What I Read Last Month & a Hurricane Helene Update

I did more reading in September than this blog post will reflect, but there was only one book I read from cover-to-cover: White Robes and Broken Badges, by Joe Moore.

White Robes and Broken Badges, by Joe Moore

This nonfiction book will stay in my mind forever. The author infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) not once but twice. He infiltrated it both times to a level never done before, gaining access to the top echelon in the organization.

I’ve never known many details about the workings of the KKK. Never needed to. Never wanted to. However, considering where society in America stands today, it seemed like a good time to get better educated about the threat the KKK holds.

This book sheds light on just how insidious the work of the KKK is and how many its members are employed as law enforcement officers in our country. It is widespread and probably even more of a problem than the FBI knows.

It was through the undercover work of “Joe Moore” that the FBI was alerted that the problem is greater than had been realized. Joe was not an FBI agent. He was recruited by them because of his skill set.

After infiltrating the organization the first time, Joe never imagined he would be called on to do it a second time. But he was so good at it, the FBI needed him. Joe and his wife and children sacrificed a lot for what he did. Ultimately, they lost their home, most of their earthly possessions, their family connections, and friends in a matter of several hours.

The book is chilling. I know of no better word to describe the effect it had on me. Chilling. The details should make every law-abiding citizen in the country – no matter your color, race, ethnicity, or nationality – shiver.

After reading this book, I now have a better understanding of why black people in the United States do not trust law enforcement officers. How can they, when they don’t know in a traffic stop whether they are being pulled over by an honest police officer or sheriff’s deputy or if they’re being pulled over by a member of the KKK who just doesn’t happen to be hiding under a white hood?

It has always seemed a great sign of cowardice that when members of the KKK do their dirty work, they hide in their white robes. If you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing, though, I suppose you don’t want to reveal your identity.

These are misguided people, and as a Christian I am offended that they use the cross as their symbol. Jesus Christ died on a cross for me (and for them!), so how dare they desecrate that symbol of Christ’s great sacrifice!

I highly recommend this book. It is not a pleasant read, but how do we improve as a society if we bury our heads in the sand and don’t open ourselves up to what is going on not only in the shadows but also in broad daylight?

I learned about this book while listening to National Public Radio (NPR) in August (https://www.npr.org/2024/08/12/g-s1-16223/white-robes-and-broken-badges-exposes-the-inner-workings-of-the-ku-klux-klan)

Update on Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina

I wish I could include photographs, but I don’t want to run the risk of sharing an image that is undocumented or not in the public domain. You can use some of the links below if you wish to see pictures.

Another reason I am not including photos is that I know from my own experience after Hurricane Hugo in 1989 that pictures don’t do a disaster justice. Unless you are in the middle of a natural disaster and destruction is all you can see, hear, smell, or touch in any direction, you can’t grasp the enormity of the situation.

I know that Hurricane Helene left a wide path of destruction in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia; however, I have lived in North Carolina all my life – four of my 71 years in the mountains. The mountains are near and dear to my heart. I will blog about North Carolina and leave it to people in those other states to blog about the conditions in their states.

A couple of my blog readers said they hoped I would continue to shine a light on the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene in the mountains of North Carolina on September 26.

I do not live in the disaster zone. I’m about 100 miles east of the mountains. We just had a lot of rain, some wind, and a lot of tree branches to pick up and deal with. That is ongoing, but that and our 13-hour power outage pale in comparison to what happened in our beautiful Appalachian Mountains.

Ten days after the storm, many areas of the mountains are still inaccessible. Damage assessments are still being made. Recovery will be measured in years, not months. Some locations were wiped off the map and will not be restored because the landscape has been changed completely and forever.

The United States Geological Survey has identified 244 landslides caused in the Southeast by Hurricane Helene. Most of those are in North Carolina. More landslides will, no doubt, occur in the coming weeks with additional rainfall and freezing conditions.

As of the data I found last night, the death toll in North Carolina so far was 115, with 72 of those being in Buncombe County. There are still people unaccounted for. Many communities still have no water or sewer service. Cell phone service was spotty before the storm and restoration has been slow.

Hundreds and hundreds of power poles and thousands of miles of overhead power lines are down. Thousands of people are homeless. You might grow weary of hearing about it, but many of the people of western North Carolina are in dire straits.

As always, though, the worst of nature brings out the best in most people. The outpouring of support has been amazing. Electrical workers have come from all over the country and from Canada. Four hundred nurses have arrived in Asheville from as far away as Alaska to pitch in and help local medical personnel who have worked around the clock since September 26 even though most of them have catastrophic damage at their own homes.

Pack mules are being utilized to haul water, non-perishable food, and other necessities into the steep and rugged terrain where vehicles cannot gain access.

Two interstate highways are closed. I-40 near the Tennessee state line will probably be closed for a year. Repairs to I-26 might allow it to reopen next March. Roads and bridges washed away, houses, cars, and businesses floated away, and overnight all the necessities most of us take for granted every day vanished.

The area of devastation in western North Carolina alone covers more than 600 square miles, and it is not flat land! Every mile of those 600 square miles is not devastated. The severity of destruction various from place to place as rain totals were, of course, higher in some places than in others. Also, some areas of the mountains received more rain than others in the days leading up to the arrival of Hurricane Helene. Elevations range from around 1,500 feet to more than 6,000 feet. The destruction is unprecedented. Since 1916, all floods in western and piedmont North Carolina have been measured against The Flood of 1916. Future floods will be measured against The Flood of 2024 because by all statistics it surpassed the one in 1916.

Classes at my alma mater, Appalachian State University in Boone, have been cancelled until at least October 16. (That’s three weeks of fall semester lost.) Students at Lees-McRea College in nearby Banner Elk were evacuated by air to Hickory. Classes have been cancelled at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee the University of North Carolina at Asheville, Montreat College, Warren-Wilson College, Mars Hill University, and numerous community colleges. Blue Ridge Community College in Flat Rock, NC is closed indefinitely. Some county school systems are unable to announce when they will reopen.

The beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway that I’ve waxed poetic about so many times is closed indefinitely. US-441/Newfound Gap Road through Great Smoky Mountains National Park has reopened; however, it was not designed to handle commercial traffic, so it is not an alternate to I-40 or I-26 for large trucks. Sadly, a few people decided that did not apply to them, so they attempted to drive on Newfound Gap Road. Two serious accidents resulted – one caused by a car hauler. The highway will be closed to all traffic from 10pm until 7:30 a.m. until further notice. (https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/news/update-on-us441-newfound-gap-road-overnight-closure.htm)

The images coming out of the mountains are gut-wrenching. The needs are great and will continue to be for a long, long time. I hesitate to start naming charities because there are hundreds of reputable ones that are on-site and providing remarkable goods and services. World Central Kitchen (https://wck.org/), the Cajun Navy from Louisiana, Mountain Mule Packer Ranch (https://www.mountainmulepackers.com/), the Red Cross, and Samaritan’s Purse are just a few.

The Manna Food Bank (https://www.mannafoodbank.org/) which serves the Asheville and surrounding areas lost their facility and its contents. Brother Wolf Animal Rescue (https://www.bwar.org/) was flooded out but the 150 animals they were housing on September 26 were rescued by volunteers. Organizations like food banks and animal rescues need to be rebuilt and aren’t necessarily eligible for government assistance. (I saw on the Brother Wolf Animal Rescue website last night that donations to that organization are currently being matched!)

The Appalachian State University Disaster Fund (https://www.appstate.edu/disaster-relief/) is another organization for you to consider. It has stepped up to assist students, staff, and faculty members who have lost their homes. The fund also provides much-needed counselling for those traumatized by the storm.

Atrium Medical Center in Charlotte has set up its mobile hospital in Tryon in Polk County. Many towns and counties across the state have sent teams of medical personnel and swift water rescue teams to assist with the aftermath of the storm. The National Guard and 1,000 active-duty personnel from Fort Liberty (formerly, Fort Bragg) were deployed and have been on the ground since weather allowed access. Numerous restaurants are giving out free meals as they are able to prepare food.

Having just visited Boone and West Jefferson on September 12-13 and having visited Hendersonville, Asheville, Bryson City, and Cherokee this summer, it is difficult to grasp the scope of the damage. I drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway from Asheville to its southern end at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in June. I drove from Hickory through Old Fort, Black Mountain, Asheville, and Canton and into Tennessee on I-40 the last week in August.

I always breathe a sigh of relief when I make it through that treacherous stretch of I-40 approaching Tennessee because rock slides are not unusual. To know that part of that interstate literally washed away 10 days ago is hard to get my head around, though.

Know that any support you can give to the people of western North Carolina is appreciated.

Since my last blog post

I was told (again) in a webinar last week that the purpose of a blog is to solve someone else’s problem. Until I figure out how to do that, I’ll just keep blogging like I have for the last 10+ years. As of last week, I have 1,200 subscribers to my blog, so maybe I’m doing all right. If you came to my blog today seeking a solution to a problem, you are probably disappointed.

On the other hand, if you were looking for a way to lend a little aid to people trying to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Helene, I hope one of the organizations I mentioned today struck a nerve with you.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read, a roof over your head, enough food to eat, and clean water to drink.

If all you are hearing is that FEMA and all levels of government are failing to respond to those affected by Hurricane Helene, then you are listening to the wrong sources. More than a week of lies about this from the immediate-past-twice-impeached-34-times-indicted-president is wearing thin here in North Carolina. Please fact check your sources and get your news from a variety of reputable news media.

Hold your friends and family close, for we never know what tomorrow will bring.

Don’t forget the people of Ukraine or the people of western North Carolina.

Janet

Books I Read in August 2024

After not finding anything that grabbed my attention enough to finish reading it in July, it was refreshing to get back into reading in August. My interests are varied, as you will see by the four books I read last month.

Simple Pleasures: Haiku from The Place Just Right, by Elizabeth Gauffreau

This is a wonderful collection of 53 haiku! If you aren’t familiar with the haiku form of poetry, this book by Elizabeth Gauffreau would be the perfect introduction for you.

Elizabeth writes in the haiku form of five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line. Haiku is defined by syllables and a precise choosing of words, but that is not the essence of the art form.

As I understand it, — and I’m no authority — the essence of haiku is the creation of a compact choice of words that convey a feast for the senses. As a writer, I am always taken aback when I read haiku. I marvel at how eloquently and concisely a complete idea or image is written by the poet.

In Simple Pleasures: Haiku from The Place Just Right, Elizabaeth Gauffreau pairs each poem with a photograph from New England, so the book gives the bonus of specific places and images important to the poet. The reader can see what types of places in nature inspire Elizabeth in her writing.

This is a book I will read over and over. It is the perfect book to sit down with when you need a few minutes to relax or calm down after a trying experience. You can read the book in one sitting, or you can read it one poem at a time. Either way, you will savor the gift that it is.

The Girls We Sent Away, by Meagan Church

Switching gears from the calming effects of haiku, The Girls We Sent Away, by Meagan Church, does not deal with a pleasant topic. It is about how in mid-20^th-century America, unwed girls who became pregnant were often “sent away” to homes for unwed mothers.

The stigma attached to such events in the 1950s and 1960s was something that middle-class Americans could not deal with. Such girls were hidden away at home or, in many cases including the protagonist in this novel, quietly sent away to facilities just for such situations.

In this novel, Lorraine Delford aspired to be an astronaut in the early days of space exploration. She had the intelligence to do it. She was on track to be the valedictorian of her high school class when all that was shattered.

Lorraine finds herself in the predicament of getting pregnant, being abandoned by the boyfriend, and devastatingly abandoned by her parents. She goes from being the apple of her parents’ eye to being a source of great shame and embarrassment.

Lorraine is hidden away at home until arrangements can be made for her to move into a facility for unwed mothers. All life choices are now made by her parents and the authorities in charge of the dormitory-type home.

She is given little information about what will happen there, and even less information about what her life will be like. She has no say in what happens to her baby. She knows from what happens to other girls that as soon as she has her baby she will disappear without having the chance to say goodbye to her friends.

This book takes Lorraine through the whole process and into her return home to her parents. It is then that she discovers a deep, dark secret her parents have kept from her for her entire life. That secret changes everything.

Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, by Whoopi Goldberg

Photo of front cover of Whoopie Goldberg's memoir, Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me — *Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me*, by
Whoopie Goldberg

As a rule, I don’t follow the lives of celebrities. I don’t care about the ins and outs of their lives, unless it is to learn about their philanthropic endeavors. It’s nice to see someone with wealth using it to help less fortunate people or using it to save the planet and its wildlife.

Whoopie Goldberg is an interesting person. She and I are close in age. I have enjoyed her acting and I agree with a lot of her political views. I checked out her memoir, Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, to learn more about her background. Although contemporaries in age, I knew that she and I had very different childhoods.

In this book, Whoopie pulls no punches. She lays out many of the details of her life with frankness that many others would shy away from. She and her brother were very close. She knew he always had her back – as children and as adults.

Their mother was an extraordinary person, to say the least. Raising two children on her own was no easy task in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, but she worked hard and made sure her children took advantage of every available opportunity for educational and cultural experiences.

Whoopie’s mother and brother have died, so Whoopie is left with a gigantic hole in her heart. They were the two people on Earth who knew her as well as she knew herself. This book conveys to the reader to never limit yourself or those around you. It also conveys to never take for granted the loved ones in your life, for they can be gone in an instant.

Hebrides, by Peter May

This is a fantastic picture book about the Hebrides off the northwestern coast of mainland Scotland. I have visited several islands in the Outer Hebrides and Inner Hebrides, and the gorgeous photographs and detailed descriptions in this book transported me right back there!

Readers might be familiar with the mystery novels written by Peter May. This is the same Peter May. He now lives in the Outer Hebrides, and this book leaves no doubt about his love for the islands.

The Hebrides are sparsely-populated with scatterings of communities among the massive peat bogs from which residents get most of the fuel for heating their homes and for cooking. Here and there along the rugged coast are pristine beaches. The waters of the Atlantic and The Minch are as clear as tap water. You will usually have a beach area all to yourself.

The area is so far north that in the middle of summer there are almost no hours of darkness, which makes for a tourist’s paradise. It’s not easy to get there. You don’t accidentally find yourself on the Isle of Lewis! But the effort is worth it if you seek a quiet place where the people are kind, soft-spoken in their Scottish lilt and their native Gaelic tongue, and the pace is somewhat slow. There are no crowded highways and no chain fast-food restaurants.

It is a spectacular corner of the world, and I will be forever blessed by having spent some time there. If you are planning a trip there or know that you will never get there, I recommend Hebrides, by Peter May to whet your appetite or to make you feel as if you have visited the islands.

P.S. Be sure and pack a heavy jacket, even if you’re going in July or August!

Until my next blog post

Be sure to visit my website: janetmorrisonbooks.com and subscribe to my e-Newsletter. The September issue will be coming out this week. I don’t want you to miss reading about my “field trip” last week to Swannanoa Gap in the mountains of North Carolina where I learned about the construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad in the 1870s.

I hope you have a good book to read.

Hold your family and friends close.

Remember the people of Ukraine.

Janet

We get by with a little help from our fellow bloggers!

Simple Pleasures Blog Tour: Day #1

Liz Gauffreau is a blogger friend of mine. This week she launched her new book, Simple Pleasures: Haiku from the Place Just Right. It is a collection of 53 of her original haiku. Each one is paired with a photograph from her love of nature and the world’s beauty.

If you aren’t familiar with haiku, please give this concise form of poetry a try.

You will find Liz’s book to be calming, refreshing, and thought-provoking. It will transport you to another place where you can sit quietly, take a deep breath, and relax.

This is the first time I’ve ever tried to reblog another blogger’s post, so Liz and Joy, I hope this works!

Janet

A Different Kind of “First-Blog-Post-of-the-Month” Blog Post

If you read my blog last week (A Lost Art) or my July e-newsletter, you know I have been decluttering this summer. I have reached an age at which I have realized that I’m not going to live forever and I really don’t want to leave my heirs a massive mess to deal with when I’m gone or incapacitated. Hence… it is time to declutter and part with many of the things, assorted memorabilia, pieces of paper, nice magazines, photographs, and even some of the books I never should have kept in the first place.

It’s time to let someone else get joy from some of my things by taking them to the thrift shop or donating them for a yard sale an organization is holding. It’s time for the recycling center to turn some of them into recycled paper. It is time for the landfill (my least favorite choice) to accept the rest.

In my first blog post of the month, I almost always write about the books I read the previous month. That is not what today’s post is about.

I started reading three or four books in July, but none of them grabbed my interest enough for me to drop everything else and finish reading them. Do you ever have times like that? When nothing feels quite right? When even favorite authors’ newest releases just fall flat?

The entire month of July was like that for me and August has begun in the same way.

Decluttering is exhausting for everyone. Looking at every item and every piece of paper and deciding whether to keep it or let it go is tedious and time consuming. I once again live in the house my parents built when I was seven years old. It is easy for things to accumulate in 64 years!

But that’s not the whole story. In fact, it is just a by-product of the root of the problem.

Some of the challenges of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

Due to Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, I always have trouble remembering the details of what I just read… and sometimes it is worse than others. I am in one of those worse times now. When it hits, it is unsettling at best and devastating at its worst.

Every time I have experienced this in the 37 years I’ve dealt with this illness, it feels like I will never feel any better than I do at the moment. Perhaps this is the time that I stay stuck forever in the brain fog and debilitating fatigue in which I struggle to put one foot in front of the other. That is the state in which I find myself as I put the finishing touches on this blog post.

As described by the Mayo Clinic, the symptoms of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis vary from one person to another and from one time to another for each individual. Physical and mental activity worsen the person’s fatigue, and rest does not lessen the symptoms.

After 37 years, I no long remember what refreshing sleep feels like. I have very active dreams and my body can’t seem to distinguish between dreamt activity and actual activity. Therefore, I always wake up more exhausted than when I went to sleep. I have to ease into my day and mornings are not good for me.

That makes no sense to someone who has not experienced it, but it is the best way I know to describe my life. As with any other person dealing with a chronic illness, I have to push through each day and do the best I can. This is my life, and I choose to make the best of it.

Part of my brain tells me that I will not stay in this slump forever, so I will hang onto that thought. I have to.

I chose to use the more accurate name for this little-understood syndrome in today’s post rather than my usual use of the American term for it, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). That name is degrading to the people who deal with the illness as patients or as medical professionals. It belittles the illness and the patients. It brings on comments like, “I’m tired, too.” Comments like that only serve to make the patient feel less valued as a human being. The CFS moniker for such an all-consuming illness is tantamount to the early name of Multiple Sclerosis: Malingerers Disease.

What did I try to read in July?

One book that I just didn’t have the mental energy for was Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism, by retired US Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer. It is a very detailed book about a deep subject. The political scientist in me wanted to read it, but I was too tired to give it the time and concentration it needed. Mr. Breyer is very good at explaining laws and concepts in understandable language.

A political thriller I enjoyed but didn’t have time to finish before it had to be returned to the public library was Phantom Orbit, by David Ignatius. I have enjoyed all of Ignatius’ novels. I’m on the waitlist to check it out again.

Until my next blog post

If you tuned in today eager to see what I read last month, I apologize. If I can snap out of this mental fog, I will blog about the books I read in August in my blog post the first Monday in September 2.

Until then, I hope you have a good book to read.

My planned topic for next week’s blog post is the anniversary of the United States’ annexation of Hawaii as a territory in 1898. Time will tell if I am able to do the necessary research on that subject over the next seven days. If not, I hope to return to the blogosphere in the near future.

And please remember the people of Ukraine.

Janet

Books read in June 2024

The first Monday of July is here, so my blog today is about some of the books I read in June. It’s hard to realize 2024 is half over.

Being Henry: The Fonz… and Beyond, by Henry Winkler

I began June by listening to Being Henry: The Fonz… and Beyond. It was enlightening and enjoyable, partly because it was read by the author, Henry Winkler. I hadn’t known anything about Henry Winkler’s childhood or how much out of his comfort zone his portrayal of Fonzie was on the TV sitcom “Happy Days.”

In the book you learn how Henry Winkler went to great lengths to try to keep his character from overshadowing Ron Howard. The show had been created to feature Ron Howard, but the public became enamored with “The Fonz.”

The book takes you on Henry Winkler’s journey as an actor and shines a light on how he met his wife of nearly 50 years. He tells of his struggles to break into acting and how he landed the part of Fonzie on “Happy Days.” He is painfully honest about the support he did not receive from his parents.

Henry Winkler describes himself as a shy and private person, which tells us what a good actor he was in his portrayal of Fonzie!

A Calamity of Souls, by David Baldacci

I will start out by saying that I highly recommend this book. Stop reading right now and get on the waitlist for it at your local public library.

This is a book that Baldacci worked on for a decade. It was a story he was compelled to write. It is a novel about race relations in the United States in 1968. It is not set in the Deep South. That would have been too easy. Instead, Baldacci did the difficult thing. He set this novel in his home state of Virginia.

A well-known formerly affluent white couple are murdered in their home. When a black man who works for them is found by sheriff deputies in the house with their bodies, it appears to be an open and shut case.

Not so fast! There are twists and turns and family secrets in this story. The tension builds and builds until the killer’s identity is revealed.

This is a novel you won’t want to put down once you start reading it. If I didn’t have several hundred books on my To-Be-Read List, I would probably read it again just to study the clues and red herrings.

The Berlin Airlift: The Cold War Mission to Save a City, by John Tusa and Ann Tusa

This was one of the books I skimmed through as I did research about the Berlin Airlift so I could blog about its 76^th anniversary last Monday. The book goes into detail about the airlift, in case you want to know more than I was able to condense into 1,000 words for my purposes. In case you missed last Monday’s blog, here’s the link:#OnThisDay: Berlin Airlift, 1948.

Stop Buying Bins & Other Blunt but Practical Advice from a Home Organizer, by Bonnie Borromeo Tomlinson

As I age and am very much in fear of leaving a bunch of clutter for my heirs to have to deal with some day, I discovered this book. It struck a nerve with me and prompted me to pull out every article of clothing I own. Some garments went in the trash – where they should have gone long ago. I’m talking about 30-year-old tee shirts that had holes in them. Not a good look for me even when doing yardwork! Nearly half the garments were donated to a thrift shop. I have lost about 16 pounds in the last year, so many of the things did not fit and I don’t want to grow back into them!

A major point in the book is that you must know why you are decluttering or downsizing, and you must have the right mindset. For several reasons, the time was right for me to do some major downsizing.

The book drives home the point that you don’t have to keep everything just because you kept it in the first place. It says you don’t have to keep things passed down to you just because they remind you of that person. Keep the memory, but don’t necessarily keep the item unless it brings you joy.

The book says if you don’t value something enough to display it, then get rid of it. Someone else might enjoy having it.

A local library had a craft swap last week. It was time for me to get rid of most of my cross-stitch supplies and books. I can’t see well enough now to do much small needlework.

Now that I have my clothes and craft items under better control than they have been in years, I’m ready to tackle my “stuff” in general, one room at a time.

There is a chapter about helping an aging parent downsize. There’s a chapter about parting with those adorable pictures your children colored. There’s a chapter about how to go about clearing out a house after a death, even if you live a long way from the house you’re having to clean out.

The book was well worth the $3.99 I spent for the Kindle version.

Until my next blog post

I wish my fellow-Americans a safe and happy Independence Day on Thursday!

I hope you are reading a good book.

Don’t forget the people of Ukraine.

Janet

May 2024 – Not my usual month of reading!

I read bits and pieces of various books in May, but there were only two that I read from cover-to-cover or deserved a mention on my blog today. I went on a nice vacation and ended up not reading any of the books I took with me.

Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential, by Tiago Forte

*Building a Second Brain*, by Tiago Forte

I was intrigued by this book’s title after reading a reference to it in passing in a blog post. I was able to borrow it from the public library immediately.

If you’re like me, you feel like your brain is constantly overloaded. As a 71-year-old person trying to learn something new every day, honing my writing skills by reading what the “experts” recommend, and taking notes from the variety of history and other nonfiction books I read… whew! It just seems like too much for my brain to absorb and remember.

Building a Second Brain, by Tiago Forte gave me much to consider and some techniques to try. The “Second Brain” he is talking about is a digital way to record and store the things you wish you could remember. The method the author lays out that works for him is a tad more involved than I want to pursue at this stage of my life and my level of tech savvy, but I did pick up some helpful lessons and things I want to implement.

The book also talks about various apps, some of which I’ve looked for and others I haven’t gotten around to yet. Did you know there are apps that will automatically capture the things you highlight in an ebook? Learning that is probably my best takeaway from the book!

I was intrigued by the idea presented in the book about being able to capture all the lines I’ve highlighted in my Kindle books; however, as I pursued that it seemed no matter which route I took it was going to cost me. I looked into Readwise.io and Evernote.com. Readwise.io Lite is $5.59 per month. I’m not sure my limited budget wants to add that new expense. I need more information before I make that decision. Anytime a website says, “Get started for free,” I proceed with caution.

It was deeply instilled in me in high school to be ever-cautious to never ever, ever plagiarize. My high school term papers were probably nothing more than a string of quotes from my research sources because I was afraid to distill the information into any semblance of a summary. And heaven forbid I take my source material and have an independent thought!

As a writer now, I appreciate the laws and rules against plagiarism; however, the fear ingrained in me as a teenager has almost paralyzed me as an adult. When I take notes from a history or other nonfiction book, I tend to take meticulous notes because (1) due to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome I have memory problems and (2) if I ever want to quote from a book or even summarize it, I don’t want to plagiarize.

This book prompted me to start condensing the notes I’ve take from books about the craft and mechanics of writing and still have access to the original verbatim original notes I took. That was time well-spent.

One last point… As usual, I’m probably the last person on Earth to learn this: Did you know you can sign into your Amazon account and then go to read.amazon.com and see all the things you have highlighted in each of your Kindle books?

Outer Banks Mysteries & Seaside Stories, by Charles Harry Whedbee

*Outer Banks Mysteries & Seaside Stories*, by Charles Harry Whedlbee

This little book contains 15 stories from the Outer Banks and other coastal counties of North Carolina.

Here’s a sampling:

“The Dram Tree” is about a cypress tree that was in the harbor of Edenton, NC for hundreds of years. Every ship that came in would stop and a bottle of rum would be left at the tree. Every ship would pause by the tree as it left the harbor. A bottle of rum would be retrieved, and the crew would share a drink to fortify themselves for their voyage.

“The Gray Man of Hatteras” is about the apparition of an old man that has appeared to Coast Guardsmen and others. It is said he appears when a hurricane is approaching.

I enjoyed this book so much that I ordered a used copy of it and used copies of Mr. Whedbee’s other books.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

Enjoy the simple pleasures in life.

Remember the people of Ukraine.

Janet

What Are You Passionate About?

I am working my way through How to Write The Short Story, by Jack M. Bickham. As the title indicates, it is a book I expect to enhance my short story writing skills. However, the first 14 pages surprised me by offering self-inventory guidelines that I think anyone – not just writers – can benefit from practicing.

Mr. Bickham was the author of 75 novels and a host of books about the craft of writing.

It would not be fair to the current owner of Mr. Bickham’s copyright to the book for me to list all 10 steps in his guidelines for self-evaluation, but I’ll try to hit enough high spots to pique your interest even if you aren’t a writer.

Since I thought I could read this 200-page book in several days, imagine my surprise when I spent that amount of time working my way through the first 14 pages!

The root premise of How to Write The Short Story is that writers cannot write to their best form without knowing what they are passionate about deep down inside. The book systematically walks the reader through Mr. Bickham’s theory of how to do a thorough self-evaluation.

The secondary premise of the book is that once writers seriously go through this exercise and the remaining recommended steps in the book, they will be able to draw on their responses to write any story.

Mr. Bickham recommends jotting down on index cards (the book was published in 1994 when personal computers were still in their infancy) the reader’s responses to the series of questions he provides. He wants this information to be written in a form that can be accessed occasionally to remind yourself what makes you tick. Your responses might be added to or deleted as you live your life.

Mr. Bickham also strongly recommends that you not move on to the next step until you have completed the prior step. Even so, I don’t think I should take the liberty of listing all 10 steps. From the five steps I’m listing, you will get the jest of the exercise and perhaps be interested enough to look for the book.

Step 1

The first step in this self-evaluation is to write down 10 “things or ideas or places or actions that you feel very deeply about.” You might want to stop reading this blog post and do this step. You need to take your time and really think about what you feel deeply about. You might easily think of three to five things, but then it can take some thought to come up with the other five to seven ideas or places or actions. If taken seriously, this should prompt you to identify your core values.

Step 3

What are five ideas or concept in which you deeply believe? This is different from Step 1, but there will probably be some overlap.

Step 8

Write a paragraph about an event that brought you great sadness.

Step 9

Describe “a time and place that made you very angry.”

Step 10

Write about “a time and place that frightened you.”

I found this exercise helpful, did you?

If you are like me, it has been a long time – if ever – that you took the time to honestly address the above questions and requests.

Did you discover any surprises?

Since my last blog post

I have added several thousand words to the manuscript for The Heirloom after finding some historical information that was helpful and specific to the story. It was rewarding to put words on the page.

I visited Hart Square Village in Vale, North Carolina once again. I took a lot of pictures, learned about the composition of daubing used by the early settlers in the Catawba Valley, and learned about the best practices there today for the preservation of 200-year-old log structures. Again… useful for me to know as a writer of southern colonial American history.

Until my next blog post

Get back to that book you started reading but put aside.

Remember the people of Ukraine.

Janet

Three of the Six Books I Read in March 2024

The first Monday of the month seems to roll around faster and faster, and it’s time for me to blog about all or some of the books I read the preceding month. Today’s post is about three of the six books I read in March. I plan to blog about the other three on April 15.

I started last month reading an incredible and much-anticipated novel. Would the rest of the books I read in March measure up to the bar set by Kristin Hannah?

Read on to find out.

The Women, by Kristin Hannah

I got on the waitlist for this novel as soon as it showed up in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library online catalog. That was months ago. Last time I checked on Friday evening, there were 4,314 people on that waitlist for the 873 copies in multiple formats. It seems to grow longer each day, so I was fortunate to get to read it soon after it was released.

Unless you live under a rock or have absolutely no interest in historical fiction, you probably know that The Women is about the American women who served in the military in-country (Vietnam) during the Vietnam War. That’s all I knew about it until I really got into the 468-page novel.

I don’t recall the last time I was so affected by a novel. Ms. Hannah writes in a way that puts the reader inside the main character, Frankie, a US Army nurse. This book grabbed me by the throat. I felt like I was right there in a US Army hospital or MASH unit during the war. It brought back memories of watching the news reports of the war on TV every night in my teenage and college years. The names of places and battles I had not thought about in decades were suddenly fresh again.

The book starts out to follow this young nurse throughout her tour of duty. I don’t want to give anything away, but I want to share that it also follows her return to the United States. These were the days of a lot of anti-war protests and the Vietnam veterans did not receive a hero’s welcome when they came home. To compound that situation, people repeatedly told Frankie she wasn’t a veteran because “there weren’t any women in Vietnam.”

Frankie went through loss after loss. Every time I thought things were finally going to go well for her, she suffered another setback.

This is an amazingly well-researched and well-written novel. Ms. Hannah’s descriptions of unspeakable combat injuries and the overwhelming number of severely injured soldiers and civilians the doctors and nurses had to deal with will take your breath away.

It seems impossible to me that the 1960s and early 1970s now qualify for historical fiction. It’s the first time I’ve been so taken aback by reading an historical novel set in my lifetime.

I especially recommend this novel to anyone with a romanticized concept of war.

The Children’s Blizzard, by David Laskin

I mentioned this book on my blog on March 11, 2024 (#OnThisDay: The Blizzard of 1888) but saved the details for today. This is a nonfiction book that reads like a novel. I love this kind of creative nonfiction!

The book emphasizes the fact that the temperatures were unseasonably warm on the morning the blizzard hit, so the school children had not worn their heaviest winter clothes. That fact put them at greater risk than on a normal January day.

I will quote a little from the prologue to give you the flavor of David Laskin’s writing style.

“On January 12, 1888, a blizzard broke over the center of the North American continent. Out of nowhere, a soot gray cloud appeared over the northwest horizon. The air grew still for a long, eerie measure, then the sky began to roar and a wall of ice dust blasted the prairie. Every crevice, every gap and orifice instantly filled with shattered crystals, blinding, smothering, suffocating, burying anything exposed to the wind. The cold front raced down the undefended grasslands like a crack unstoppable army. Montana fell before dawn; North Dakota went while farmers were out doing their early morning chores; South Dakota, during morning recess; Nebraska as school clocks rounded toward dismissal. In three minutes, the front subtracted 18 degrees from the air’s temperature…. Before midnight, windchills were down to 40 below zero…. By morning… hundreds of people lay dead…, many of them children who had fled – or been dismissed from – country schools….”

In the early pages of the book, the author explains that many of the people affected by this storm were immigrants from eastern Europe. They had taken advantage of the Homestead Act, which gave each one 160 acres of land in the region in exchange for a small filing fee and a promise to farm their land for five years. This was a recipe for every family to be isolated and children to have to walk miles to the nearest one-room school.

Much to my surprise, there was a national weather service in 1888. It was attached to the US Army. Such things as barometric pressure, wind speed, and temperatures were recorded and tracked, but this storm out-paced the warning system of flags emblazoned with a single black square and the telegraph system. I dare say it was a monstrous storm moving with such speed that it would challenge 2024 technology to sufficiently warn the populous.

The book gives details about specific families and individuals in the early chapters and then moves into how each one was affected by the storm.

The details of how individual school teachers – many of whom were scarcely older than their students – were faced with impossible decisions of whether to keep their students in the school houses where they were at risk of freezing to death or to send the children out to walk home at the risk of freezing to death.

The individual stories Mr. Laskin shares in this book are powerfully written and show us feats of heroism by children and adults alike. It was a mix of quick thinking and sheer luck that saved the ones who survived. Many survivors lost limbs to frostbite. Many who survived hypothermia succumbed to the warming of their bodies after being rescued.

The author weaves in details of how weather systems are created and how they interact with each other, as well as interesting details of the process the human body goes through when subjected to various temperatures that take the body below 95 degrees F.

People whose ancestors lived in the Great Plains states in January 1888 still tell the stories about this storm. It was interviews and family records that enabled Mr. Laskin to include such details in his book.

This is the first book by David Laskin that I have read. I will definitely look for his other books.

The Wisdom of Trees: Mysteries, Magic, and Medicine, by Jane Gifford

I happened upon this book at the public library. The title caught my eye. Trees fascinate me. I am intrigued by the different properties each species has. Since I am writing historical fiction set in the backcountry of Virginia and the Carolinas in the 1700s, I need some knowledge of trees and how they were used by pioneers.

My Morrison ancestors worked with trees a lot and were, no doubt, very knowledgeable about which trees were best used for what purpose. My grandfather had a sawmill. My father enjoyed woodworking and made some beautiful furniture.

Unfortunately, I was not interested in the properties of trees until recent years, so I have had to read and take notes about things my ancestors just knew. It was a necessity for pioneers, farmers, sawmillers, and woodworkers to know about trees. At a glance, my father could identify any tree by its leaf or its bark and any piece of lumber by its color, grain, or fragrance.

I have only recently been able to identify an ash tree, and there are many on our property. My newfound interest in ash trees is a result of many of them succumbing to the invasive emerald ash borer that was introduced from its native range in Asia. This is a costly loss to our environment.

Ash trees were so plentiful here 100 years ago that there was a factory in Harrisburg, North Carolina that made baseball bats and spokes for wagon wheels. (I write about that in Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2, which is available from Amazon and at Second Look Books in Harrisburg.)

Back to The Wisdom of Trees: Mysteries, Magic, and Medicine, by Jane Gifford… in the words from page six: “This book celebrates the enormous cultural and medicinal value of the trees most familiar to modern-day Europe from the point of view of our Celtic ancestors.” It goes into some history of the Druids, poets in Ireland, and the basic Celtic tree alphabet. In other words, the book was not what I thought it was going to be. Only a few species of trees were addressed, and some of them are not found in North Carolina.

For the information the book covered, it is probably a good resource. I’m not sure I learned anything that will help me in writing historical fiction set in North Carolina.

Since my last blog post

I attended a book discussion at the public library in Harrisburg. Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi was selected as this year’s “Big Read” by the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). I have not finished reading the novel, but I thoroughly enjoyed the group discussion. The library branch manager had listened to the book and said the recording was outstanding.

Until my next blog post

Read a good book or two.

Support your local public library and independent bookstore.

Check with your local public library system to see if it is offering special programming in conjunction with the NEA’s “Big Read.”

Remember the people of Ukraine.

Janet

The Other 2.4 Books I Read in February 2024

On March 4, 2024, I blogged about three of the 5.4 books I read in February. After writing about #OnThisDay anniversary topics the last two Mondays, today I get to tell you about the other 2.4 books I read last month.

Slave Escapes & the Underground Railroad in North Carolina, by Steve M. Miller & J. Timothy Allen

Most documented history of the Underground Railroad concentrates on how it operated in the northern states. This is understandable, considering the very secret nature of the operation. As you can tell from the title, this book is almost exclusively about the Underground Railroad in North Carolina.

This was an enlightening book, just as I anticipated. Much of it is about the part Quakers in North Carolina played in the so-called Underground Railroad. I knew that there were many Quaker early settlers in the Guilford County section of North Carolina, but I was surprised to learn that there were many Quaker settlers in the northeastern region of the state.

Another thing I learned from reading the book is that some Quakers owned slaves. The denomination gradually changed its attitude about slavery, which necessitated some creativity in how to deal with the matter. Quakers agreed to manumit their slaves in 1774, but some of their heirs refused to do so.

The book references various colonial and state laws enacted regarding slavery in North Carolina since the late 1600s. One of the laws I had never heard of was the Slave Code Act of 1741 which required local sheriffs who held runaway slaves to give descriptive details of those slaves to churches, and the churches “were then obligated to post them in an ‘open and convenient place’ for two months.” [Thank goodness we have separation of church and state now!]

The book talks about how the Great Dismal Swamp in northeastern North Carolina was a haven for runaway slaves and a hell for some area enslaved individuals. The remoteness and dense vegetation in the swamp provided hiding places for escaped slaves to take refuge; however, slave labor was used – at the cost of many slaves’ lives – to building the Dismal Swamp Canal.

Examples of newspaper notices about runaway slaves are included. Although it is assumed that all runaway slaves headed north, this book explains that some headed east in an effort to get on ships to various destinations, some fled to Tennessee, and others tried to make their way to New Orleans to board ships.

Another thing I learned from the book is that the Underground Railroad was used by white people during the Civil War. Quakers, Union sympathizers, and Confederate deserters were known to have used the system.

Summary of Miriam Margolyes’s This Much Is True

Miriam Margolyes is a British actor with an interesting life’s story. Unable to find her memoir, This Much Is True, at the public library, I settled for reading Summary of Miriam Margolyes’s This Much Is True. It was available from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library through Hoopla.

I enjoyed the summary and it satisfied my curiosity about Ms. Margolyes’s life. I must admit that I was not that familiar with her until recently watching a “Lost in Scotland” PBS series. I had no idea how many movies and TV shows she had appeared in until I read this book.

Between Earth and Sky, by Amanda Skenandore

*Between Earth and Sky*, by Amana Skenandore

This was the February book for Rocky River Readers Book Club in Harrisburg, NC. I read the first 40% of it before I found part of the story line to be implausible. Others in the book club loved it. There was a lot of discussion, especially by two of the members who were all fired up about the story.

I was interested in the beginning because it was about the terrible treatment of the Native American children at a school run by white people in 1889. That is a topic we all need to be educated about. Other library books were begging for my time, though, which gave me an excuse not to finish reading the novel.

From the discussion at the book club meeting, the 60% of the novel I did not get to read apparently contained some interesting dilemmas for the main characters. I do not want to cast aspersions on the book. If you are interested in reading about the way indigenous peoples were treated in the United States in the late 1800s, I recommend this novel.

Since my last blog post

One of my regular blog readers asked me what happened to Clarence Earl Gideon after the Gideon v. Wainwright US Supreme Court ruling I blogged about last week (#OnThisDay: Gideon v. Wainwright). I realized I was remiss in not including that information in that post.

Mr. Gideon appeared in court in Florida for a retrial in August 1963. That time, he had legal counsel and was acquitted by the jury. He was never in trouble with the law again, as far as I could learn. He died of cancer in 1972 at the age of 61.

Thank you, FictionFan, for asking the follow-up question. By the way, if you enjoy reading thoughtful and honest book reviews of a wide range of genres, I recommend you visit https://fictionfanblog.wordpress.com/ to see what she is reading.

Until my next blog post

I hope you are reading a good book.

Remember the people of Ukraine and all the places in the world where innocent people are suffering.

Janet

#OnThisDay: The Blizzard of 1888

I am wearing my historian hat today to write another #OnThisDay blog post. Sometimes I’m quite familiar with the topics covered in my occasional #OnThisDay blog posts, but today’s subject was one I knew nothing about. I need a topic like that to come along once in a while to keep my research juices flowing.

The Blizzard of 1888

I had never heard of the Great Blizzard of 1888 until I stumbled upon it in a reference book that lists events of note for every day of the year. It turns out that the blizzard in March 1888, also known as the Great White Hurricane, was not measured in feet like the snow in the Sierra Nevada ten days ago. However, it was a paralyzing blizzard in the Northeast US and eastern Canada.

It was unseasonably mild leading up to the March 1888 blizzard. Temperatures plummeted and it snowed for a day and a half. Many people were stranded at their places of employment. It is said that prisons and hotels were crowded with people seeking shelter from the storm.

Snow depths from 10 to 58 inches accompanied by sustained 45 mile-per-hour winds created 50-foot snow drifts. It took eight days to clear the New York-New Haven rail line at Westport, Connecticut. Telegraph service infrastructure was knocked out in Montreal and from Washington, DC to Boston for days. In fact, the disabling of rail and telegraph lines by that storm prompted authorities in New York City to start working toward moving of some of those services underground.

More than 400 people died as a result of the blizzard, including 100 seamen as more than 200 ships were grounded or wrecked. Immobilized fire stations prevented firefighters from responding to fires. Loss of property to fires alone during the blizzard amounted to $25 million (in 1888 dollars), which is the equivalent of $810 million in 2024.

The Children’s Blizzard of 1888

In researching the Great Blizzard of 1888, I found information about another blizzard that year and a book about it – The Children’s Blizzard, by David Laskin. I read the book and thought it would be interesting to supplement what I had learned about The Blizzard of 1888 with a few details about The Children’s Blizzard.

Photo of dark clouds looming over a herd of buffalo on the Great Plains — Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash

To my surprise, The Children’s Blizzard, by David Laskin captivated my interest. The stories about the so-called Children’s Blizzard dwarfed the more famous “Blizzard of 1888” in the northeastern states. Granted, the snow drifts in the northeast might have been higher than in the Children’s Blizzard in the Plains states two months earlier, but the sheer brutality and suddenness of the storm in Montana, the Dakota Territory, Nebraska, and Minnesota made the one in the northeast pale in comparison.

The snowstorm on January 12, 1888 in the Plains was called the Children’s Blizzard because so many school children were caught off-guard in their one-room schoolhouses that mild winter day when a monster blizzard roared in at break-neck speed. In today’s meteorological parlance, it would probably be described as a “perfect storm,” as all the forces of nature converged to create a blizzard beyond comprehension.

Photo of a person just visible in blinding snow — Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash

Like the Blizzard of 1888 in the northeastern states and eastern Canada, the Children’s Blizzard was preceded by at least a few hours of mild weather. This lulled people, except for the most seasoned Plains residents, into a false sense of security. Folks across the Plains welcomed a morning when the temperatures did not dictate the wearing of their heaviest winter clothing. Children were glad to have a pleasant morning on which to walk to school.

The state of weather prediction in 1888 did not afford the people enough – and in some cases, not any – warning that within several hours a dramatic drop in temperature and blinding snow would engulf them.

I will write more about The Children’s Blizzard, by David Laskin in my blog post scheduled for the first Monday in April.

Until my next blog post

Never be without a book to read. I hope you are reading one now that you don’t want to put down.

Don’t forget to visit https://www.janetmorrisonbooks.com to subscribe to my e-newsletter and to read about the books and short stories I’ve written.

Remember the people of Ukraine who have been fighting for their lives and democracy for two years now. Can the members of the US Congress not see what Putin is doing?

Remember the innocent people in Gaza who it appears more convincing by the day are the victims of a genocide. I do not condone in any way the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023; however, that event does not warrant the wholesale bombing of millions of innocent people. This war will not lead to peace in the Middle East. It will lead to countless generations of hatred on the part of survivors and the descendants of those who are murdered. And that hatred will be turned against not only Israel but also on the countries that enable Israel.

You and I don’t have to agree on politics but, at least for now, I am free to state my opinions. I hope you are free to state yours.

Janet

Janet's Writing Blog

Category: What I’m reading

What I Read Last Month & a Hurricane Helene Update

We get by with a little help from our fellow bloggers!

A Different Kind of “First-Blog-Post-of-the-Month” Blog Post

Books read in June 2024

May 2024 – Not my usual month of reading!

What Are You Passionate About?

Three of the Six Books I Read in March 2024

The Other 2.4 Books I Read in February 2024

#OnThisDay: The Blizzard of 1888

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: