Tag: Vietnam War

#OnThisDay: 26th Amendment Ratified, 1971 – Part Two

As I indicated in my blog post yesterday, #OnThisDay: 26th Amendment Ratified, 1971 – Part One, when I started researching the history of the 1971 ratification of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age in federal elections in the US from 21 to 18 years of age, I got in over my head quickly and the blog post grew like topsy.

Therefore, I split the post into two posts. My post yesterday gives important background information which helps to put today’s post in perspective.

Starting with the beginning of America’s involvement in World War II, here is how the 26th Amendment finally came about. As I said in yesterday’s blog post, the military draft and the setting of the voting age in the United States became intertwined decades ago.

World War II

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. Congress gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the authority to send US military personnel anywhere in the world. The distinctions between draftees, regular army, National Guardsmen, and Reservists were removed for the war. They were all part of the army.

Eleven months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress lowered the draft age to 18 and raised the upper limit to the age of 37.

Also in 1942, West Virginia Congressman Jennings Randolph introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to lower the voting age from 21 to 18. That was the first of 11 times that Randolph would introduce such legislation in his political career which eventually found him in the US Senate.

It seems that Randolph had a particular faith in the youth of America. He is quoted as saying that American young people, “possess a great social conscience, are perplexed by the injustices in the world and are anxious to rectify those ills.”

What seems idiotic to us in 2025 is the fact that black men were not considered for the draft until 1943. The so-called reasoning for that was the assumption that white men and black men could not work together in a military setting and white racists believed that black men were not capable of serving in the military!

As a result, in 1943 a racial quota system was put in place under which black men were drafted in numbers to coincide with their percentage of the general population. At that time, just over ten percent of the US population was black.

But even with this new quota, black soldiers were restricted to serving in “labor units.” That changed, though, as World War II progressed and they were needed in combat positions.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt lowered the minimum age for the age to the age of 18 during World War II, but the minimum voting age held at the age of 21. At that time voting age was set by each state.

The slogan, “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote” gained momentum in 1943, and George became the first state to lower voting age for state and local elections from 21 to 18.

By the end of World War II, of the 34 million men registered for the draft, 10 million had been inducted into the military.

Post-World War II until the Korean War

In 1947, President Harry S. Truman asked Congress to let the 1940 Selective Training and Service Act expire and recommended that the US military could rely on voluntary enlistments.

However, in 1948, the minimum number of military personnel was not reached, so Truman asks for the draft to be reinstated. The new act called for the drafting of men between 19 and 26 years old for twelve months of active service.

Korean War (June 25, 1950-July 27, 1953)

Mean between 18½ and 35 were drafted for an average of two years. Men who had served in World War II were not required to sign up for the Korean War draft; however, I know a fighter pilot who served in World War II who was called back into active service during the Korean War. (By the way, he is 100 years old now.)

The Universal Military Training and Service Act passed in 1951. It required men from 18 to 26 years old to register. The next year, Congress enacted the Reserve Forces Act. It required every draftee and every enlisted man to an eight-year military service obligation. That obligation meant that after their term of active duty, they were assigned to standby reserve and knew they could be called back into active duty upon a declaration of war or a national emergency.

Post-Korean War until Vietnam War

In his 1954 State of the Union address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “For years our citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 have, in time of peril, been summoned to fight for America. They should participate in the political process that produces this fateful summons.”

Jennings Randolph (mentioned above in the US Congress in the 1940s) was a Democrat. As a US Army General, Dwight Eisenhower had led US forces in the European Theatre in World War II and was a Republican. So why did it take until 1971 for the 26th Amendment to the US Constitution to come about?

Vietnam War, Civil Rights, and Voting Rights

The US provided military advisors in South Vietnam beginning in the early 1950. The war in North and South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos continued.

President Lyndon B. Johnson started pressuring Congress to let him send active-duty troops to Vietnam after a military incident in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2, 1964. The US was carrying out a covert amphibious operation near North Vietnamese territorial waters. North Vietnam responded, and then based on skewed intelligence the US falsely claimed that another incident occurred on August 4, 1964.

There was very little support in the US for America to send troops to fight in that war, but what a tangled web we weave once we set out to deceive!

The first US Marines landed in DaNang, South Vietnam on March 8, 1965. The first anti-war demonstrations took place in the US since the end of the Civil War. Ironically, that was the same day that the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in US v. Seeger, which broadened the definition of conscientious objection but it was still based on religious beliefs.

Although President Johnson appointed a study commission to come up with changes to the Selective Service system, the war raged on and thousands of young men left the US to avoid the draft.

Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 make discriminatory practices based on race illegal; however, some states continued to enforce poll taxes and literacy tests. That necessitated the adoption of the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1964 which outlawed poll taxes.

Some states still had literacy tests that had to be passed before a person could register to vote. It was seen as a way to prevent black people from voting. Therefore, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was necessary. It prohibits any racial discrimination in voting in the United States.

Photo of people -- mostly black people -- marching with signs demanding the right to vote.
Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

And yet, if you were under 21 years old, you could be drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam but you still could not vote.

In 1969, President Richard M. Nixon ordered a “random selection” lottery system for the draft in place of drafting men at the age of 19. In 1970, Nixon wanted Congress to end student deferments.

On June 15, 1970, in US v. Welsh, the US Supreme Court ruled that men holding ethical and moral beliefs against the war could be exempt as conscientious objectors.

The US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Oregon v. Mitchell (a case brought by Oregon, Arizona, Texas, and Idaho) on December 21, 1970. In a 5 to 4 decision, the Court ruled that the federal government can set voting age in federal elections but not on the state and local level. It also made it illegal for states to require passage of a literacy test in order for an individual to register to vote. Oregon v. Mitchell

There was no end in sight for the US sending troops, which included female nurses, to Vietnam, but they could not vote until they reached the age of 21. Sadly, many of the soldiers in all the wars up to and including most of the war in Vietnam never got the chance to vote because they died before the 26th Amendment was ratified.

Photo of a section of the Vietnam Memorial wall in Washington, DC with flowers laid at the base
Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash

Ratification of the 26th Amendment

Under increasing pressure to lower the federal voting age to 18, on March 10, 1971, the US Senate unanimously voted in favor of the proposed 26th Amendment. Thirteen days later, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of it. It went to the states for ratification, and in a record-setting two months, the required three-fourths of the state legislatures ratified the amendment. It went into effect on July 1, 1971, and President Nixon signed it into law on July 5, 1971.

Photo of a white banner with the letters V O T E in big black ink.

Post-Vietnam War (for a military and draft perspective)

A cease-fire was reached between the US and North Vietnam on January 27, 1973, and US prisoners-of-war began to return home. The last US combat troops left South Vietnam on March 29, 1973.

The 1967 Selective Service Act, which had been extended by Congressional action, was allowed to expire in 1973. Therefore, the draft ended.

The United States operates with an all-volunteer armed forces now; however, all male citizens between 18 and 26 years of age are required to register for the draft and are liable for training and service until they reach the age of 35.

Until my next blog post

Keep reading that novel or nonfiction book that has you captivated. We all need an escape from daily worries and current events.

Never take your family or friends for granted.

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

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

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

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

The Wisdom of Trees,
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.

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi

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

4 Other Books I Read in February 2021

Last week I blogged about four of the books I read last month. Today, I write about the other four books I read in February.

The Unwilling, by John Hart

The Unwilling, by John Hart

John Hart being a southern piedmont North Carolina writer, I looked forward to his new novel, The Unwilling. It did not disappoint. I listened to it on CD. It is a slice of American history when we were divided over the Vietnam War.

It is a riveting story about three brothers. Two were in the military and served in Vietnam. One didn’t survive the war, and the other one came home with problems for the rest of his life. Their youngest brother, Gibby, is the main character. At 18 years old, he is struggling to find his way in life. His mother is over-protective, and his father is a police detective in Charlotte. His parents want him to stay away from the middle brother, Jason, but Gibby can’t help but idolize him and is drawn to hang out with him. This leads to untold trouble.

The seedy, corruptive underbelly of the prison systems comes into play in a gruesome way. This novel is not for the squeamish, but the story really drew me in, and I couldn’t stop listening to it because I wanted to know what was going to happen next to Gibby and Jason. If you like a coming-of-age story wrapped in a police thriller, set in the winding down years of the Vietnam War, with some troubled family dynamics and prison time thrown in, this should be your next read.

Mr. Hart’s inspiration for this novel was Hugh Thompson, the US Army helicopter pilot credited with stopped the My Lai Massacre on March 16, 1968. It is not a war story per se but is the story of what a soldier sees and does that follows him or her home — the things those who have not been there cannot imagine; but more than that, it is a story of a small city in which the evil one fears isn’t always faraway but sometimes just up the street.

Southern Writers on Writing, edited by Susan Cushman

Southern Writers on Writing, edited by Susan Cushman

This delightful book is a collection of 26 essays by Southern writers, each giving their unique take on writing and how The South influences their writing.

One of my favorite essays in the book is “Southern Fiction: A Tool to Stretch the Soul and Soften the Heart,” by author Julie Cantrell.

Ms. Cantrell hails from Louisiana and writes vividly in her essay about the extremes of life in her home state. I love what she writes about Southern fiction about halfway down page 53 in the book:

“In literature, the South works as a lure by tapping all the senses. When we set a story here, we not only deliver a cast of colorful characters, we share their sinful secrets while serving a mouth-watering meal. We draw readers in with soul-stirring music and landscapes that would make anyone want to disappear beneath the mossy oaks. The South offers a fantasy, a place where time slows and anxieties melt like the ice in a glass of sugar cane rum.”

On page 54, Ms. Cantrell writes: “Many in life say the earth is our mother. If that’s the case, then the South is the lap into which we all crawl to hear her story…. The South is nothing less than a sanctuary for story. It is the porch swing, the rocking chair, the barstool, the back pew. It is everything that made me and shaped me and saved me. As a southern writer, I aim only to invite my readers to enter this sacred space.”

And then I read “The Burden of Southern Literature,” by Katherine Clark. She concisely explained how Southern literature came to be – how the South was looked down on after the Civil War and why would anyone want to read about such a place? Southern writers were weighed down by the region’s history. Writers like William Faulkner struggled to “strike a chord with a national audience.” Then, Faulkner and other southern writers learned to embrace the South and their southern-ness.

Ms. Clark writes on page 56, “Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the writer in the South is not plagued by the burden of southern history, but by the burden of southern literature. Our literary tradition is revered all over the world and has produced many of the best writers to come out of our country. Southern literature is the strongest tradition in American literature, and one of the greatest gifts that American culture has given the world.”

What the southern writer is left with today is the burden not so much of the history of the South, but the wealth of literature that has come out of the South. To paraphrase Ms. Clark, it is inspiring and intimidating. I can vouch for that!

I also liked what Ms. Clark writes about not wallowing in what she calls, “southern-ness.” Here’s a little of what she writes on the topic:

“Whereas 100 years ago, writers had to learn to embrace the differences of the South, nowadays the tendency can be to positively wallow in the eccentricities and grotesqueries of the southern experience, usually of an earlier era. We shouldn’t be wallowing in southern-ness, and we don’t need to embrace it either, because that’s been done. That’s a given now, thanks to our great literary ancestors. Our job today is not to stick to the foundation they laid for us, but to use it as a springboard launching us in the new and different directions demanded by a changing culture.”

River Jordan, another author contributing to Southern Writers on Writing, writes the following about how she can tell when she’s reading the work of a southern writer and when she’s reading the work of New York writer: “…when I read a writer from say New York I think, oh, they are so smart. I could swear I actually hear their brain ticking. But when I read a southern writer I can feel their heart beating. That’s how I know it’s southern. By the heartbeat.”

Ms. Jordan also writes the following about the danger of southern writing disappearing as our lifestyles change: “When the porches all finally disappear, when the backyard steps are replaced with the kind of yards manicured to perfection, then the days of real southern writers will shift and slip away. Assimilation will be complete and southern will be no more.”

I hope she’s wrong, but I worry about the assimilation. I worry as I hear aspects of southern accents disappearing. I worry when I notice that my great-nieces in metro Atlanta sound much less southern than I do.

Speaking of southern accents, the next contributor in Southern Writers on Writing is Lee Smith. I love to hear her talk. Her contribution to the book is from her book, Dimestore: A Writer’s Life, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading five or six years ago. Ms. Smith is southern through-and-through, and her writing oozes “southern.”

About writing, Ms. Smith writes, “Whether we are writing fiction or nonfiction, journaling or writing for publication, writing itself is an inherently therapeutic activity. Simply to line up words one after another upon a page is to create some order where it did not exist, to give a recognizable shape to the chaos of our lives.”

30 Short Stories, by Laleh Chini

30 Short Stories, by Laleh Chini

My blogger friend, Laleh Chini, just keeps writing books. You may recall in last week’s blog post (4 Books I Read in February 2021) I told you about her new novel, Soroosh. Also, I’ve blogged about her book Climbing Over Grit in my November 5, 2018 blog post, Many Good Books Read in October!

Laleh is a fantastic storyteller. 30 Short Stories is her new picture book. I don’t often read picture books now, but I just had to purchase and read Laleh’s. Although written for children, this book can be enjoyed by people of all ages. Each of the 30 stories teaches a life lesson. My favorite was the last story in the book, “Racism.” In it, Laleh relates a story of how as a Muslim from Iran she experienced racism in a store in Canada, where she has lived for decades. It’s heartbreaking.

In the spirit of cultural acceptance and respecting and valuing people, no matter their ethnicity or religion, I recommend this book to everyone who is open to seeing that people are just people. We need to take a step back and stop making snap judgments about people just because they are of a different culture than ours.

Greenlights, by Matthew McConaughey

Greenlights, by Matthew McConaughey

From TV interviews, I know that actor Matthew McConaughey is a good storyteller. Wanting to hear his book in his own voice, I got on the waitlist for the CD edition of Greenlights at the public library as soon as it showed up on the online catalog.

I must admit that listening to Greenlights on CD was probably not the best way to read the book. Mr. McConaughey is an enthusiastic storyteller, and he relates many very entertaining stories in Greenlights; however, as a good storyteller is prone to do, Mr. McConaughey varies the volume of his voice greatly as he spins a yarn. This can create discomfort while listening to the book on CD.

I read a review on Goodreads.com that gave the book a very high rating and recommended listening to it instead of reading it but with the caveat that it should be listened to in a quiet environment. That’s good advice. I would also say you shouldn’t attempt to listen to it with headphones or earbuds. Also, trying to listen to it in one room while someone is trying to sleep in the next room is not a good idea. Just sayin’.

I also admit that I have moderate hearing loss, but I don’t think that was the root of the problem I had in listening to Greenlights. If I set the volume to a comfortable level for the shouting, I could not hear much of the rest of the book. This meant I couldn’t hear the near-whisper parts at all. I had to constantly adjust the volume, so the CD edition of the book was a great disappointment.

Early on, the book talks about Mr. McConaughey’s home life as a child and teen. His parents had a volatile relationship, which couldn’t help but have a profound effect on him. He relates some very funny experiences he had as an exchange student in Australia. In fact, that was my favorite part of the book. He tells interesting and humorous stories about his world travels and how he more or less fell into the occupation of actor.

The overriding theme of the book is that we should learn from all life’s experiences. Don’t let the obstacles in life keep you down. Learn from them and keep going.

If you’re a Matthew McConaughey fan, you’ll enjoy reading the book. Listening to it? Maybe not so much.

Since my last blog post

I’m still reading good books and working on my historical novel manuscript for a partial critique by a professional editor.

I got my second Moderna Covid 19 shot on Saturday. I’m grateful that I live in a country where such things are available, and I’m grateful to all the people who worked to develop and distribute the vaccine. I had some unpleasantness for about 48 hours after the shot, but it surely beats contracting a bad case of Covid-19.

On Wednesday night, I enjoyed participating in the third virtual gathering of a group discussing Janet Givens’ book, LEAPFROG: How to have a civil conversation during an uncivil era. We had an interesting conversation about racial prejudice and our common humanity. I mentioned Ms. Givens’ book in my blog posts on January 18, 2021 ( Fictional Characters Can Take on Lives of Their Own), on December 14, 2020 (Favorite Books Read in 2020), and on April 13, 2020 (LEAPFROG and The Immoral Majority.)

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m listening to In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson, and I’m reading Cicely Tyson’s memoir, Just As I Am. Other library books are piling up and calling my name. What a wonderful “problem” to have!

I hope you have some time for creativity and hobbies this week.

Wear a mask and get vaccinated as soon as that’s possible for your age and location so we can rediscover “normal.”

Janet

Some March Reading

I usually wait until the first Monday of the next month to blog about books I read this month, but I’ve read so many good books in March I decided to split them up between today’s blog and my April 2, 2018 blog post.

The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah

After reading Kristin Hannah’s best-selling novel, The Nightingale, last year, I eagerly awaited the release of The Great Alone. What a masterpiece! I don’t want to spoil the story for you if you haven’t read it.

9780312577230
The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah

I’ll just state the basic description – that it is the story of a troubled Vietnam War veteran and POW survivor who took his wife and daughter to Alaska to escape the craziness he saw in life in the lower 48 states.

Ill-prepared for life in the wilds of Alaska, things went from bad to worse for the family. Domestic abuse is a thread that weaves throughout the novel. Can love outlast the horrors this family lives with?

The Tuscan Child, by Rhys Bowen

This historical novel alternated between World War II and 1973. After the death of her father, 25-year-old Joanna travels from London to a remote village in Tuscany where her father’s fighter plane was shot down in 1944.

tuscanchild-200
The Tuscan Child, by Rhys Bowen

Since her father’s death, Joanna has found an undeliverable and returned-to-send letter he wrote to an Italian woman named Sofia. In the letter, he references “our beautiful baby boy” who is hidden away where no one but he and Sofia can find him.

Joanna had no knowledge of this woman named Sofia until discovering the letter in her father’s belongings after his death. Who was Sofia, and is “our beautiful baby boy” a half-brother Joanna knows nothing about?

White Chrysanthemum, by Mary Lynn Bracht

This historical novel was a difficult read for me because the subject matter was so bleak, violent, and sad; however, I’m glad I read it. I learned a great deal of history.

9780735214439
White Chrysanthemum, by Mary Lynn Bracht

White Chrysanthemum is about man’s inhumanity to man – or more specifically, man’s inhumanity to woman. The novel was inspired by the plight of Korean girls and young women who were abducted by the occupying Japanese soldiers during World War II. The girls and young women were physically- and sexually-abused and were forced to be “comfort women” for the Japanese soldiers.

This is also a story of the human spirit and what it is able to endure due to the innate will to live. It is also about the love two sisters share for each other and how they long to be reunited.

It is not for the faint of heart, but I recommend it to anyone who wants to have a better understanding of the early- to mid-20th century history of Korean-Japanese relations. As recently as 2015, the treatment of Korean girls and women by Japanese soldiers from the late 1930s through the Second World War was being swept under the rug.

In 2015, the governments of Japan and South Korea agreed “to remove the Statue of Peace [in Seoul] and never speak of the ‘comfort women’ again” according to the timeline in the back of Mary Lynn Bracht’s book. Thanks to her novel, a whole new generation will learn about his piece of history.

The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life, by Anu Partanen

I checked this book out because the title intrigued me. The author grew up in Finland but moved to the USA as a young adult. This book is her perspective on the social and governmental differences between the two countries.

NordicTheoryofEverything-bookimage
The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life, by Anu Partanen

The prologue was interesting in that Ms. Partanen expressed her surprise in finding that Americans are less free and independent than the people of her home country. Her opinion is that

  1. the fact that most Americans’ health care is dependent upon their employer, we in the USA are tied to our jobs;
  2. Americans are sometimes forced to stay in unhappy marriages because the income tax laws are written to reward couples filing jointly;
  3. the tax laws in America encourage young adults to depend upon their parents for paying for college and supporting them financially in other ways past the age of 18; and
  4. the policies of the US government saddle parents with too much expense in the raising of children and saddle too many middle-age adults with the financial burden of caring for their elderly parents.

 

Ms. Partanen boiled all this down to what she calls The Nordic Theory of Love.

My brief summary doesn’t do justice to this 450-page book, but maybe I have piqued your interest. I enjoyed a couple of days’ break from reading depressing World War II novels, but about halfway through Ms. Partanen’s book I decided I’d rather read fiction. Some short stories and novels were vying for my attention.

Since my last blog post

I’ve worked on letters to send to 40 bookstores to encourage them to place spring orders for my 2014 vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, I’ve done a lot of reading, and I’ve studied book marketing and writing in deep point-of-view.

Until my next blog post

If you haven’t already signed up for my sometime-in-the-future newsletters, please fill out the form below.

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading A Piece of the World, by Christina Baker Kline. Perhaps you’ll want to read one of the books I wrote about today.

If you’re a writer, I hope you have quality writing time.

Janet

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They’re All Uncertain Times

Events of the last week prompted me to write about uncertain times for today’s blog post. It soon occurred to me that all times are uncertain because we cannot see into the future.

We tend to think the time we’re living in is more unpredictable than any other time, but if you’ll stop and think about it, you might see that life is and always has been full of doubts, worries, and stress. The unknown can do that to you.

I think about the uncertain times my known ancestors lived through:

English-speaking Lowland Scots being taken into the Gaelic-speaking Kintyre Peninsula in the southwest of Scotland to be tenant farmers in the 1600s and being required to attend a church where only Gaelic was spoken;

Scottish immigrants crossing the Atlantic and settling in the Carolina backcountry/wilderness in the 1760s; and

Those Scottish immigrants facing the American Revolution and not knowing what the outcome would be.

On December 23, 1776, in “The Crisis,” Thomas Paine wrote the following:

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

My ancestors lived through those times. The deaths of my Morrison great-great-great-great-grandparents during the American Revolutionary War left my great-great-great-grandfather orphaned at the age of nine. He and his siblings were cared for thereafter by his uncles and their wives, but it must have been more than frightening.

Then came the following trying times:

War of 1812;

American Civil War;

Reconstruction Era in The American South;

My maternal great-grandmother’s death in childbirth in 1881;

My paternal great-grandfather’s accidental death while felling a tree for lumber to build a kitchen in 1886;

Spanish-American War;

World War I;

The Great Depression;

My paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather both dying as young adults;

World War II;

Korean War; and

Illnesses and epidemics.

Living in the age of modern medicine and miracle drugs, it’s difficult for most of us to empathize with our ancestors who lived with the possibility of dying or watching their children die of typhoid fever, tetanus, flux, or polio.

When the Salk polio vaccine became available in the late 1950s, I did not fully appreciate what it meant to my parents. For me, as a child, I just remember our family going to the gymnasium lobby at Harrisburg High School on three Sunday afternoon after church to get an oral vaccine on a sugar cube.

The 1960s and years since have brought the following times of uncertainty:

Vietnam War;

Civil Rights Movement in the United States;

Numerous wars in the Middle East;

Rumors of more wars;

Terrorism; and

Incompetency and recklessness in The White House. (Don’t blame me; I didn’t vote for him!)

All of my ancestors down through my grandparents were farmers. I can’t imagine a life full of more uncertainties than one in which one’s livelihood is at the mercy of the weather.

I believe that God created the world with everything we need to not only survive but thrive. Human beings have brought on many uncertainties by not being good stewards of the world that God has entrusted to us – its animals and natural resources. Come to think of it, we have created most of the uncertainties ourselves – war, poor planning, poor agricultural practices, greed, and envy.

Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, volcanoes, and wildfires happen, but even many floods and wildfires are caused by man’s carelessness.

I attended two funerals in less than 48 hours last week. One was expected after a long battle with cancer, but the other one was quite sudden. Life is full of uncertainties.

Reviewing some of the events and hardships my ancestors faced, and the things I’ve witnessed in my 64 years has helped me put recent events and concerns in perspective.

The sun comes up. The sun goes down. The world keeps spinning around and revolving around the sun. What an amazing world!

simon-hesthaven-216108 (2)
Photo by Simon Hesthaven on Unsplash

 

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading Killers of the Flower Moon:  The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann and Among the Living by Jonathan Rabb.

If you’re a writer, I hope you have lots of productive writing time.

Janet