Kate’s 2¢: “The Vanishing Half” by Britt Bennett

“The Vanishing Half” by Britt Bennett

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   This story bothers me. You might think: So what! And I’d agree with you.

   The story opens with Desiree Vignes and her 7-year old daughter, Jude,  returning to Malard, LA in 1968  after Desiree and her twin sister, Stella, ran away 14-years ago.

   In 1848, Alfons DeQuer created a town where light-skinned Negros could live in peace. They bred light skin until his 3X twin granddaughters were so beautiful and fair-skinned, they could pass as white. Idea and place became one and marrying a black was frowned on and discouraged.

   As young children, the twins witnessed several white men drag their father out of his wood-working workshop, stomp on his fingers, and shoot him. They tracked him down in the hospital and finished him off, so he couldn’t take any more customers from their furniture business.

   After the twins ran away to New Orleans, Stella faded into the white culture. Desiree became an FBI finger-print expert, married a black attorney, and had a daughter. At first, it might have been rebellion or it might have been love, however, it turned to dread when he started to beat her. The ‘hunter’ her husband hired to find his run-away wife and child, happened to be an ardent admirer of Desiree, from when they were teenagers.  Early Jones didn’t want to turn her in and, instead, offered to hunt for Stella.

   In 1978, 17-year-old Jude, lithesome, tall, and very black rode the bus into Las Angeles, CA  to attend UCLA on a full-Track Scholarship. She meets Reese, a trans-gender, and works with a catering business for the white and wealthy. It is during one of her gigs that she gets the surprise of her life.

   Stella has emersed herself in the pampered life as the wife of a rich, white banker, living in a gated community. In fear of her secret being discovered, she protests the sale of the house across the street to a black family with one daughter. Things turn ugly and, after the family moves out, Stella starts taking courses for a degree in math.    

   Jude befriends Stella’s spoiled, actress daughter, in an effort to find out more information about her aunt. One night Jude confronts Stella and is rebuffed.

   Unknown to each other, Jude, who is now a med student,  accompanies Reese for his surgery and Kennedy’s soap opera acting career put them all in NYC. Jude and Kennedy re-unite in an uneasy truce, and Jude passes her a photo of their mothers with their Grandmother at their Grandfather’s funeral.

   Kennedy’s questions get to Stella and she goes to confront Desiree in Mallard. They resume their twinness, but Stella vanishes back to her white life. Even the death of their mother doesn’t re-unite the twins.

   I finally figured out why this story bothers me. So much of being a separatist or inclusionist, straight or gay, male or female, black or white, citified or countrified, is that they lie. They not only lie to each other, they lie to themselves.   

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

britbennett.com

Bennett (b. circa 1989) was raised in Southern California and received an undergraduate degree in English from Stanford University. She later attended the University of Michigan for her M.F.A. She also studied at Oxford University.[1]

   While she was completing her M.F.A. at Michigan, Bennett’s 2014 essay for Jezebel, “I Don’t Know What to Do With Good White People”[2] gained considerable attention, generating over one million views in three days.[3] While at Michigan, she also won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers.[4]

She has since published other nonfiction essays, including a history of black dolls called “Addy Walker, American Girl” for the Paris Review,[5] as well as a review of the 2015 Ta-Nehisi Coates book Between the World and Me for The New Yorker.[6] Vogue said Bennett’s nonfiction essays “recall Ta-Nehisi Coates [with] a similar ability to contextualize the present moment in a bigoted past.”[3]

   The Washington Post called The Vanishing Half a “fierce examination of contemporary passing and the price so many pay for a new identity.”[15] Within a month of publication it was reported that HBO had acquired the rights for “low seven-figures” to develop a limited series with Bennett as executive producer.[16]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

The vanishing half DB99791

Bennett, Brit Reading time: 11 hours, 36 minutes.

Shayna Small

Family

Bestsellers

Desiree Vignes and her daughter return home to Louisiana in 1968, fourteen years after Desiree and her identical twin sister Stella ran away. The sisters ended up on different paths, and as Desiree struggles with the racial tensions of her hometown, Stella lives her life passing as white. Violence, strong language, and some descriptions of sex. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller. 2020.

Download The vanishing half DB99791

Cornucopia: CarliGrace, acrostic

CarliGrace

By Kate Chamberlin

October 30, 2022

Collie and Labrador mix is a Lollie

ADHD, pace too fast, pull too hard

Ready to play, 21-months old

Lean body, black with white chest

Intelligent, very independent

Gazelle-like prancing on the patio to leap onto the grass

Related well to elderly cat and retired guide dog

A slow, dainty eater at mealtime

Chewed two rug bindings, a hair brush, leather, and lots of garden mulch

Ever-after partner will be someone else.

Kate’s 2¢: “Forty autumns: a family’s story of courage and survival on both sides of the Berlin Wall” by Nina Willner

“Forty autumns: a family’s story of courage and survival on both sides of the Berlin Wall” by Nina Willner

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   I enjoyed this book very much. Cassandra Campbell did a great job of reading this powerful story.

   I grew up during the Cold War, but, I must have been rather sheltered by my parents. I wasn’t aware of many of the hardships the East Germans were experiencing. I, like the author, seemed to exist on a parallel plane, until, as a young adult, the facts became more widly known.  She had the advantage of experiencing the truth as she infiltrated East Germany for her military job.

From the WEB:

Nina Willner is an American nonfiction author, a former intelligence officer and human rights activist. Her first book Forty Autumns A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall (HarperCollins William Morrow, 2016,

ISBN 0062410318) is the true story of Willner’s mother’s escape from communist East Germany at age 20, the large family she left behind the Iron Curtain, and their four-decade journey to reunite. During the Cold War, Willner, then a 22-year-old U.S. Army intelligence officer, was sent into the heart of Soviet-controlled East Berlin to lead secret spy missions. Willner uses her personal story to tell the broader story of the Cold War and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

   Nina Willner is a popular American Activist. Born on 1 March 1961 in United States of America

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Forty autumns: a family’s story of courage and survival on both sides of the Berlin Wall DB101454

Willner, Nina Reading time: 10 hours, 7 minutes.

Cassandra Campbell

Biography

A former American military intelligence officer recounts her experiences with her family’s division by the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. She details her own escape from East to West Germany and subsequent move to America, as well as her daughter’s intelligence work in Berlin mere miles from their German relatives. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2016.

Download Forty autumns: a family’s story of courage and survival on both sides of the Berlin Wall DB101454

Kate’s 2¢: “Creativity: a short and cheerful guide” by John Cleese

“Creativity: a short and cheerful guide” by John Cleese

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   I actually enjoyed the author reading his own short boo,  He seems to have a practical solution to the whole idea of creativity.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

johncleese.com

Early life

Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, the only child of Reginald Francis Cleese (1893–1972), an insurance salesman, and his wife Muriel Evelyn (née Cross, 1899–2000), the daughter of an auctioneer.[4] His family’s surname was originally Cheese, but his father had thought it was embarrassing and used the name Cleese when he enlisted in the Army during the First World War; he changed it officially by deed poll in 1923.[5][6] As a child, Cleese supported Bristol City and Somerset County Cricket Club.[7][8] Cleese was educated at St Peter’s Preparatory School[9] (paid for by money his mother inherited[10]), where he received a prize for English and did well at cricket and boxing. When he was 13, he was awarded an exhibition at Clifton College, an English public school in Bristol. He was already more than 6 feet (1.83 m) tall by then.[11]

“The biggest influence was The Goon Show. Kids were devoted to it. It was written by Spike Milligan. It also had Peter Sellers in it, who of course is the greatest voice man of all time. In the morning, we’d be at school and we’d discuss the whole thing and rehash the jokes and talk about it. We were obsessed with it.”

—Cleese on his greatest comedic influence growing up, 1950s BBC Radio comedy The Goon Show.[12]

Cleese allegedly defaced the school grounds, as a prank, by painting footprints to suggest that the statue of Field Marshal Earl Haig had got down from his plinth and gone to the toilet.[13] Cleese played cricket in the First XI and did well academically, passing eight O-Levels and three A-Levels in mathematics, physics and chemistry.[14][15] In his autobiography So, Anyway, he says that discovering, aged 17, he had not been made a house prefect by his housemaster affected his outlook: “It was not fair and therefore it was unworthy of my respect… I believe that this moment changed my perspective on the world.”[16]

Cleese could not go straight to Cambridge, as the ending of National Service meant there were twice the usual number of applicants for places, so he returned to his prep school for two years[17] to teach science, English, geography, history, and Latin[18] (he drew on his Latin teaching experience later for a scene in Life of Brian, in which he corrects Brian’s badly written Latin graffiti).[19] He then took up a place he had won at Downing College, Cambridge, to read law. He also joined the Cambridge Footlights. He recalled that he went to the Cambridge Guildhall, where each university society had a stall, and went up to the Footlights stall, where he was asked if he could sing or dance. He replied “no” as he was not allowed to sing at his school because he was so bad, and if there was anything worse than his singing, it was his dancing. He was then asked “Well, what do you do?” to which he replied, “I make people laugh.”[17]

At the Footlights theatrical club, Cleese spent a lot of time with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie and met his future writing partner Graham Chapman.[17] Cleese wrote extra material for the 1961 Footlights Revue I Thought I Saw It Move,[17][20] and was registrar for the Footlights Club during 1962. He was also in the cast of the 1962 Footlights Revue Double Take![17][20] Cleese graduated from Cambridge in 1963 with an upper second. Despite his successes on The Frost Report, his father sent him cuttings from The Daily Telegraph offering management jobs in places like Marks & Spencer.[21]

John Marwood Cleese (/kliːz/ KLEEZ; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Along with his Python co-stars Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman, Cleese starred in Monty Python films, which include Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979) and The Meaning of Life (1983).

In the mid-1970s, Cleese and first wife Connie Booth co-wrote the sitcom Fawlty Towers, in which he starred as hotel owner Basil Fawlty, for which he won the 1980 British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance. In 2000 the show topped the British Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes; and in a 2001 Channel 4 poll, Basil was ranked second on its list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters.

Cleese co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and Fierce Creatures (1997), both of which he also wrote. For A Fish Called Wanda he was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He has also starred in Time Bandits (1981) and Rat Race (2001) and has appeared in many other films, including Silverado (1985), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), two James Bond films (as R and Q), two Harry Potter films (as Nearly Headless Nick) and the last three Shrek films.

Cleese has specialised in political and religious satire,[1] black comedy, sketch comedy, and surreal humour.[2] He was ranked the second best comedian ever in a 2005 Channel 4 poll of fellow comedians.[3] With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay, he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films. In 1976, Cleese co-founded The Secret Policeman’s Ball benefit shows to raise funds for the human rights organization Amnesty International. Although a staunch supporter of the Liberal Democrats, in 1999 he turned down an offer from the party to nominate him for a life peerage.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Creativity: a short and cheerful guide DB105851

Cleese, John Reading time: 1 hour, 2 minutes.

John Cleese

Psychology and Self-Help

Humor

The actor and co-founder of the Monty Python comedy troupe shares lighthearted advice on how anyone can learn the skill of creativity, drawing on personal experience to explain how to get into the right frame of mind, develop worthwhile ideas, and overcome blocks. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2020.

Download Creativity: a short and cheerful guide DB105851

Kate’s 2¢: “Keep it pithy: useful observations in a tough world” by Bill O’Reilly

“Keep it pithy: useful observations in a tough world” by Bill O’Reilly

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   I’m going to re-read this book.

From: www.billoreilly.com/pg/jsp/general/billbio.jsp

Bill O’Reilly was born in Manhattan, and raised on Long Island. His Bachelor’s Degree is in History from Marist College, and he has a Master’s in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University and another Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

From NLS/BARD/LOC          :

Keep it pithy: useful observations in a tough world DB76764

O’Reilly, Bill. Reading time: 3 hours, 14 minutes.

Read by Patrick Downer. A production of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.

Government and Politics

Bestsellers

Fox News television commentator looks back on his predictions concerning the presidency of Barack Obama and offers his views on the secular progressive agenda, European socialism, religion, terrorism, and more. Bestseller. 2013.

Download Keep it pithy: useful observations in a tough world

Kate’s 2¢: “Wild nights out: the magic of exploring the outdoors after dark” by Chris Salisbury

“Wild nights out: the magic of exploring the outdoors after dark” by Chris Salisbury

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   I really enjoyed reading this ‘how-to’ book. It is chock full of activities to use with children and adults to encourage them to experience the woods at night.

   Many of the things I experience all the time, since I am totally blind. Some of the activities I’ve used with groups during “Sensitivity Training’ to give them a sense of what it is like to be totally blind, aka, walking in the dark.

   Much of the night walks emphasize using our other senses, which can be rather over-whelming and should be entered into with small steps.

https://www.wildandwell.org/speaker-link/chris-salisburyActions for this site

Chris Salisbury

Chris founded WildWise, an outdoor education and training company, in 1999 after many years working as an education officer for Devon Wildlife Trust. With a professional background in theatre, a qualification in drama therapy and a career in environmental education, Chris uses every creative means at his disposal to encourage people to enjoy and value the natural world on the courses he facilitates in the UK and abroad.

Chris is a course facilitator at Schumacher College in Devon, where he also directs the acclaimed ‘Call of the Wild’ foundation year-programme.  He is a professional storyteller (aka Spindle Wayfarer) and has performed for royalty. He is also the founder and Artistic Director for the West country Storytelling Festival.  In his capacity as a ‘Be the Change’ facilitator he offers symposiums for interested groups.

Chris is married with 4 children and a dog called Dexter. He lives very happily on the edge of the forest in Dartington, Devon

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Wild nights out: the magic of exploring the outdoors after dark DB104538

Salisbury, Chris Reading time: 7 hours, 34 minutes.

Jon Pinnow

Sports and Recreation

Animals and Wildlife

Nature and the Environment

Environmental educator and founder of WildWise provides a hands-on guide for those who wish to take kids (of all ages) outdoors for an adventurous, even slightly scary nighttime nature experience. Includes a collection of unique activities to explore the natural world from dusk till dawn. 2021.

Download Wild nights out: the magic of exploring the outdoors after dark DB104538

Kate’s 2¢: “Call us what we carry poems” by Amanda Gorman

“Call us what we carry poems” by Amanda Gorman

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

“In the Deep’:   We swam through the news like a bucking at sea/ for a year our telefision was a lighthouse/ blinking only in warning / never in warmth…Don’t we recognize all the ways normal can stutter an die?…Let no one again have to begin, love, or end alone.  

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amanda S. C. Gorman[1] (born March 7, 1998)[2] is an American poet and activist. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015. In 2021, she delivered her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

Her inauguration poem generated international acclaim, and shortly thereafter, two of her books achieved best-seller status, and she obtained a professional management contract. In February 2021, Gorman was highlighted in Time magazine’s 100 Next list under the category of “Phenoms”, with a profile written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.[3] That same month, Gorman became the first poet to perform at the Super Bowl, when she delivered her poem “Chorus of the Captains” at Super Bowl LV.[4]

   Born in Los Angeles, California,[5][6] Gorman was raised by her single mother, Joan Wicks, a 6th-grade English teacher in Watts,[7] with her two siblings.[5][8] Her twin sister, Gabrielle, is an activist[9] and filmmaker.[10] Gorman has said she grew up in an environment with limited television access.[11] She has described her young self as a “weird child” who enjoyed reading and writing and was encouraged by her mother.[5]

Gorman has an auditory processing disorder and is hypersensitive to sound.[5] She also had a speech impediment during childhood.[12][13] Gorman participated in speech therapy during her childhood and Elida Kocharian of The Harvard Crimson wrote in 2018, “Gorman doesn’t view her speech impediment as a crutch—rather, she sees it as a gift and a strength.”[14] Gorman told The Harvard Gazette in 2018, “I always saw it as a strength because since I was experiencing these obstacles in terms of my auditory and vocal skills, I became really good at reading and writing. I realized that at a young age when I was reciting the Marianne Deborah Williamson quote that ‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure’ to my mom.”[1] In 2021, Gorman told CBS This Morning co-host Anthony Mason that she used songs as a form of speech therapy, and explained, “My favorite thing to practice was the song ‘Aaron Burr, Sir,’ from Hamilton because it is jam-packed with R’s. And I said, ‘if I can keep up with Leslie in this track, then I am on my way to being able to say this R in a poem.”[15]

Gorman attended New Roads, a private school in Santa Monica, for grades K–12.[16] As a senior, she received a Milken Family Foundation college scholarship.[17] She studied sociology at Harvard College,[18] graduating cum laude in 2020[19][20] as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.[21][22] In 2019, Gorman spent a semester studying in Madrid, Spain,[23] supported by IES Abroad.[24]

Career[edit]

Beginnings and recognition (2014–2020)[edit]

Gorman’s art and activism focus on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora.[25][26] She has said she was inspired to become a youth delegate for the United Nations in 2013 after watching a speech by Pakistani Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai.[27] Gorman was chosen as the first youth poet laureate of Los Angeles in 2014.[28] In 2014 it was reported that Gorman was “editing the first draft of a novel the 16‑year‑old has been writing over the last two years.”[29] She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015.[30]

In 2016, Gorman founded the nonprofit organization One Pen One Page, a youth writing and leadership program.[31][32] In 2017, she became the first author to be featured on XQ Institute’s Book of the Month, a monthly giveaway to share inspiring Gen Z’s favorite books. She wrote a tribute for black athletes for Nike[33] and has a book deal with Viking Children’s Books to write two children’s picture books.[34][35]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:Call us what we carry: poems DB106426

Gorman, Amanda Reading time: 3 hours, 34 minutes.

Amanda Gorman

Poetry

Bestsellers

A collection of more than seventy poems written by National Youth Poet Laureate and New York Times bestselling author Amanda Gorman. Reflects on the past, present, and future, exploring history, language, identity, grief, and hope. Includes The Hill We Climb, which was read during the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, in 2021. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller. 2021.

Download Call us what we carry: poems DB106426

Kate’s 2¢: “The Last House On the Street” by Diane Chamberlain and Susan Bennett

“The Last House On the Street” by Diane Chamberlain and Susan Bennett

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   I really enjoyed this story, although, sometimes jumping back and forth between generations was unsettling. It certainly brought to the forefront the danger of being a civil rights proponent ‘back in the day’  and how its secrets still affected the ‘present’.

   No the author and I, as far as I know, are not related. Our last names are spelled differently.  

I was an insatiable reader as a child, and that fact, combined with a vivid imagination, inspired me to write. I penned a few truly terrible “novellas” at age twelve, then put fiction aside for many years as I pursued my education.

I grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey and spent my summers at the Jersey Shore, two settings that have found their way into my novels. In high school, my favorite authors were the unlikely combination of Victoria Holt and Sinclair Lewis. I loved Holt’s flair for gothic suspense and Lewis’s character studies as well as his exploration of social values, and both those authors influenced the writer I am today.

I attended Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in New Jersey before moving to San Diego, where I received both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from San Diego State University. After graduating, I worked in a couple of youth counseling agencies and then focused on medical social work, which I adored. I worked in hospitals in San Diego and Washington, D.C. before opening a private psychotherapy practice in Alexandria, Virginia, specializing in adolescents. I reluctantly closed my practice when I realized that I could no longer split my time between two careers and be effective at both of them.

It was while I was working in San Diego that I started writing. I’d had a story in my mind since I was a young adolescent about a group of people living together at the Jersey Shore. While waiting for a doctor’s appointment one day, I pulled out a pen and pad and began putting that story on paper. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I took a class in fiction writing, but for the most part, I “learned by doing.” That story, PRIVATE RELATIONS, took me four years to complete. I sold it in 1986, but it wasn’t published until 1989 (three very long years!), when it earned me the RITA award for Best Single Title Contemporary Romance Novel. Except for a brief stint writing for daytime TV (One Life to Live) and a few miscellaneous articles for newspapers and magazines, I’ve focused my efforts on book-length fiction and have written twenty-eight novels.

My stories are often filled with twists and surprises and–I hope–they also tug at the emotions. They have always been hard to characterize—some are contemporary, some are historical, some are suspenseful, and there’s even a bit of time travel thrown into the mix with The Dream Daughter. What they do have in common is the focus on relationships — between men and women, parents and children, sisters and brothers, friends and enemies. I can’t think of anything more fascinating than the way people struggle with life’s trials and tribulations, both together and alone.

I now live and write in North Carolina, the state which has become my true home and has also spawned many settings for my stories. I live with my significant other, John, a photographer and film maker, and our sweet Shetland Sheepdog, Cole. I have three grown stepdaughters, a couple of sons-in-law and four grandkids.

For me, the real joy of writing is having the opportunity to touch readers with my words. I hope that my stories move you in some way and give you hours of enjoyable reading.

Read by Susan Bennett, who  was born in Burlington, Vermont, and attended high school at Clinton Central School in Clinton, New York. In 1967, she enrolled in Pembroke College and graduated in 1971 from Brown University after the two schools merged. In college, Bennett focused on the classics, intending to be a teacher.

Alma mater: Brown University

Occupation: Voice actress, singer

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

The last house on the street DB106437

Chamberlain, Diane; Bennett, Susan Reading time: 12 hours, 13 minutes.

Susan Bennett

Suspense Fiction

Family

Romance

Two women, a generation apart, find themselves bound by tragedy and an unsolved, decades-old mystery. In 1965, Ellie chafes against the future planned for her and works to register black votes in her North Carolina home town. In 2010, widow Kayla receives warnings not to move into her new home. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2022.

Download The last house on the street DB106437

Kate’s 2¢:  “A lab of one’s own: one woman’s personal journey through sexism in science”

by Rita R. Colwell and Sharon Bertsch  McGrayne

“A lab of one’s own: one woman’s personal journey through sexism in science”

by Rita R. Colwell and Sharon Bertsch  McGrayne

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   This scientist had an up-hill battle, because in her opinion, Deep down , many scientists are convinced that the ability to do science is linked to the Y chromosome. The unequal treatment of women in science is an institutional and social problem.  Women have the intelligence for successful careers…There is no biological difference in intelligence in students of STEM.

   On a personal level, our daughter did very well in her 6^th Grade math courses, but, the female department chairman said we wouldn’t recommend her for the Advanced Math in 7^th Grade, because she only recommended boys for that course.

   Implicit bias is holding us back

   In Chapter 10,    The author offers her suggestions on how to get an equal chance to achieve.

“The best of 100% of the population is better than choosing from 50% of the population.”

From the WEB:

Rita R. Colwell is an American environmental microbiologist and scientific administrator. Colwell holds degrees in bacteriology, genetics, and oceanography and studies infectious diseases. Colwell is the founder and Chair of CosmosID, a bioinformatics company. From 1998 to 2004, she was the 11th Director of the National Science Foundation.

https://www.mcgrayne.comActions for this site

Sharon Bertsch McGrayne is the author of highly-praised books about scientific discoveries and the scientists who make them. She is interested in exploring the cutting Works McGrayne interviewed all the featured women alive at the time and more than.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:        

A lab of one’s own: one woman’s personal journey through sexism in science DB100468

Colwell, Rita R; McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch Reading time: 8 hours, 34 minutes.

Jackie Sanders

Science and Technology

Biography

Microbiologist and first female director of the National Science Foundation shares her experiences with building a career in scientific research and the sexist practices and behaviors she experienced. Examines what has changed since she was studying for her PhD and what still needs to change. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2020.

Download A lab of one’s own: one woman’s personal journey through sexism in science DB100468

 Kate’s 2¢: “Birds In Fall: A NovelL by Brad Kessler

“Birds In Fall: A NovelL by Brad Kessler

Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as,     describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read.  I’m just saying…

   The airplane that crashed was, of course, analogous to a big bird. Appropriately, the surviving wife is an ornithologist specializing in bird migration. The simile of the King Fisher Bird is threaded throughout the story.

   At one point, the victims’s families sit outside and look toward the moon with binoculars to see birds flying past the moon’s light.

–Thousands of birds under the  cover of darkness, riding the wind like a wave.

   It was poignant at the end to have the King Fisher awaiting his mate, ready to dive to gift her a fresh fish.

   I enjoyed this melancholy tale of sadness and hope of a brighter future.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brad Kessler (born Feb 15, 1963) is a prize-winning novelist and non-fiction writer whose work has been translated into several languages. He is best known for his novel Birds in Fall which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and his memoir Goat Song about living with goats and the culture of pastoralism.

   His second novel, Birds In Fall, was published in 2006 by Scribner. Set on a remote island off Nova Scotia, the novel is a retelling of the Greek myth of the Halcyon days. It follows the grief and recovery of ornithologist Anna Gathreaux and an international cast of characters after the crash of Swissair flight 111. Birds in Fall won critical acclaim and earned Kessler a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and a Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It went on to win the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction.

Kessler  is married to the photographer-activist Dona Ann McAdams. They collaborated on a photography-text project, the Garden of Eden that documented the lives of people living with severe mental illness in an adult home on Coney Island where McAdams worked for decades offering art therapy. The Garden of Eden won the 2002 Lang-Taylor Prize from Duke University’s The Center for Documentary Studies. The couple also co-authored A Woodcutter’s Christmas (Council Oaks Books, 2001), Kessler fictional text based on McAdams’ photo series of discarded Christmas trees on the streets of New York City.

In 1998, Kessler and McAdams moved to Sandgate, Vermont where they eventually raised dairy goats and became farmers and licensed cheesemakers. Their transition from work on paper to works on the land, and the blending of the two, culture and agriculture, is an ongoing project of their Northern Spy Farm.

Kessler teaches creative writing at the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. He is a graduate of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Birds In Fall: A Novel DBC13112

Kessler, Brad. Reading time: 7 hours, 42 minutes.

Read by Mark Hintz.

Human Relations

General

Psychological Fiction

One fall night, an innkeeper on a remote island in Nova Scotia watches an airplane plummet to the sea. As the search for survivors envelops the island, the mourning families gather at the inn, waiting for news of those they have lost. Here among strangers, they form an unusual community, struggling for comfort and consolation. At the center of the story is Ana Gathreaux, an ornithologist who specializes in bird migration, and whose husband perished on the flight. 2006. Adult. Some descriptions of sex. Strong language.

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