family living in England.

3. Nothing but the truth: A memoir by Marie Henein. Marie Henein is an Egyptian-Canadian criminal defense lawyer. It is the story of her family, their move to Vancouver, then to Lebanon, then to Toronto, where they put down roots. While she mentions the law, and her passion for it--why we need it, how the law protects us when we don't even realize it is protecting us--this is really just her life story. As she explains, the stories of her clients are THEIR stories, not hers; so this book stays far away from telling the stories of high-profile cases she has defended. All she says about that is that every person deserves a defense attorney. Which--they do. I have to agree. 

4. The dark angel by Elly Griffiths. At the invitation of an archaeologist colleague in Italy, Ruth and her friend Shona take their children (Kate and Louis, respectively) for a two week holiday in Italy. Shona intends to relax and swim with the children, while Ruth will have some spare time, but she is there to look at and advise about bones, and film a segment for Italian TV about her colleague's current excavation. When there is an earthquake, they are fine; but Nelson, back in England is too worried, so he and Cathbad fly to Italy, too. While they are away, Michelle and Laura's lives are threatened by an ex-con out for revenge.

5. Love Lies & Hocus Pocus 4: Legends by Lydia Sherrer. Lily, Sebastian and Sir Kipling are off to England to try and stop Lily's father from finding and awakening Morgan LeFay. Because I have been to London and Oxford, I enjoyed the setting. Much of the action happens at Tintagel, though. I have not been there, but it is one of Josie's favorite places on earth, and I have seen lots of pictures. So I enjoyed the setting for this book, as well as enjoying the story.

6. Holy Cow! An Indian Adventure by Sarah MacDonald. Sarah arrives in India an atheist, but a brush with her own mortality puts her in a more spiritually receptive frame of mind. While her husband is off collecting news for the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) Sarah is learning about all the various religions that are practiced in India. She comes away from the experience a little bit Hindu, a little bit Buddhist, a little bit Jain, a little bit Sikh, a little bit Zoroastrian, a little bit Muslim, a little bit Catholic--plus more. She learns something about, and grows in appreciation for, all the religions she investigates, and leaves for home with a more open mind about religion and the role that it plays in the lives of many. 

7. The stone circle by Elly Griffiths. We are back at another archaeological dig on the salt marsh, where the first book about Dr. Ruth Galloway was set. More bodies of young girls--one is bronze age, but the other is probably 30-40 years buried. The police are set to look at cold cases and discover who this is, and solve the case once and for all. Add a baby kidnapping and the birth of Nelson and Michelle's baby son George, and there is never a dull moment. Nelson finally tells his daughters the truth about Kate, and after some justifiable anger and emotional upset, the older girls want to get acquainted with their sister.

8. Irreversible damage: The transgender craze seducing our daughters by Abigail Schrier. When Abigail Schrier first did a short piece on this topic for the Wall Street Journal, she didn't know that she would end up writing this well-researched book (with about 24 pages of notes) or that the topic would grab her the way it did. Right now, we are supposed to be oh-so-careful about the feelings of trans people, but Schrier's research leads her to believe that what is happening right now, particularly with teenage girls, is a craze. The numbers are statistically improbable, and she follows where that improbability leads her. It happens that I agree with her findings. I do not think that it is appropriate to give children puberty blockers, or hormones. Children are not fully grown, as in DNA fully flowered and cerebral cortex finished developing, until they are 25 years of age. Puberty blockers affect the WHOLE person, not just sex characteristics. Like brain, heart, major organs. Hormones affect more than just sex characteristics. Like central nervous system, emotions. And surgery! Surgery is, as the book calls it, irreversible damage. Before you damage your body irreversibly, you need to be sure, and a couple of years of teenage angst is not sure. Reading about that reminded me of a daughter going a bit off the deep end as a teenager, and her calling her dad one night in the wee hours of the morning. "I am so confused!" she said. "Of course you are confused," said her dad, "you are a 14 year old girl." And yet, the "rules" of treatment for gender dysphoria right now are--if the kid says it, do it. Don't treat their confusion--turn them into a boy. So you end up with girls, when they come to themselves eventually, who have been all chopped up. One doctor who is very in favor of this kind of surgery (and who probably makes a great deal of money, so she has bias!) said, well they can just get it reversed again. But a renowned plastic surgeon says --no! I can't give you back breasts! I can only give you back lumps that LOOK like breasts. I had already run into some detransitioners before I read this book. You can find some here. I feel like this is a super important subject and that it would be really good for parents to have read this book as a forewarned is forearmed project. Because the girls who are caught up in the craze are not your typical gender dysphoria sufferers. It is more a trendy thing to do. Kind of disturbing, but important topic. This is a good interview with three detransitioners.

Family Fun

 We had a visit from Eric and Jocelyn and their three kids today! Lucky for my brother, Josie reminded me to call him. I thought that he would be in Orangeville for the holiday weekend, but he was in town, so he and Sara came, too. Sara has never met Jocelyn before--or the kids. So that was fun.

We found some of our toys that nobody plays with and they got some play time in! Payton tried to work on Bruce's puzzle--IDK if it is better or worse now! Josie even called Patrick and let him and Eric chat for a minute.  Fun to spend about an hour together!

Vacuum Cleaner Saga

 I grew up with an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, which I loved. (As much as you can love a vacuum cleaner.) But when I got married and we needed a vacuum cleaner, I learned that the Electrolux, at least the one that I was used to, was a bit pricey for our budget. Fortunately, someone gave us a Kenmore as a wedding gift, and I found that I could learn to love a Kenmore, too.

Fast forward many years, and when our old vacuum cleaner needed to be replaced when we lived in the North Orem house, I bought another Kenmore--orange. When we moved to the condo, I decided to get a new upstairs vacuum (also a Kenmore--gold) and the old orange one became the downstairs vacuum.

So, in our new house as well, we had the two vacuum cleaners, one for each floor. Or one for all the floors on each floor! :o) 

But one day, when I was vacuuming upstairs, I turned off the vacuum cleaner, unplugged it from one plug, and plugged it into another plug, but it would not turn back on. Of course I tried all sorts of things trying to figure out if it was the plug or the vacuum, and determined it was the vacuum.

So--get it fixed or buy a new one? Well, it seemed faster and probably no more expensive than to find a place to repair the old one and get it fixed and pick it up, and certainly less hassle.

So I bought a new one, a replica of the old new one. Only--it was just different enough that things from the old one didn't fit on the new one.

Still, I kept the old one, because I knew the floor attachment part worked great, even though the vacuum cleaner itself would no longer turn on. (I wished the switch had broken with it on--then I could have just plugged it in and it would run. But no.)

The new new one was blue. And I liked it at first. But--first the wheel of the floor attachment started coming off. Like, two or three times each time I used it. And then the plug-in part of the hose got all separate-y. And then one day, when I attached the floor attachment, it would not turn on! I figured that it might have something to do with the separate-y part thingy, because wires were involved there...

So I tried the gold floor attachment to see if it would work with the blue vacuum and it wouldn't. So I vacummed all the floors on my hands and knees!

(Why didn't I go downstairs and get the old orange vacuum cleaner, which still works perfectly? you ask. Because of the cat prison, that's why. The old orange vacuum cleaner was imprisoned with Cleo in the back, and I didn't want to go there.)

Vacuuming all the floors on my hands and knees made me want a new vacuum cleaner. Like seriously!! The third one since the orange one was new?!! Fortunately, they are not expensive. 

So I found one for a good price, at Walmart, only they said it was not in store, so I would have to order it online. So I did. Even though it was purple.

They said it would come on Tuesday, but on Monday I got notice that my package had been delivered! Only, it hadn't. It didn't come on Tuesday either, so I wrote my little complaint, and a very nice lady got back to me and asked me to wait to complain until Thursday, because it might still show up.

This morning I got a text from a neighbor who lives on 800 East. My vacuum got delivered to her neighbor's house!

What happened was this: her neighbor is away for months while some renovations are being done to his house. There are piles of things, boxes and stuff, all around his doorway and sidewalk. But she saw a delivery truck come and take a box to his door. And so she thought she should text him and tell him. He was mystified because he is not there, and had not asked for anything to be delivered there because he is not there. So she asked if he wanted her to go and check it out. He said yes.

So she went over and texted him to say it was a Kenmore vacuum cleaner. He said he had not ordered that, and asked her to look at the packing slip or whatever paperwork there was. And there was my name! (and address, honestly) He didn't know me, but she did--so she texted me, and today after work I picked it up and put in my trunk.

At home, I looked at my closet full of two vacuum cleaners, and I thought, which one should I throw away? I wished I could throw away the one that didn't turn on, only keep its floor attachment. And throw away the blue floor attachment whose wheels always come off. But I already tried using the blue vacuum with the gold floor attachment, and they did not join together properly. Then I had the thought--take the entire HOSE off the gold vacuum, attach that to the blue vacuum (which also gets rid of the faulty separate-y thing problem the blue hose has)--and hey presto!! I now had a perfectly good blue vacuum with a perfectly good gold floor attachment that works like a charm.

So I didn't even need to buy the purple vacuum!!!! 

Only I didn't think of it until I had already opened and assembled the purple one. 

So, I threw away all the faulty parts, kept all the good parts, and now have two working vacuums in my closet. One blue and gold, one purple.

And downstairs, the old orange vacuum, still dependable, can be used for the floors down there!

Library Quest

For a couple of years before the pandemic, our library instruction unit sponsored a library event, which they called “Secrets of the BYU Library.” They had escape rooms and other such things, and we would sponsor live music here on the 4^th floor. I blogged about the event held in 2018. I think I missed the event in 2019 because I was in Poland at the time, but it happened, too. This event is intended to bring people into the library, move them to various floors so they see what is there (so they will hopefully return there), and just generally let them meet library staff who are working the event so that the library seems like a friendly, welcoming place where they will feel comfortable. Because we are a very big, kind of overwhelming library! So making the library a friendly place to be is the major goal of the event. It was held in the fall—end of September, beginning of October—and targeted freshmen.

But then came the pandemic, so we could do nothing in 2020 or 2021, but when approval came to proceed with it in 2022, they decided to do it Winter semester, and it was calendared in for Feb. 3. (And then—the omicron variant arrived, and the library was packed last night, so there is that.)

This year, the instruction unit came up with the idea of a Renaissance Fair.

This is me, at home, ready to go:

They asked departments in the library to come up with “guilds” that students could join. I met with our full-time staff members, Mary and Kellie, and three of our student leads and we brainstormed, and decided we could sponsor two guilds, one on level four and one on level five.

On level 5, we decided on a guild called “Quill & Quire.” The three tasks students would need to complete to join that guild were:

1. To learn to / practice to write in calligraphy.

2. To make a quire (paper or parchment folded to form eight leaves, as in medieval manuscripts). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg4IlcowJ0c

3. To write a short poem, using calligraphy, in their quire.

We also had to come up with a guild oath. The one for Quill & Quire was: I solemnly swear to bear my heart to the Quill and the Quire. Or in Latin, Iuro sollemnitus aperio animum pencillo et volumini. (Our student Candice is the Latin-literate creator of the oaths.)

On level 4, we decided to call the guild “Troubadours,” with the three tasks being:

1.   1. To sing (using a karaoke playlist on youtube that a student, Dorie, created) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfCmWxxyzM4If5Caw38-60ZZFVo_yk-1P

2.    2. To dance (a short Renaissance jig) as instructed by Ethan, and then Beth.   

3.    3. To read a monolog from the bard himself, short excerpts selected by Candice, from MacBeth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Hamlet.

The guild oath we came up with was: We sing, we dance, we play. Only in Latin: Cantamus, Saltamus, Alludimur.

(You will notice that we had some trouble with using the British spelling or the American spelling for troubadour/troubador! We were inconsistent but it mattereth not—both variations are correct!)

 A week before the event, we got this update, which gives an idea of what was planned for the event:

• We’ll be getting you your guild supplies early next week. This will include your pins, gold, bandannas, and sign. The bandannas are for library employees to wear that are part of the event. You can wear them around your neck or over your hair. It just needs to be visible so that participants know who to go to for guild instructions, swearing in, and getting guild pins and gold. Please let me know how many of your employees will be running your guild that night so I know how many bandannas you will need.  Also please keep track of how many pins you give out that night. We are gathering data on how many participants we have that night. Your guild sign will include your guild name, your guild pin design, and a brief description of your guild. Your guild tasks will be included on guild posts on our Instagram.
• While participants are working on joining your guilds, they can also participate in quests. We will have varying levels of quests (easy, medium, and hard). All quests will begin at the trading post. Some quests may involve your guilds. For example, one quest may require a participant to go to five different guilds and learn a fact about each of them. It will require minimal involvement from your areas, if any at all (most quests function outside the guilds). When a participant completes a quest, they get a sticker on their quest card and get some gold (at the trading post).
• With earned gold, participants can come to the trading post (located on the third floor) and “buy” various goods (candy and other items with a Medieval or magical twist).
• Other events: we will be having on-going games of Settlers of Catan, a fencing demonstration by the Medieval Club, foam sword fighting demonstration by the Knights of the Y, a presentation on fencing masters using scenes from The Princess Bride for examples, a display of Medieval crafts, and a photobooth. We hope that all of these events will create interest and draw people into our event.

 We had to have guild pins, as noted above. Our student Candice designed the pins. Here they are:

The library gave participants maps, so they could move around the library and find the various guilds.

You can see, they mixed up our two guilds on the map, positioning troubadours on 5, and Quill & Quire on 4. So, we had to correct participants about that--send them to the right floor.

There was another guild on 4, in the Makerspace. I noticed this morning that they had altered their entrance for the event:

That was cool! We didn’t do anything like that, but some of us dressed up. Here are Kellie and I:

Here are the instructions for participants, which was printed on the back  of the map:

Each guild had a sign to alert participants that they had come to the right place. Here is the one for the Troubadours on level 4, which was prominently placed on an easel.

We were busy most of the time from 6-9 pm. The students were so good at being on top of everything, that I just stayed in my office out of the way unless I was needed. It got the busiest between 8 and 9, and honestly, in my opinion, the event should have run until 10, because some people were just arriving around 9, and they didn’t have enough time to do all of the events that were possible. We had a group that had done 2 out of 3 tasks at 9. I was in favor of letting them finish, but I don’t know what the outcome was; I let the students decide whether they would stay an extra five minutes or not to allow that group to complete the tasks to join the guild.

Here are some pictures and videos from our guild on level 4:

Ethan teaching our first participants the jig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUkwLeNi_YQ that Kellie found on Youtube. (We didn’t show the video. Our kids (first Ethan, then Beth) learned the dance, and used the video as the music when they were ready to put the dance to music. (They just played it on their phones.))

And an action shot of Ethan--he did such a good job of teaching! Not unexpected--he is the regular teacher of a ballroom class for BYU. (Also, if you click on that earlier link to the 2018 event, notice that Ethan participated that year, too!)

Here is a larger group learning the dance:

Lillian was very good at drawing out the inner thespian in participants as they either did a dramatic reading of a monolog, or did their own monolog. I am pretty sure this guy was doing a monolog from The Music Man. Which he did rather well! (It was not Renaissance-themed, but very dramatic!)

Here she is with another guy. She supported him through his performance  of both the monolog and the karaoke. This guy had a helmet too, but he mostly carried it. Probably hot under there!

A few pictures (borrowed from Instagram) from upstairs at the Quill & Quire. First of one of our students, Andrea, and then one of random participants.

And some short videos follow. First, dancers:

  

Now, singers: