January thru April 2018: Where'd You Go Bernadette, Little Fires Everywhere, Moloka'i, and The Rock the Road and the Rabbi

Volume 1, Issue 2 - April 2018

BUTLER WOMEN

OF WISDOM

QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER

Greetings, Women of Wisdom!

Happy Mother’s Day!  Hope you all enjoyed a May day of showers with flowers or some other sweet indulgence.

As the year picked up its momentum, I quickly found myself way past my own quarterly deadline for this newsletter. Luckily, I have no editors hounding me for words only you my readers who have forgotten that the book club archivist still pens the minutes of our meetings.

Looking back, this newsletter includes summaries of the Butler Women of Wisdom’s discussions from books we have read from January 2018 to April 2018. The books include Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste NG, Molokai by Alan Brennert, and The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi by Kathie Lee Gifford.

Starting the year with Lori’s choice, our January’s read Where’d You Go Bernadette provided us with comic relief from the “blah” days of January. The story, a documentary novel, takes place in a Microsoft town in Seattle where Semple plants an eccentric family in the middle of an upscale neighborhood of Craftsman built homes. The mother, Bernadette, once an award winning architect, ironically does little to mask their own home’s dilapidation amid the classic designs. While thorny blackberry bushes grow up from the floor, the home is where Bernadette is the wife to her Microsoft celebrity husband, Elgin, and mother to her genius daughter, Bee. Among the letters, emails, and notes which construct the novel’s plot, it segways between various points of view, leading the reader to wonder whether Bernadette is indeed crazy. Her inability to perform even the most menial of tasks and giving up her personal ID to a veritable virtual stranger is a sure sign that Bernadette may have bats in her belfry. As her problems surmount due to the meddling of a conniving neighbor, the scamming virtual assistant from India, and her husband’s adulterous co-worker; Bernadette frees herself from a forced stay in a mental institution by fleeing with her daughter Bee on Bee’s planned family trip to the South Pole.

Semple incorporates so many fun one-liners as the chronicled events in Where’d You Go, Bernadette progress. It heats up with humor from the very beginning with sardonic lines like “Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They’re everywhere,” and  “You know what it’s like when you go to Ikea…, and even though you may not need a hundred tea lights, my God, they’re only ninety-nine cents for the whole bag!” We had a good time discussing Lori’s hilarious book pic and look forward to the movie coming out this year which will star Cate Blanchett as Bernadette!

A suburb of Cleveland is the setting of February’s read Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. Cheryl’s pick, this book contrasted two very different lifestyles. When the wealthy suburbanite Richardson family becomes interested in the unconventional lives of their tenants Mia and Pearl Warren, conservative lines are crossed. Through this story of high profile parents raising the perfect family in their perfect home on their perfect street, dark secrets are divulged and their superficial life begins crumbling. As always in the worlds of those who hold themselves above others, it is the little person who pays in the end. Mia, a starving artist, and her daughter Pearl are drawn into the drama of the Richardson’s heart and home only to be tossed out by Mrs. Richardson, a controlling white collar socialite.

The value of this book lies in the endearing mother and daughter relationship between Mia and Pearl. As Pearl is now grown up, Mia misses the occasional embraces of her daughter. “It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.” Mia understands the essence of parenting, “To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, … a vast eternal place...You could see it every time you looked at her. It made your head spin. It was a place you could take refuge… And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again. Ng’s writing becomes very intense in some passages as if she is trying to say what no other writer has ever articulated about motherhood. It is a theme that is just too transcendent, it is love in its highest form.

Making the list of the top ten best books I have ever read is not easy, but Moloka’i by Alan Brennert now holds that honor. First, the book is historical fiction, my favorite genre. Second, the setting includes a priest and a convent with nuns; and third, it relates a richly factual story of American oppression using a child’s innocence to support the message of social injustice. Brennert’s novel is an epic which spans a lifetime of drama of one character, a leper.

In Moloka’i, we meet the main character Rachel Kalama a happy and loving five year old living on the Hawaiian island of her birth, Honolulu. When she succumbs to leprosy two years later in 1893, she is torn from her parents by the American board of health, never to return. Young Rachel soon finds herself on the shores of Moloka’i, a remote island used for the banishment of leprosy victims. The direction of Rachel’s pathetic life seems bleak, but Brennert is able to shine light in the darkness of her internment. Taken in by a convent of nuns as a child, Rachel is protected from the paganism of the rest of the island. She grows into a young woman able to find love amid so much loss, “I’ve come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death . . . is the true measure of Divine within us. . . It is in our mortality that we are most Divine” (307). This passage expresses the timeless theme of Moloka’i, my fourth reason for placing this book on my list of top ten novels of all time. A deep undeniable message makes the time spent reading worthwhile.

April’s meeting to discuss my book pick, Kathy Lee Gifford’s The Rock, the Road and the Rabbi was so well attended! It was more of a book “party” at Natilie’s Pizzeria than a book club. Such a gathering it was, Vince Tavolerio himself, the locally re-known owner, graced our table for a short chat. Ten of our eleven members were in attendance. Even Jody was back from her travels to God knows where - and He knows because He is usually the one who sends her there. It was a good discussion about the enlightening explanations of scripture from the viewpoint of a Messianic Jew. Learning about the Jewish culture, we now understand is vital for truly understanding the Divination of Jesus Christ, His heritage, and the customs He observed.

I am now confounded by the symbolism which is everywhere in Biblical text. Every number, every food, every animal, every name holds so much meaning. How do we think we can truly know what the Bible is saying without understanding the language of Hebrew and the numerous other Biblical languages? We all decided, it would be beneficial if we could all be like Kathy Lee and just have our own Messianic Jew on hand for instruction. It’s never too late to learn. At the age of 82, Frank Gifford, Kathy Lee’s husband, finally learned. He found his stone, his sense of peace and purpose in this life. With or without an understanding of Hebrew, Kathy Lee’s book encourages us all to pick up our stones and just throw them on the road that Christ has prepared for us. On page 147, Kathy’s Rabbi Jason quotes Jeremiah 29:11, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Consequently, Kathy Lee’s exuberance throughout the contents of her book is contagious. In sharing with us an understanding of the Jesus of His time, it can only deepen our relationship with Him.

The meeting to discuss our next book The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen is soon approaching. This time we will meet at Ann Marie’s Restaurant in East Butler. The date is set for Wednesday, May 23, at 6 PM. Our second historical fiction novel of the year, The Tuscan Child reports those who have started reading it are loving it. The title, selected by Sharon, takes us to Tuscany during WWII and transports us thirty years into the future to an English countryside. With that description, I can’t wait for my own reading journey to start!

I’m looking forward to seeing all of you on the 23rd!

Sincerely,

Tammy

June thru November 2017 Book Clubs "The Book That Matters Most," "The Invisible Thread," "Kiss Carlo," "What Alice Forgot," "The Heart Mender: A Book of Second Chances," and "Below Stairs"

Volume 1, Issue 1 - January 2018

BUTLER WOMEN OF WISDOM

QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER

This newsletter is the first of my new quarterly issues. Through it, I hope to add a fresh perspective to our book club in order to elevate the energy we bring to our monthly meetings. My pep talk: Let’s start the new year off as winners! With fearless questions and incites in response to our reading, we can create change in our minds and hearts! We may be growing older, girls, but we are growing wiser! If we combine the forces of our sagacity, our reading reflections have the capability to be practically omnipotent in nature! Repeat after me, “I can, I will, read our books!”                    

The Spirits of the Last Six Months of Book Clubs Past

Bah, humbug, to me for not being vigilant in book club updates. “Books are my business, the common welfare of the book club is my business; reading, analyzing, quoting, and discussing books were all my business!” Well, at least that is what I proclaim, but I am mortal and liable to fall in my commitments, as a golden idol named Ike has stolen my heart of a more than three years, and his welfare shall always come first, let the truth be known.

To impart my wisdom on any of the last six months of book clubs past would be to embark on a difficult task. A simple summary of each, snippets of thoughts, and a quote here and there are all I can render.

June 2017 introduced us to Anne Hood’s The Book that Matters Most. This selection about a book club made the list  of my top favorites of the year. Although the tension I felt while reading about Ava and her lack of true motherly concern for her deeply troubled daughter Maggie set a negative tone. The drug addiction theme is frightening and it bothered me to visualize scenes of Maggie shooting up heroin and having no control of her own mind. The value of this book comes from the lessons learned. When I think of all those drug addicts who skulk the streets of Butler, I’m reminded of Hood’s quote, “Our lives are our own to ruin or not… No one can do it for us.”

July 2017’s book choice also made the list of my top favorites of the year, The Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff. This book was serendipitous. An autobiographical memoir, Schroff, a successful advertising executive, writes about a time in her life when she befriended an 11 year old African American street kid named Maurice. While I was reading this book, naturally I was astonished by the survivalist lifestyle of the young boy, but I became even more caught up with Schroff’s accounts of her own dysfunctional childhood. You see, her memories seemed to mirror many from my own youth. Again, like in The Book That Matters Most, I was forced to face images of a negative ilk. The timeliness of reading the book during my stay at the Kripalu yoga retreat center in Massachusetts coincided with an unexpected acquaintance I made with an African American man after a journaling workshop. His interest in my responses during the class prompted him to engage me in a conversation that developed into a full blown therapy session of sorts for him. Through our discourse, I began to understand the plight of Schroff’s Maurice from a new perspective. This man had, I learned, lived the same life as Maurice. He was pinching himself that he was even in a place as wonderful as Kripalu considering the poverty he once knew. He shared with me horror stories of living in New York’s most contemptible projects, a drug dealing brother, gangs and gun fights, an abusive father, and a mother who worked herself to the bone to hold her family together. Our encounter was fate. I showed him Schroff’s book and urged him to read it, it was his story. When coincidences such as this one occur in my life, I always search for reasons. Why did God have us meet? Maybe, as I was pondering too much on my own past, in reading about Schroff’s, He instead wanted me to focus my thoughts on the unbelievable determination of people to rise above the ponderous chains that hold us down. Shcroff writes, “In life, there are many different kinds of heroes, but sometimes you can be something more than a hero. You can be a survivor.”

Who doesn’t love the author of our August read, Adriana Trigiani? With five books under our belts by the novelist, we never grow tired of her hard working characters who struggle to survive between both historic and modern settings, Italian or American. Our August read, Kiss Carlo, is set in Philadelphia in an Italian neighborhood where Dominic Palizzini’s family flourishes in their two businesses. Family ties are broken as a feud ensues between Dominic and his brother Mike. Nicky, a nephew who drives a cab for his Uncle Mike, becomes disillusioned with his family’s expectations and a future with his fiance Peachy.  When  Trigiani presents him to the lights of the theater in NYC during the advent of television, she weaves a clever story with allusions to Shakespeare to jazz up the plot. This book did not find its way on  my list of this year’s favorites, but I do love Shakespeare and found the backdrops of several of my most cherished Shakespearean comedies a bonus. Most of all, the theme of the enduring strength of la famiglia makes it worth the read.

Not a book to forget, September’s book pick What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty is a winner. The main character Alice has the experience of waking up without the memory of the last ten years of her life. She is in disbelief when she discovers that she has three school age children and that her perfect marriage is about to end. No one and nothing is as she remembers, and she is not at all certain she likes any of it, especially a boyfriend who knows her in ways that make her blush. This book was an awakening for anyone who wishes to consider that our choices today can have an affect on our future. Alice realizes that she had become too absorbed in the things that didn’t matter and had ignored what was most important, family. Life is too short to waste it on bad choices, “Back in 1998, the days were so much more spacious. . . Days were so stingy now. Mean slivers of time. They flew by like speeding cars. Whoosh!” What Alice Forgot makes us think, what would we do differently if we could see the future?

The Heart Mender: A Book of Second Chances by Andy Andrews is the only book I haven’t read that is included in this newsletter. Not something I like to admit, but they say honesty is a virtue, and I really see no need to confess this transgression to Father Harry. All I can say about this book is that we all deserve second chances, the Ebenezer Scrooge kind of second chances. “Spirit, assure me that I may yet change these shadows, by an altered life. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me!”

I like a book that teaches me something. That book was our last novel of 2017, November’s selection, Below the Stairs by Margaret Powell. What did I learn? Specifically, about the hardships of an era and a way of life, a life of service to the rich. Powell tells first hand about life as a servant to the wealthy. In the book she humorously narrates memoirs of her jobs as a cook during a time when cooking was truly a chore. In fact, I would not have lasted a day preparing the meals these aristocrats expected to be served. Painstaking preparation and cleanup marked Margaret’s days which were hours long with few days off. Domestic duties such as spring cleaning were done nothing like we do them today. Margaret had no Hoovers, mechanical aids, modern detergents, nothing, to help with tasks which would take up to a month to complete, unlike today where many people can’t begin to understand the veritable meaning of the words spring cleaning. Luckily, Margaret loved learning and chose to rise from the dreariness of her situation. What I love about Powell is how she attributes her ability and success to academics, to her school days, “... the great thing about school in those days was that we had to learn… We were forced to learn and I think children need to be forced. I don’t believe in this business of ‘if they don’t want to do it, it won’t do them any good’. It will do them good. Our teacher used to come around and give us a mighty clump on the neck or box on the ears if she saw us wasting our time. Believe me, by the time we came out of school, we came out with something. We knew enough to get us through life.” Amen.

The Spirit of January Book Club Future

“No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused” - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Have no regrets, come to book club, and even make an attempt to read the book! We will meet at Natilie’s Pizzeria on Thursday, January 18, to discuss Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, Lori’s pick! “And it was always said of them, that they knew how to keep book club well, if anyone alive possessed the knowledge. May that truly be said of us, and of all of us!

God bless us, everyone!

Tammy

September 2010 Book Club "Flags of Our Fathers" by James Bradley

Easy Company takes the flag up Mt. Suribachi; they had been fighting for 4 days and had already suffered 40% casualties.


Hi Everyone,

Our September book club convened on Wednesday, September 28, at Ginnie’s house in Chicora. Members in attendance in addition to Ginnie were Cheryl, Jody, Lori, Sharon, and me. Our selection, Flags of Our Fathers; Heroes of Iwo Jima by James Bradley, provided a biographical account of the 6 flag raisers immortalized by their famous photo, raising the American flag on Iwo Jima. Clearly, a heartfelt work of love in memory of his father, Bradley’s book will affect every reader who peruses its pages. For the young, it will spark patriotism; for the middle-aged, it will remind them of their heritage; and for the old, it will take them home.

My son-in-law, a US Naval Officer, read Bradley’s book, and I am certain its contents have inspired in him an even stronger passion for the service he is now giving to our country. My mother read it and through its pages, she relived the years of her youth: watching 4 brothers leave for WWII and only 3 return, standing in the Pittsburgh train depot when Joseph Getz said his last goodbye, rationing everything from tin foil to sugar in an effort to provide for the overseas troops, and the gold star that hung in the window of their home. For me, a middle aged baby boomer, born 15 years following the end of WWII, Flags of Our Fathers has reminded me of a patriotism I learned mostly through tears and music. My step father, sitting along the street in a wheel chair, a James Bradley type, a quiet and peaceful man, would cry streams of tears when the soldiers marched past our house every year in the Memorial Day parade. Charlie, a US Air Force veteran, most likely, was remembering the scene of his plane crashing to the ground or anguished faces of his buddies dying on the fields of battle. Words were not necessary for me as a child to learn patriotism; affected by the flowing tears of a WWII veteran, I learned through empathy. Also, a large part of my music education in public school was patriotic hymns. I sang them robustly as we were taught to understand the message the lyrics represented, unwavering loyalty to our country.

I highly recommend that everyone take the time to read Flags of Our Fathers; I would especially recommend it for required reading in high schools. Those who read it, get ready to weep. Weep for the young, who do not yet understand patriotism; weep for the middle-aged, those who were raised without fathers as they died serving our country; and most of all, weep for the old and deceased, all of the great, war heroes of WWII who did nothing less than save our world.

“Celebrities seek fame. They take actions to get attention. But heroes are heroes because they have risked something to help others.”

For those who missed out on the September read, try to get a head start on our October pick, The Blue Notebook. Written by another James, James Levine, it deals with the shocking social issue of child sex slavery. Through the poignant journal of a 15 year old Indian teen, the young girl writes to cope with her daily life of forced sexual service to ten men. We may be mortified by some of the passages in this novel, but one aspect of book club is to open our eyes to the realities of other cultures and human situations. We will meet to discuss our views on this disturbing story on Monday, October 18, at 6:30 P.M. Join us at my house, 250 Old Plank Road, the site of the first book club held six years ago in October of 2004!

Yours in reading,

Tammy

P.S. Attached is the updated list of books for our six years as a club, and don’t forget you can also find the list at our blog address http://tsmithkcwwbc.blogspot.com/

January 2011 Book Club "Free Man of Color" by Barbara Hambley

Dear Women of Wisdom,

Yes, we are meeting at 6:30 PM. at Panera. The book we read for February was Good Things I Wish You by A. Manette Ansay. Forgive the delayed email, Makenzie, Vince, and Timmy are coming home this week and I have been trying to prepare for them as well as study for my Principal's test, work on my Yoga Teacher Training, and keep up with my lesson plans at school. Oh, and I forgot to add how many hours I wasted researching for a good price on airline tickets to Italy which by the way I never found a good deal. Anyway, I kept meaning to get around to writing, but it never happened. This month, I want to get everyone hooked into my phone for a group text message in case this happens again. I hope you can all make it.

Since, to no surprise, I never finished January's book Free Man of Color by Barbara Hambly, I appointed Becky group leader for the meeting. Others in attendance were Cheryl, Ginnie, Jody, Mary Beth, and, of course, me. We all had a difficult time staying with the book because of the historical setting’s Mardi Gras celebration where a countless array of characters were in disguise. However, Becky insists that if we continue to “wade” through the book the characters are unmasked and their true identities are revealed.

We will learn, Becky adds, that the costumes or disguises are symbolic of the main theme: “People are not who you think they are; everyone wears a mask.” This reminds me of Shakespeare’s quote from his play, As You like It: “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” Do you think maybe Hambly borrowed a little of Shakespeare’s timeless plot to write her book? If she did, she wouldn’t be the first.

One thing Becky and I both found interesting in Free Man of Color was the vocabulary. If you read only the forward of the book, you will learn a history of cultural terms used for the mixed races of people in New Orleans during the story’s time setting. For instance:

mulatto for a child with one white parent and one black parent

griffe or sambo for a child with one mulatto parent and one full black parent

quadroon for a child with one mulatto parent and one full white parent

octoroon for a child with one quadroon parent and one white parent

musterfino for a child with one octoroon parent and one full white parent

I think it’s odd that during the early 1830’s it was more offensive to call a black person “black” than “colored.” The terms people used then truly distinguished people by their class in society and the expectations in etiquette for each class. We discussed at book club how much of the prejudice between classes still exists in the south and many of us have seen it, especially Jody who lived in the south for a time. We also remembered our book The Help where we learned in despicable details about the 1960’s, when the distinction between races was still very evident.

To finish my response to A Free Man of Color, I’ll end with a quote Becky chose for us from the book: “But with all its faults – with my family and the Americans coming in and … and all else – New Orleans is my home.” We are all accepting of the faults of our family and roots of our home. “Not Africa, nor Paris, but here this place where he had grown up.” (Thoughtfully consider this quote, and be ready to discuss it tonight!)

Yours in Reading,

Tammy