And then a month went by....
Ooops.
So, obviously, my semester is in full swing now (just started Week 6) and free time has been in short supply most weeks. In addition to that, I'm preparing to test for my 2nd degree black belt on this weekend, so there have been some extra prep classes for those students who are participating (testing to 1st, 2nd and/or 3rd deg), which has meant traipsing out to PA on weeknights instead of the weekend, like I usually prefer to do, and that cuts more into my study time because even though the drive time is the same, regardless, those prep classes run longer than typical classes. I also had to research and write a short essay (mine happened to be ~1k words) on the history of TKD (the required topic for 2nd degree), so I had to shoehorn that in with my regular schoolwork, too.
In general, however, life has been pretty routine: subbing, library volunteering, visiting my dad, TKD, school, taking Two to/from work, trying to get him set up with the preliminary stuff for his entrance to JWU in the fall (note to child: I am more than happy to sort through emails and figure out what needs doing. I am happy to help you read anything that's confusing. But YOU will do the work. Not me.) talking to MiniPlu every couple of days, etc etc. Jade has, thankfully, mostly recovered from her ACL injury and we're allowed to start building her up to regular walks again. Oh, and last weekend she turned 7!
For my YA Lit class, the prof is one I had last semester for a totally different class. She's super nice and always willing to help explain something, but her expectations for assignments are REALLY high, and I sometimes struggled to get all the pieces right in her assignments. This semester, I've been going through her rubrics with a fine-tooth comb, REALLY making sure I've covered every detail. I cannot begin to tell you how ecstatic I've been to get, for the first two assignments, a 100% and a 94%. And even though I got "only" a 94% on the second one, I still got a shoutout to the whole class for my project having been a fantastic example for one of the particular elements. Like, no joke, I am ECSTATIC to be finally getting a better grip on what she's after. \o/
Our weather has been all over the place the past couple of weeks, with days where the windchill is far below freezing, and other days when you can go out in a long-sleeve shirt and no sweater or jacket. Our crocuses (croci?) started blooming early and are, no doubt, very confused. We're in the midst of a couple of those warmer days, peaking on Wed with forecast temps of 65F/18C. But on Sat morning, when I have to go for an outdoor pre-dawn run (only about a mile/1.6km, but still) with the group as part of our belt test? Current forecast is for 18F/-7.7C. Here's hoping there's no wind, or it'll be even worse. FML.
And speaking of FML - Will is really hating his work life at the moment. His team of 6 within the IT department dropped to 4 a few months ago, and then, in the past couple of weeks, 2 more left. So, now it's just him and T, and he's just learned that even T is interviewing elsewhere. The department as a whole has been laboring on making this huge switch over to a new IT platform for the college, and they're in the final stages of getting it ready - but if most of Will's team is disappearing [a woman from another team came over to his team to replace one of the guys who left, the one who had been head of the team since we moved here (Will used to be team leader before our move)], then it's going to make this last stage extremely difficult to pull off. Now is not the time to be bringing in newbies who have no idea what's going on. The problem here is the community college has significantly underpaid their employees, and now they're reaping the "benefits" - people are jumping ship. Yes, Will could change jobs, too, but he doesn't WANT to. He has - mostly - liked where he's been (and he's been there since Aug 2003, shortly after we brought MiniPlu home), wants to see this damn project through to completion, and, honestly, had planned to stay where he was until he retired. He doesn't want the stress of being new somewhere else right now, or worrying that some new place will make him go in person again. So, anyway - yeah, he's been really REALLY stressed lately.
Movies: I saw Encanto a couple of weeks ago on Disney+ and, as with so many people, immediately fell in love with the music and the visual details. :D
Broadway: Two and I went to see the musical Six on Broadway at the end of Jan - his generous Christmas present to me. We had a fun day, and the musical itself was a BLAST. Go listen to the soundtrack, it's awesome. We're taking MiniPlu to see it in June.
Books: Obviously, all my reading has been for school lately, except for readalouds with Two, and the audiobook of Autoboyography, which magically showed up when I opened my Audible account. I guess at the time it came free with my Kindle edition? I dunno. Not complaining, though!
Read Aloud: "Playing the Palace" (sweet and hilarious m/m), "If This Gets Out" (boyband romance, m/m) and ... I can't think if there's been anything else. Just recently started "Here's To Us".
For school:
Choose Your Own Adventure: 8th Grade Witch (graphic novel) by Andrew E.C. Gaska: this is apparently a remake of the classic 1980s-ish text-only version, which I never read. I'm not a "creepy story" kind of person, and this is intended to be creepy for the middle-school set. So, the artwork was nice, but the various plot options did nothing for me, and in some cases just seemed pointless.
Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee: This was a book I had been eyeing for awhile anyway, as it features a trans (ftm) main character. Basically, Noah runs this blog featuring meet-cute stories involving transmale characters - except they're all fictitous, born of Noah's idealistic imagination. A troll figures out the stories are fake and begins to turn his fanbase against him, but a cute (gay) guy Noah had invented a meet-cute about (after bumping into him) offers to fake-date him to make one of the stories, at least, seem true. That guy ends up being kind of self-centered, himself, eventually, and you can clearly tell whom Noah's really going to end up with, even if that relationship takes some time to build. But, wow, I was disappointed by the story overall. Noah is incredibly shallow, whiny, lazy and self-centered for most of the book, and since I didn't really like him, it made it hard to like the general story, which could otherwise have had much more potential. Yes, some personal growth is involved. And I really did love Noah's interactions with the person he ends up with, someone who is still figuring out their pronouns (which don't end up being "they/them" btw, but I don't want to say too much more here) - the way Noah assured them that it was ok to still be figuring things out, and rolling with whatever changes that person was making - that was really sweet. But overall, yeah, I was disappointed with how irritating Noah was most of the time.
White Smoke by Tiffany D Jackson: Aaaand, we're back to the creepy. Marigold and her recently blended family (mom, younger brother, stepdad and his little girl) move to a rundown midwestern town where the mom has been granted an artist's residency as a writer, as part of a program to lure new life to the community and rebuild it. Marigold is black; the stepdad and stepdaughter are white, which adds to the tension, along with the little girl, Piper (I think she's 10) being a bratty Daddy's Girl. The town seems highly unfriendly, and there's all kinds of creepy stuff going on in the house they were given, which seems very likely to be haunted. There are tons of references to Marigold having recently come out of rehab for drug issues, and trying to rebuild her reputation within her family. (Turns out she was injured in track, got hooked on painkillers.) She also has major anxiety related to bedbugs, and the only real coping mechanism she has for dealing with stress is pot, which I didn't like, at ALL. Because of the painkiller addiction history, her mom watches her like a hawk, so Mari can't manage to sneak in any, and she's constantly jonesing for some. I accept that medical marijuana has its place, I do. But given Mari's history, it just seemed like a slippery road to start back down and also, she mostly just seemed like she was being whiny about her need for it.
I "read" this as an audiobook, and I'll just say that having the creepy stuff described out loud was not really my favorite thing. :-P There were some interesting plot twists along the way, as far as the whole "why creepy shit is happening in their house" along with "why Piper is a horrible brat". There's also a "follow the money and see where it goes" mystery to solve, too, and some good social commentary about what gentrification does to minority communities. But, erk. Just not my thing, overall. Also, the story desperately needed an epilogue.
Rolling Warrior by Judith Heumann. This is the YA adaptation to her main memoir. Judith Heumann was born in the late 1940s/early 50s but developed polio as a toddler, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down, and with limited use of her arms. Part of her story was featured in the movie "Crip Camp" from last year (highly recommend!), about how a bunch of disabled activists fought for their civil rights at a time when "civil rights" was only considered to be a race issue. Their work culminated in what would be known as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. But, anyway, in this book, Judith covers what her childhood was like, with parents who fully believed in her right to go to school, and schools who wouldn't let her in because she was disabled and considered to be a) a fire hazard and b) unteachable. Even once she forced her way in to a regular high school, graduated with honors, and went to college, she was constantly having to worry about finding someone to help her in the bathroom. This book also gives more details about the activism work she and others did. A really uplifting story, as well as an eye-opener into the lives of the disabled, especially before the ADA took hold. Recommend!
Wake by Rebecca Hall (graphic novel): This book covers the author's real-life research as an African American lawyer working on her PhD, stumbling into the realization that when there were records of slave revolts in America (or on ships bound for America), they actually seemed to be lead by women, not men. The information she uncovers was interesting, and definitely one that had never been in any textbook or lesson about slavery I had ever heard of before. It also covers a little of her personal life (lesbian partnered with a white woman, and they had a son), and in the difficulty she sometimes had in getting access to records a) from hundreds of years ago and b) from touchy periods in history that some firms (ie those with ties to the slave ships) didn't want being brought to light. Here was a case where the story was reasonably interesting and the information about slave revolts - and Rebecca's obviously intensely personal reaction to reading about her people having been enslaved - was important. But the artwork, which was just black and white, didn't really do anything for me.
A Face for Picasso by Ariel Henley. Ariel and her twin sister Xan (short for Alexandra) were born with Crouzon Syndrome, in which the bones of the skull fuse prematurely. They were diagnosed at just a few months old. While they would both undergo dozens of surgeries to alleviate pressure on their brains and adjust the shapes of their faces, keep their eyes from bulging in their sockets, etc etc, they would also undergo two MAJOR surgeries, at ages 4 and 12. The author read the audiobook aloud herself, in a somewhat flat voice, but when I heard about the almost nonstop trauma (both emotional and physical) she and Xan faced throughout their youth, I could understand why being relatively flat might be a coping mechanism. Basically, they were stared at and shunned by peers and strangers alike, because their faces didn't look "normal". They were demeaned as monsters, treated as idiots, even by some teachers who should have known better. The physical pain they endured after the major surgeries at age 12 sound almost unbearable to cope with. This was an incredibly difficult book to get through, because of all the unhappiness surrounding the two girls their whole lives, despite having incredibly loving, supportive parents who did their best but even then still didn't always know what to say and do. Ariel also developed an eating disorder as a means of coping with the trauma - she says this right up front, and also says she doesn't intend to glamorize it, and she doesn't, only mentioning that she overate and, very briefly, mentioning that she had to be later treated for bulimia without getting into details.
The title comes from the fact that when the girls were still in preschool, a French magazine had written about them, declaring that their faces were Picasso-like. And this theme crops up throughout the entire book - Ariel becomes fascinated with him, particularly because - and I didn't know this before - Picasso was apparently actually a jerk. He cheated on women, had several partners who later went on to commit suicide or have other severe mental health issues because of how he'd treated them, and basically distorted their faces in his Cubism style as a means of exploiting weaknesses. So, yeah, Ariel takes major umbridge at being compared to Picasso's works. But I did learn a lot about art, and Picasso, as well as about Crouzon Syndrome. Still, it was a difficult story to listen to. Although it did prompt me to talk to my mom about my brother, because he didn't have Crouzon syndrome, but he, too, had part of his cranium close too early, and my mom has always felt that the surgery they did to open up the space - which apparently involved cutting a strip of bone out of his skull - is what caused his cerebral palsy. (Doctors denied this, said he was born with it, but my mom disagrees.)
The main message here: DON'T stare at people who look different than you. Don't treat them like children or morons. Include them socially and teach your kids to do the same. Treat them like ordinary humans.
Words In My Hands by Asphyxia (Australian Title: "Future Girl"). Presented as the paper journal of a 16-year-old Melbourne (Australia) girl named Piper (not to be confused with the bratty Piper in White Smoke), set in a near-future time, or perhaps an AU, where a lot of food is bioengineered and "wild food" (aka what we'd call "real food") is considered dangerous. Piper has been deaf since she was 3; she can hear a bit with hearing aids, but the effort to combine the bits she can hear with lip reading leave her with constant headaches. Her mother wanted her to be as "normal" as possible. And then Piper meets Marley, who is a CODA (child of deaf adult) - and he teaches her to sign (Auslan - Australian sign language) for the first time. Marley and his mom live off of "wild food" and since the bioengineered food, fuel shortages, and other crises have made food deliveries difficult, Piper begs to learn how to grow her own food, raise her own chickens for eggs, etc. Her mother - who helped design the bioengineered food - is NOT pleased about any of this. But Piper flourishes, and becomes an accidental activist for the right to grow your own food, refusing to let the government stranglehold censor her. The "journal" presentation means that gorgeous artwork punctuates many pages - Piper wants to be an artist. It's truly a gorgeous book, and a good story overall. Recommend.
A Pho Love Story by Loan Le Modern-day Romeo & Juliet, except in this case, the warring families own competing Vietnamese restaurants across the street from each other in modern-day Southern Calif. But then the son of one family meets the daughter of the other family, and they slowly become friends, and then more than friends, all the while hiding this from their respective families. The son, Bao, has kind of coasted by on mediocrity his whole life, but finally finds something he's passionate about when he gets reluctantly roped into writing and editing for the school newspaper - and discovers he's good at it. The daughter, Linh, wants to be an artist and is very talented, but her parents don't believe art is an acceptable career path, only a hobby, so she has to hide how much it truly means to her. A story about being true to yourself, and long-buried family hurts (turns out the family rivalry is about a lot more than the restaurants), and about being an immigrant family working to live the American Dream. Cute story, easy read, aside from a LOT of Vietnamese being thrown around. You can generally figure out the context of most words, but I have no idea what a lot of the foods were. This book is very much a love letter to Vietnamese food and families, though.
I'm almost done with my current audiobook, a nonfiction story called From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry about a Chinese-American 20-something, Victor Chin, being killed with a baseball bat by a white guy a week before his (Victor's) wedding in 1982. While there's never any doubt about who killed him, the white guy gets off super-light at his trial for manslaughter. An appeal to the judge to reconsider fails, but then Victor's friends and family convene a second trial for civil rights abuse, saying the crime was racially motivated. But was it? Or was it just a drunken brawl that got out of hand? Up until this point, there hadn't ever been a civil rights claim against an Asian American, only against Black people, which is what made this whole case so groundbreaking. The author has done a good job of presenting multiple sides. I actually don't know what I think - whether it was racially motivated or not. If you like legal cases, civil rights, true crime - any of that - I recommend this.
And now that an hour and a half have gone by, I need to crash. But now that it's after midnight, let me wish all of you a very happy Twos-Day! (Tuesday 2/22/22 aka 22/2/22)
So, obviously, my semester is in full swing now (just started Week 6) and free time has been in short supply most weeks. In addition to that, I'm preparing to test for my 2nd degree black belt on this weekend, so there have been some extra prep classes for those students who are participating (testing to 1st, 2nd and/or 3rd deg), which has meant traipsing out to PA on weeknights instead of the weekend, like I usually prefer to do, and that cuts more into my study time because even though the drive time is the same, regardless, those prep classes run longer than typical classes. I also had to research and write a short essay (mine happened to be ~1k words) on the history of TKD (the required topic for 2nd degree), so I had to shoehorn that in with my regular schoolwork, too.
In general, however, life has been pretty routine: subbing, library volunteering, visiting my dad, TKD, school, taking Two to/from work, trying to get him set up with the preliminary stuff for his entrance to JWU in the fall (note to child: I am more than happy to sort through emails and figure out what needs doing. I am happy to help you read anything that's confusing. But YOU will do the work. Not me.) talking to MiniPlu every couple of days, etc etc. Jade has, thankfully, mostly recovered from her ACL injury and we're allowed to start building her up to regular walks again. Oh, and last weekend she turned 7!
For my YA Lit class, the prof is one I had last semester for a totally different class. She's super nice and always willing to help explain something, but her expectations for assignments are REALLY high, and I sometimes struggled to get all the pieces right in her assignments. This semester, I've been going through her rubrics with a fine-tooth comb, REALLY making sure I've covered every detail. I cannot begin to tell you how ecstatic I've been to get, for the first two assignments, a 100% and a 94%. And even though I got "only" a 94% on the second one, I still got a shoutout to the whole class for my project having been a fantastic example for one of the particular elements. Like, no joke, I am ECSTATIC to be finally getting a better grip on what she's after. \o/
Our weather has been all over the place the past couple of weeks, with days where the windchill is far below freezing, and other days when you can go out in a long-sleeve shirt and no sweater or jacket. Our crocuses (croci?) started blooming early and are, no doubt, very confused. We're in the midst of a couple of those warmer days, peaking on Wed with forecast temps of 65F/18C. But on Sat morning, when I have to go for an outdoor pre-dawn run (only about a mile/1.6km, but still) with the group as part of our belt test? Current forecast is for 18F/-7.7C. Here's hoping there's no wind, or it'll be even worse. FML.
And speaking of FML - Will is really hating his work life at the moment. His team of 6 within the IT department dropped to 4 a few months ago, and then, in the past couple of weeks, 2 more left. So, now it's just him and T, and he's just learned that even T is interviewing elsewhere. The department as a whole has been laboring on making this huge switch over to a new IT platform for the college, and they're in the final stages of getting it ready - but if most of Will's team is disappearing [a woman from another team came over to his team to replace one of the guys who left, the one who had been head of the team since we moved here (Will used to be team leader before our move)], then it's going to make this last stage extremely difficult to pull off. Now is not the time to be bringing in newbies who have no idea what's going on. The problem here is the community college has significantly underpaid their employees, and now they're reaping the "benefits" - people are jumping ship. Yes, Will could change jobs, too, but he doesn't WANT to. He has - mostly - liked where he's been (and he's been there since Aug 2003, shortly after we brought MiniPlu home), wants to see this damn project through to completion, and, honestly, had planned to stay where he was until he retired. He doesn't want the stress of being new somewhere else right now, or worrying that some new place will make him go in person again. So, anyway - yeah, he's been really REALLY stressed lately.
Movies: I saw Encanto a couple of weeks ago on Disney+ and, as with so many people, immediately fell in love with the music and the visual details. :D
Broadway: Two and I went to see the musical Six on Broadway at the end of Jan - his generous Christmas present to me. We had a fun day, and the musical itself was a BLAST. Go listen to the soundtrack, it's awesome. We're taking MiniPlu to see it in June.
Books: Obviously, all my reading has been for school lately, except for readalouds with Two, and the audiobook of Autoboyography, which magically showed up when I opened my Audible account. I guess at the time it came free with my Kindle edition? I dunno. Not complaining, though!
Read Aloud: "Playing the Palace" (sweet and hilarious m/m), "If This Gets Out" (boyband romance, m/m) and ... I can't think if there's been anything else. Just recently started "Here's To Us".
For school:
Choose Your Own Adventure: 8th Grade Witch (graphic novel) by Andrew E.C. Gaska: this is apparently a remake of the classic 1980s-ish text-only version, which I never read. I'm not a "creepy story" kind of person, and this is intended to be creepy for the middle-school set. So, the artwork was nice, but the various plot options did nothing for me, and in some cases just seemed pointless.
Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee: This was a book I had been eyeing for awhile anyway, as it features a trans (ftm) main character. Basically, Noah runs this blog featuring meet-cute stories involving transmale characters - except they're all fictitous, born of Noah's idealistic imagination. A troll figures out the stories are fake and begins to turn his fanbase against him, but a cute (gay) guy Noah had invented a meet-cute about (after bumping into him) offers to fake-date him to make one of the stories, at least, seem true. That guy ends up being kind of self-centered, himself, eventually, and you can clearly tell whom Noah's really going to end up with, even if that relationship takes some time to build. But, wow, I was disappointed by the story overall. Noah is incredibly shallow, whiny, lazy and self-centered for most of the book, and since I didn't really like him, it made it hard to like the general story, which could otherwise have had much more potential. Yes, some personal growth is involved. And I really did love Noah's interactions with the person he ends up with, someone who is still figuring out their pronouns (which don't end up being "they/them" btw, but I don't want to say too much more here) - the way Noah assured them that it was ok to still be figuring things out, and rolling with whatever changes that person was making - that was really sweet. But overall, yeah, I was disappointed with how irritating Noah was most of the time.
White Smoke by Tiffany D Jackson: Aaaand, we're back to the creepy. Marigold and her recently blended family (mom, younger brother, stepdad and his little girl) move to a rundown midwestern town where the mom has been granted an artist's residency as a writer, as part of a program to lure new life to the community and rebuild it. Marigold is black; the stepdad and stepdaughter are white, which adds to the tension, along with the little girl, Piper (I think she's 10) being a bratty Daddy's Girl. The town seems highly unfriendly, and there's all kinds of creepy stuff going on in the house they were given, which seems very likely to be haunted. There are tons of references to Marigold having recently come out of rehab for drug issues, and trying to rebuild her reputation within her family. (Turns out she was injured in track, got hooked on painkillers.) She also has major anxiety related to bedbugs, and the only real coping mechanism she has for dealing with stress is pot, which I didn't like, at ALL. Because of the painkiller addiction history, her mom watches her like a hawk, so Mari can't manage to sneak in any, and she's constantly jonesing for some. I accept that medical marijuana has its place, I do. But given Mari's history, it just seemed like a slippery road to start back down and also, she mostly just seemed like she was being whiny about her need for it.
I "read" this as an audiobook, and I'll just say that having the creepy stuff described out loud was not really my favorite thing. :-P There were some interesting plot twists along the way, as far as the whole "why creepy shit is happening in their house" along with "why Piper is a horrible brat". There's also a "follow the money and see where it goes" mystery to solve, too, and some good social commentary about what gentrification does to minority communities. But, erk. Just not my thing, overall. Also, the story desperately needed an epilogue.
Rolling Warrior by Judith Heumann. This is the YA adaptation to her main memoir. Judith Heumann was born in the late 1940s/early 50s but developed polio as a toddler, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down, and with limited use of her arms. Part of her story was featured in the movie "Crip Camp" from last year (highly recommend!), about how a bunch of disabled activists fought for their civil rights at a time when "civil rights" was only considered to be a race issue. Their work culminated in what would be known as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. But, anyway, in this book, Judith covers what her childhood was like, with parents who fully believed in her right to go to school, and schools who wouldn't let her in because she was disabled and considered to be a) a fire hazard and b) unteachable. Even once she forced her way in to a regular high school, graduated with honors, and went to college, she was constantly having to worry about finding someone to help her in the bathroom. This book also gives more details about the activism work she and others did. A really uplifting story, as well as an eye-opener into the lives of the disabled, especially before the ADA took hold. Recommend!
Wake by Rebecca Hall (graphic novel): This book covers the author's real-life research as an African American lawyer working on her PhD, stumbling into the realization that when there were records of slave revolts in America (or on ships bound for America), they actually seemed to be lead by women, not men. The information she uncovers was interesting, and definitely one that had never been in any textbook or lesson about slavery I had ever heard of before. It also covers a little of her personal life (lesbian partnered with a white woman, and they had a son), and in the difficulty she sometimes had in getting access to records a) from hundreds of years ago and b) from touchy periods in history that some firms (ie those with ties to the slave ships) didn't want being brought to light. Here was a case where the story was reasonably interesting and the information about slave revolts - and Rebecca's obviously intensely personal reaction to reading about her people having been enslaved - was important. But the artwork, which was just black and white, didn't really do anything for me.
A Face for Picasso by Ariel Henley. Ariel and her twin sister Xan (short for Alexandra) were born with Crouzon Syndrome, in which the bones of the skull fuse prematurely. They were diagnosed at just a few months old. While they would both undergo dozens of surgeries to alleviate pressure on their brains and adjust the shapes of their faces, keep their eyes from bulging in their sockets, etc etc, they would also undergo two MAJOR surgeries, at ages 4 and 12. The author read the audiobook aloud herself, in a somewhat flat voice, but when I heard about the almost nonstop trauma (both emotional and physical) she and Xan faced throughout their youth, I could understand why being relatively flat might be a coping mechanism. Basically, they were stared at and shunned by peers and strangers alike, because their faces didn't look "normal". They were demeaned as monsters, treated as idiots, even by some teachers who should have known better. The physical pain they endured after the major surgeries at age 12 sound almost unbearable to cope with. This was an incredibly difficult book to get through, because of all the unhappiness surrounding the two girls their whole lives, despite having incredibly loving, supportive parents who did their best but even then still didn't always know what to say and do. Ariel also developed an eating disorder as a means of coping with the trauma - she says this right up front, and also says she doesn't intend to glamorize it, and she doesn't, only mentioning that she overate and, very briefly, mentioning that she had to be later treated for bulimia without getting into details.
The title comes from the fact that when the girls were still in preschool, a French magazine had written about them, declaring that their faces were Picasso-like. And this theme crops up throughout the entire book - Ariel becomes fascinated with him, particularly because - and I didn't know this before - Picasso was apparently actually a jerk. He cheated on women, had several partners who later went on to commit suicide or have other severe mental health issues because of how he'd treated them, and basically distorted their faces in his Cubism style as a means of exploiting weaknesses. So, yeah, Ariel takes major umbridge at being compared to Picasso's works. But I did learn a lot about art, and Picasso, as well as about Crouzon Syndrome. Still, it was a difficult story to listen to. Although it did prompt me to talk to my mom about my brother, because he didn't have Crouzon syndrome, but he, too, had part of his cranium close too early, and my mom has always felt that the surgery they did to open up the space - which apparently involved cutting a strip of bone out of his skull - is what caused his cerebral palsy. (Doctors denied this, said he was born with it, but my mom disagrees.)
The main message here: DON'T stare at people who look different than you. Don't treat them like children or morons. Include them socially and teach your kids to do the same. Treat them like ordinary humans.
Words In My Hands by Asphyxia (Australian Title: "Future Girl"). Presented as the paper journal of a 16-year-old Melbourne (Australia) girl named Piper (not to be confused with the bratty Piper in White Smoke), set in a near-future time, or perhaps an AU, where a lot of food is bioengineered and "wild food" (aka what we'd call "real food") is considered dangerous. Piper has been deaf since she was 3; she can hear a bit with hearing aids, but the effort to combine the bits she can hear with lip reading leave her with constant headaches. Her mother wanted her to be as "normal" as possible. And then Piper meets Marley, who is a CODA (child of deaf adult) - and he teaches her to sign (Auslan - Australian sign language) for the first time. Marley and his mom live off of "wild food" and since the bioengineered food, fuel shortages, and other crises have made food deliveries difficult, Piper begs to learn how to grow her own food, raise her own chickens for eggs, etc. Her mother - who helped design the bioengineered food - is NOT pleased about any of this. But Piper flourishes, and becomes an accidental activist for the right to grow your own food, refusing to let the government stranglehold censor her. The "journal" presentation means that gorgeous artwork punctuates many pages - Piper wants to be an artist. It's truly a gorgeous book, and a good story overall. Recommend.
A Pho Love Story by Loan Le Modern-day Romeo & Juliet, except in this case, the warring families own competing Vietnamese restaurants across the street from each other in modern-day Southern Calif. But then the son of one family meets the daughter of the other family, and they slowly become friends, and then more than friends, all the while hiding this from their respective families. The son, Bao, has kind of coasted by on mediocrity his whole life, but finally finds something he's passionate about when he gets reluctantly roped into writing and editing for the school newspaper - and discovers he's good at it. The daughter, Linh, wants to be an artist and is very talented, but her parents don't believe art is an acceptable career path, only a hobby, so she has to hide how much it truly means to her. A story about being true to yourself, and long-buried family hurts (turns out the family rivalry is about a lot more than the restaurants), and about being an immigrant family working to live the American Dream. Cute story, easy read, aside from a LOT of Vietnamese being thrown around. You can generally figure out the context of most words, but I have no idea what a lot of the foods were. This book is very much a love letter to Vietnamese food and families, though.
I'm almost done with my current audiobook, a nonfiction story called From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry about a Chinese-American 20-something, Victor Chin, being killed with a baseball bat by a white guy a week before his (Victor's) wedding in 1982. While there's never any doubt about who killed him, the white guy gets off super-light at his trial for manslaughter. An appeal to the judge to reconsider fails, but then Victor's friends and family convene a second trial for civil rights abuse, saying the crime was racially motivated. But was it? Or was it just a drunken brawl that got out of hand? Up until this point, there hadn't ever been a civil rights claim against an Asian American, only against Black people, which is what made this whole case so groundbreaking. The author has done a good job of presenting multiple sides. I actually don't know what I think - whether it was racially motivated or not. If you like legal cases, civil rights, true crime - any of that - I recommend this.
And now that an hour and a half have gone by, I need to crash. But now that it's after midnight, let me wish all of you a very happy Twos-Day! (Tuesday 2/22/22 aka 22/2/22)