Book Club selection for 2021-2022

  

Book Club Schedule for 2021-22  
All Book Club meetings will be on first Monday at 2 PM at Bethel Presbyterian unless noted otherwise.

September 13--The Paris Dressmaker by Kristy Cambron led by Mary Lou 

October 4--The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore led by Peggy at Peggy's home

November 1--A Burning in My Bones by Winn Collier led by Carolyn C.

December 6--Pearl Harbor Christmas by Stanley Weintraub led by Carolyn A. at Carolyn's home

January 3--This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing by Jacqueline Winspear led by Carolyn A.

February 7--A Divided Loyalty by Charles Todd led by Cindy 

March 7--Gilead by Marilynne Robinson led by Marti 

April 4--The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott led by Margie 

May 2--Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky led by Peggy 

Runner-ups include--The Gown by Jennifer Robson,  Good and Angry by David Powlison, 
No Surrender by Chris Edmonds

Two local history titles on Jerome, Ohio

I’ve been living in Columbus since 1967, and I admit that until today I’d never hear of Jerome, Ohio, which is just up the road near Dublin, and was described 65 years ago by Johnny Jones, columnist 1940-1971 for the Columbus Dispatch, as “American as apple pie” and off the state highways where you cross the O’Shaughnessy Dam Bridge near the Columbus Zoo. With Dublin spreading out, Jerome had a 90% increase in population in the last decade, from about 4,000 in 2000 to 7500 in 2010. Author of the first book, Les Gates, grew up in Jerome and recorded his fond memories in a small book titled simply “Jerome” (3d ed. 2014). Gates returned to the home place after serving in the military and was in the insurance business for many years in Dublin, OH.  After a few words about his parents and life on the Gates farm at 7379 Brock Road, he continues with memories, photos and descriptions of neighboring farms, the local school and business establishments like the Twin Oaks Golf Course and Seely Grocery Store. Gates is about my age, and includes stories of his years at Dublin High School with photos of his team sports, baseball and football.

In a conversation with another Jerome resident, 99 year old Mary Alice Schacherbauer, Les Gates learned she had a diary of her writings with memories and musings from 1914 to 2014. With his interest in Jerome, Les and his wife Mary decided to edit and publish her memories also  as “Days I remember; my memories and musings from 1914 to 2014. “ Mrs. Schacherbauer is about the age of my parents, so I particularly enjoyed her stories of school in the 1920s, and found to my surprise that people had school buses back then.  My parents lived on farms near Dixon, Illinois, and walked to school. She and her husband Lee married in 1937 and were active in the Jerome United Methodist Church.  She includes family stories and has many fond memories of grandparents and aunts and uncles. Several of her poems are included, and she closes with prayer for “our country, our world, our way of life.” One hundred years old and she has seen a lot of changes, but still enjoys life and especially her memories.

You can purchase one or both titles from Amazon or at local gift shops. Or you can contact Les Gates at goldengator1938@yahoo.com.

Reading between the lines with Condi

Having almost finished Condoleezza Rice's memoir, Extraordinary, Ordinary People, I'm impressed and alternately bored. First, it's a remarkable story of a loving, supportive family and a dutiful daughter, an only child. Second, she's quite a name dropper, and I think has included everyone who was anyone or could become a someone or is now a has been. Maybe all autobiographies are that way--I usually read biographies. However, I think she has some subtle messages for conservatives who are so quick (like me) to criticize Barack Obama's administration.

1. Her father was obviously a powerful influence in her life, and the friends he made along the way, who sat at their kitchen table in days before public accomdations for blacks were as good as what whites had, would cause great concern if someone wanted to stir up trouble about her "associations." Her father was, however, a conservative Republican, but believed in honest, confrontational dialogue with those whose political ideas were different--i.e., radical blacks. She also numbers among her friends today many black Democrats. Based on the black Republicans I've seen on Glenn Beck's show, I'm guessing she voted for Obama. If you were black, wouldn't you in 2008, before you really understood what he was about?

2. She makes no apologies for affirmative action that most likely got her established at Stanford at a young age and before she had a strong publication record--she knows she was good enough, or better than other candidates, but she is honest about the need of the department to move ahead with minority faculty hiring.

3. She makes no apologies for the academic tenure system, in fact, calls herself a fan. Even so, she says, "it's true that university faculty since the 1960s have been overwhelmingly liberal. I strongly believe that students would be better served by a wider range of views and an environment that challenges the liberal orthodoxy that is so pervasive in universities today . . . conservative colleagues say that they simply censor themselves in political debates. I have never felt the need to do so." Odd that she doesn't see the similarity to blacks in the south who needed to submit to indignities to keep their jobs and security, nor that being a black female she has a double layer of protection against the anger and narrow mindedness of the left wing academics.

4. She notes from her early experience as a staffer in the National Security Council how many offices and agencies make decisions that could/should be made by Congress or the President. (Iran-Contra was devised and carried out by NSC.) This today is one of the big issues about the Obama government and its growing list of "czars," people appointed who have great power, but have never been vetted or confirmed and who by-pass the representative government. On p. 247, she called Brent Scowcroft "the most important man in Washington whom few Americans could identify in a photo lineup" and who wanted his NSC staff out of the limelight (something she couldn't do as a black woman).

Interview seen at another website

Hobbies: I didn’t have any until I retired in 2000. I was very concerned about that so I wrote a story and a plan about possible hobbies. Now I write all the time--12 blogs, poetry, essays, and I sometimes paint and draw. I’m a better artist than many people, even better than some who make a living at it, but not good enough to satisfy me, and no burning desire so I do less and less. These are interests I had before I started kindergarten. My mother used to bring home discontinued wallpaper rolls for me to write and draw.

In college I drove a: Whatever my parents owned, and Dad changed cars frequently--every year or two. That Ford red ranchero was great fun for a teen-ager.

My worst subject in school: Algebra II in 11th grade. Panicked and dropped it and took Psychology which I really liked. I did get a C once--in tennis. The teacher was pregnant and I couldn’t even keep up with her.

College, undergrad degree: University of Illinois, Russian and Spanish with a whole lot of history. Also attended Manchester College, and two small schools, one in Maine and one in Indiana the names of which I’ve forgotten. Oh yes, and I took some classes at Ohio State and Ohio Dominican over the years.

College, graduate degree: University of Illinois, Library Science. Great school. Opened a lot of doors.

Best advice I ever got: It probably came from my mother. She never ran out--I guess the apple didn‘t fall far from the tree--but I can’t place my finger on just one thing. Probably to marry my current and only husband. She was never that thrilled with the other candidates I brought home and I think she took one look and thought I had a winner. I know we feel that way about our son-in-law.

Favorite coffee: Whatever I don’t make as long as it’s brewed in a coffee shop, not kept on a burner, and not in someone else’s kitchen. For years I drank black coffee only, but must have started adding cream sometime in the 70s. No sugar. Yuck. I started "going out" for coffee when I was in high school and never looked back. I write a blog about people I meet in coffee shops.

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NPR's liberal bias is aggravating

Usually I don't listen to our local NPR, WOSU Radio, but you all know what's the fare on Saturday--garden shows and sports. So three different times today my dial stopped at WOSU-AM.

First in the car I got Wesley Clark, complaining about Bush in Iraq but suggesting, I think, that we need to take out Iran. I only caught about 5 minutes, so I'm not sure of his drift or if he's running again. Then about an hour later on a return trip I got a book interview, and the author was genuflecting before the memory of FDR and complaining that conservatives portray liberals as spendthrifts taxing us to the poor house, but liberals haven't been in control since the 1960s. Huh? Where was this guy during the years the Democrats ran Congress and Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were in office? The interview was so worthless, I'm not even bothering to track it down for you.

But the absolute worst was around 5 p.m, when needing noise while I fixed dinner, I heard on WOSU-AM a tiny clip of Bush's speech at the U.N. about dictators, and then a whole bunch of sound bites from various dictators slamming President Bush charging violations of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights and dripping blood of the innocent Iraqis. They could have at least balanced the time.

Right after the Bush slamming with my tax dollars where NPR became a mouthpiece for dictators I might not otherwise had to listen to, I got Nina Totenburg just aghast by Justice Thomas' new autobiography. Boy, is she miffed that he's escaped the plantation. Successful black folk should be more respectful and know their place, I suppose.

"Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' autobiography My Grandfather's Son hits bookstores Oct. 1, coinciding with the start of the court's new term. Justice Thomas received a $1.5 million advance for the memoir, which is being promoted by conservative interest groups. It covers his life up to his swearing in as a member of the high court. He offers vivid, and at time seething, details about events surrounding his nomination, the charges of sexual harassment against him by Anita Hill, and his memories of growing up poor in rural Georgia. NPR obtained an advance copy." [from promo]

Nina's shocked, just shocked, that he's made this book so personal. It's just unseemly, you know? Now, any other black leader or celebrity growing up poor without his parents would be lauded for "a tortured soul," but Justice Thomas is a conservative. He's also been skewered in another book, according to Eugene Volokh in WSJ.