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Book Diversions Politics Reading Review

Bookish – Sept 2022

So back in August I said I would finish the library books I already had and then focus on reading some of the actual books I already own.

Because my father teased me in a dream lol

So I finished up:

Introducing Feminism by Cathia Jenainati & Judy Groves

The Truth Will Set You Free – but first it will piss you off by Gloria Steinem

Introducing Feminism was published in 2007 and is a good overview of historical stuff. Also reminded quite clearly that non-white, non-affluent individuals are often relegated to the margins/footnotes. Though there is a fair bit of Black American feminism reflected here there is very little Indigenous or non-western.

Steinem’s book was published in 2019. It’s hard not to feel her energy coming off the page. It’s mostly quotes and little vignettes so a quick read though lots to stop and think about. I would like to read more by her. Any thoughts on where I should start?

Then there was:

This Book is Feminist by Jamia Wilson and Aurelia Durand

Published in 2021 it’s meant for teens and I’m fine with that. I still learned a lot and it was nice to have everything clearly set out without assuming the reader knew it.

There were some good definitions in here including intersectional feminism, womanism, and more. And a constant reminder to look at who is being left out.

And the last of my own little mini intro course on feminism:

Amplify – Graphic Narratives of Feminist Resistance

By Norah Bowman & Meg Braem with art by Dominique Hue, this 2019 book was published by UofT Press and tells the story of 7 different people / groups and how they can be seen as feminist.

This started with the premise that the willful taking on of a feminist political identity is itself an act of resistance. It told the stories (very briefly) of Pussy Riot, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, Idle No More, Harsha Walia, and others.

The backlash to feminism always seems to come from conservative governments and their innate fear of change. And just outright selfishness: the fear that giving more to others will mean less for them. Sigh.

as an aside this little exploration of feminism was brought about by trying to read Nora Loreto’s

Take Back the Fight

I’m not gonna lie. It was a tough slog. For how amazing it is to read her stuff on Twitter and what she wrote for The Maple and Chatelaine etc. this was hard. I couldn’t do it. One of the rare times I said “enough, I’m not getting anything out of this especially for the effort going in.” So I took a step back and started from the basics.

And then I picked three random books from A authors, which I’ll write about soon… thanks. love you.

Categories
Around the house Diversions Reading

Bookish – Aug 2022

Okay – so I actually had a dream while at the cottage where my dad made fun of my attempts at decluttering by asking when I was going to get around to reading the books I owned instead of reading the ones from the library.

Seriously. *insert eye roll here* I tease myself in my dreams!

So my goal for September is to read three books from A authors on my shelf.

On August 26 I made all my current library holds “inactive.” Well, except for a book on beadwork that the library is still looking for and Vol 1 of The Sandman because Toby is making me watch it on Netflix (and as of Aug 26, I was number 142 on the wait list for 10 copies).

I will finish the ones I have out now and the book of poetry I picked up on August 27 and then no more library books until it feels right.

Categories
Birds Diversions In the Great Outdoors Reading

Pigeons – part 1

So one of the books I took out is a little kids book so that was a quick read 😉 Still taught me something though – which wasn’t hard as I really didn’t know anything about pigeons – because I didn’t know that there is no real “breeding season” for pigeons, they can lay eggs at any time of the year.

Pigeon - City Safari
Yes, indeed, I read and I learned!

Q has a “common birds of the GTA” brochure and it says the pigeons in Toronto are mostly rock pigeons. He told me this fact while reading the Pigeons book pictured above – and then tried to argue that this counted as his “reading obligation” for the day. We’ll see about that!

Q calls pigeons “street chickens.” I think he must have heard that on youtube somewhere. Toby calls them flying rats. I mean, it’s not really their fault but I guess they have a bad rap.

This next book (also for ahem, middle schoolers) said they’re sometimes called feathered rats!

Pigeons

I learned that pigeons were once the symbol of Aphrodite – the Greek Goddess of Love.

But the shocking news to me was that pigeons are not native to North America! Although they can be found everywhere in the world (except Antarctica), they descended from the rock dove (columba livia) a species native to Europe, Asia and northern Africa. So really – the pigeon’s we see? They’re all feral (wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_pigeon – have I mentioned lately how much I love wikipedia? I really should have just started there but I really didn’t want to just rehash the wiki entry I wanted to see what I could learn; and it has three citations for calling pigeons “rats with wings.” Sigh)

TYPES

There are almost 300 different species of pigeons! And most live in the tropics – I mean, given the option, wouldn’t you?

How lovely do these birds look? The Nicobar Pigeon pic came from a blog I found: https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/2016/08/30/the-nicobar-pigeon/

The Spice Imperial Pigeon is from ebird.org: https://ebird.org/species/spipig1

COMMONALITIES

There are some common features of most pigeons/doves (apparently doves = small, pigeon = big; I’m just gonna use pigeon from now on): short necks and small heads; straight, narrow beaks.

And most eat small seeds and fruit though they are very adaptable to whatever can be found in their area. The mostly eat off the ground so long grasses and high crops are not their friends.

COLOURS

The colours can certainly vary – even among the feral pigeons. Here in Canada they’re mostly grey with some white, black or reddish/brown thrown in. In Hawaii though feral pigeons are mostly white; in England, mostly black.

I can’t really tell the difference between a UK and a Canadian pigeon though the Hawaiian one is pretty nifty:

http://www.explorebiodiversity.com/Hawaii/BIRDS/Birds/Rock%20Dove.htm

I had forgotten that squab was pigeon. White Kings and Giant Runts are two breeds that are bred for food – an adult Giant Runt can weigh more than a kilo! And up to 1.4kg for a “prime example” (uhm 2.5 to 3 pounds-ish) A regular city feral pigeon is usually less than half a kilo. Or less than a pound.

Other breeds were selected for speed, or acrobatics – no seriously – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO8eLn_h9FQ

Then there are the breeds selected for looks – show pigeons! Fantails, Jacobins, Frillbacks, Capuchines and more. Here’s a screen shot after I googled “show pigeons.”

And then there are the homing pigeons: Aristotle wrote about pigeons being used as messengers and, according to Patent, the news of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo arrived in England by carrier pigeon four days earlier than by horse and ship!

It turns out pigeons really are that smart. They actually do recognize the people who feed them – and some have even learned about impressionism!

Staying together in a flock is for protection – hard for a predator to target an individual. And when they’re all eating together, they’re picking their own stuff and leaving the rest for the others. So if you can picture a bag of bird seed: some will only eat the little dark round bits, another the long light coloured stuff, a third the huge seeds and so on. So they don’t compete against every other pigeon for their food. They kinda share it around. Equitable birds!

Okay, so the kid’s books taught me a whole bunch of nifty stuff. Now to see what I can get out of the other ones…

Categories
Book Diversions Reading Review

Bookish – May 2022

What I read in May 2022

I finished three books in May.

Celia’s Song by Lee Maracle

The StoryGraph key words: fiction fantasy emotional reflective slow-paced

I really enjoyed this book. Maracle has a terrific way with words – I find myself transported to another place.

A grandfather in the story said: It is about trust. Talking kept us trusting. Trusting one another secures our sense of hope in the future. Silence kills hope. We have to be vulnerable I think in order to build bonds with other people; to strengthen our relationships. This goes together with listening more too – actually paying attention to what someone is saying without already thinking about what you’re going to say in response.

Jameela Green Ruins Everything by Zarqa Nawaz

The StoryGraph key words: fiction contemporary adventurous challenging reflective medium-paced

Another book that I thought was terrific. It’s a good book for when you want a funny, touching story about accidentally going off to join a terrorist group called Dominion of the Islamic Caliphate and Kingdoms, you know, D.I.C.K. 🤣

Really well done I thought and a good read. And a Canadian author – the standard born in the UK, grew up in Toronto and now lives in Regina type Canadian!

Meetings with Remarkable Trees by Thomas Pakenham

The StoryGraph key words: nonfiction nature informative slow-paced

I cannot remember where I heard about this book. Perhaps the Completely Arbortrary podcast? Or the nature drawing workshop put on by the Lahontan Audubon Society (from Nevada!)? Or maybe the facebook group for Completely Arbortrary fans? I just can’t remember. Sometimes I save notes on the library’s website when I put a book on hold but I didn’t this time – but I wanted to shout out this very nifty feature too.

Anyway, this is literally a book of tree portraits. A sort of world tour of trees that are all found in the UK. I learned that English people really really like yew trees. And there are a lot of really old trees there. And really really old trees can be really really big – like a girth of 10 metres or more! I would imagine that we have some fairly old trees here too but I cannot recall seeing any that are so large. Mind you, I’ve been limited to Toronto for the last couple of years.

As an example, though I found this oak on the BBC online :

The trunk is 13.4m around!

It’s a fun book if you are a little obsessed with trees – but also a huge reminder of the remarkable wealth held in the hands of a small number of people (lots of the trees are on “private” lands and so a bit of a nose-crinkling happened while I was reading.)

Categories
Around the house Diversions Health Politics Reading

June 2022

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.

James Russell Lowell

I seem to always love the idea of planning but then, stress hits and my most well-worn response is avoidance. I plan to get things done and then they don’t and the next thing I know it’s bedtime and well, that’s about it really.

Yesterday (June 4) there was a “Daily Jay” on the Calm app about “time confetti“; about how little things add up to disrupt your plans and goals and break up your day and cause irritation. Prioritizing is definitely not something I am good at – but it’s comforting to know I am not alone and that there are so many external factors influencing this that I have no control over at all. Thankfully my work is one of those places that really is not there when it’s not supposed to be there. I don’t get messages on my personal phone etc. So that’s terrific. Work is also flexible enough that when I need to take breaks during the day, that’s fine, the work day doesn’t have to be precisely 9 to 5 but also understands that work is not all consuming.

white background with lots and lots of little coloured pieces of paper
confetti 😉

Okay – so back to trying to plan, think about what’s important, not necessarily going off on all sorts of new and fun directions. I mean, new and fun directions are great. But I don’t have to follow the path RIGHTNOWTHISVERYINSTANT. I can make a note, and follow up later.

One of the ways I thought I would do this would be to think of big themes for the month and if something pops up that fits into the theme – yippie! and if not, and it looks cool, I can make a note and maybe use that to come up with another month’s theme.

THEMES FOR JUNE

There are some easy ways for my brain to group things and also a few topics I want to learn more about which themselves have lots of subheadings so the big overall groups are:

SELF

OTHERS

HOME

NATURE

SELF focus for June:

❶ schedule – a day

❷ mindfulness – being present

❸ health – menopause

Schedule: I’m trying to figure out what I would like “a day” to look like. Three different days actually: in-office work day, WFH work day, non-work day.

Mindfulness – just something I’m always working on; whether it’s a bit of reading about stoicism, the Calm app, yoga. Something.

Health – read the damn menopause book. That time is creeping up slowly but surely and I really want to be sure I have some sort of idea about what’s going on. We don’t talk about this stuff enough and I need to learn.

Also move more. I have an appointment with a specialist about weight management and stuff also.

OTHERS focus for June:

❶ reading – neurodiversity

❷ support – volunteering? politics?

The idea here is to not lose myself in my own little bubble. The Ontario election annoyed me to no end – the lowest turn out in years, maybe ever? WTAF?!? The cons killed people during the pandemic no less than if they had pulled a trigger on a gun and you will not be able to convince me otherwise. And they were rewarded with another majority? @#(P YPVDLI but rather than retreat to the safety of my world with only my people in it I want to do more.

Concrete tasks here:

① deliver egg cartons to the food bank

② bring black take out containers to the farmers’ market for re-use

③ chat with Laura about how to _do something_ about the politics stuff that’s frustrating me

④ read this: recommended by a friend:

Picture of book titled NeuroTribes

HOME focus for June:

❶ minimalism – organize/declutter

We live in a fairly large house. The problem with this of course is that we acquire enough stuff to fill the large house. And then some. This will really probably be the focus every month for HOME but key tasks for June:

① Lisa’s Stuff – organize jewellery; what do I want to keep; offer the rest to family / friends and then sell / donate what’s left

② Q’s Stuff – a big goal for the entire summer is to get everything out of Q’s rooms and really clean and maybe repaint them etc. So we’ve got to start whittling his stuff down too

③ Art – hang more of the art I love and offer up the stuff we no longer adore. This has already started which is great.

NATURE focus for June:

❶ birds – pigeons

❷ tree – northern red oak

Y’all know I’m weird right? I wanna learn more about birds and trees but I keep going off on all sorts of tangents and, while fun, it’s really not sinking in. So, thanks to a random chat with the wonderful Abby, I fixated on pigeons for June. I know nothing about pigeons but they’re everywhere. So I’m gonna learn about pigeons.

A stack of four books about pigeons
Sometimes I wonder what the librarians might be thinking…

Same with trees. There are a bazillion trees out there. So overwhelming to know where to start. But we just planted Tom in the fall – Tom is the name we gave to our northern red oak (Quercus rubra) – so that seemed like a good place to start.

Tom – June 5 taken from the balcony