Patricia Garry

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Joe Biden – Our Calm, Deliberate, Clear and Direct President

May 4, 2021 By pgarry

President Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior, gave an excellent speech to the Joint Session of Congress last week, didn’t he?  And covered a remarkable amount of political, environmental and transformative territory in a fairly short span of time.

It was great to see Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader of the House, and Kamala Harris, Vice President of these United States of America, sitting behind him – and standing up a lot, applauding.

What I am happiest with, with his new leadership, is that he does not yell, does not tweet to make sure we are awake, and simply tells us calmy and in a friendly fashion, what he is working on, and the direction he thinks we should be taking.  He also gives us the reasons behind what he is doing.  Almost every initiative has at its base the creation of good paying jobs for American citizens, that will also make our country and the world better.

I am super happy that he is expanding broadband across the country.  Expanding electricity across the country and to every nook and cranny of our rural areas, especially the Texas hill country, was one of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s major initiatives.  Both of them wanted to make sure that America’s prosperity reached everywhere.

Everything our President is trying to do gives us multple bangs for each buck – for instance, each infrastructure dollare fixes the roads, puts our workforce to work, and makes it easier and safer to get where we are going.  He is a good strong planner, with many teams and a big vision.

Our famlies are being supported as they never have been before, again with multiple good outcomes:  When the kids can be in an excellent preschool, their moms can get back to work, thus rebuilding our economy.  Each new program is building up our country in similar ways.  We clearly elected the right president at the right time.  Thanks, Joe!

Filed Under: Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc., The Political Realm

The Hidden Messages in Water – an oldie but a goodie!

February 27, 2021 By pgarry

I was looking for another book entirely about a week ago, when this one fell out of the bookcase. Published in 2001, and written by Masaru Emoto, the major premise is that beautiful frozen crystals can be created from clear springs and quality water, which has been talked to with love, encouragement, and appreciation. And that dirty, un-fresh water, spoken to disparagingly, only forms incomplete crystals when frozen. The pictures are incredible – bright, colorful, full of beauty!

Dr. Emoto believes that ‘our emotions and feeling have an effect on the world moment by moment.’ My life tells me the same thing. Approaching the world with ease, gratitude and love, expecting joy with each breathe, gives us that world.

Beauty begets more beauty, smiling creates more smiles. Practice and play with these ideas. Your amazement at how well that works will create even more amazement! xoxox

Filed Under: Nature / The Environment, Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc., Spirituality, Uncategorized

The House in the Cerulean Sea

February 15, 2021 By pgarry

The House in the Cerulean Sea – By T J Klune, Published 2020

 

An exquisite book, set in a slightly futuristic world where work deadens and fear rules employment, and most folks don’t think – too scary, risks are too risky.  The world works just enough to keep most everyone miserable.

 

Linus Baker is a caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, run by Extremely Upper Management.  He lives one of those dead lives, and has made his caseworker decisions without regard to what happens after he decides.

 

Then he is sent to the far end of the country, with his cranky cat Calliope, to spend a month essentially judging whether to close down the particular and peculiar orphanage with 6 marvelously magical and gifted children with varied gifts, physical appearances, phobias and strengths.  Located on an island in the ocean, it is run by Arthur Parnassus and essentially managed by a winged sprite who is chief cook and main supporter. Helping with the cooking is Lucy, one of the students / children, actually 6-year-old Lucifer, son of you-know-who.

 

This is a beautiful heart-wrenching and affirming story of one man’s growth, taking charge of his own life, and a story of overthrowing the bureaucracy.  It is also a gay love story, not very gay (in terms of happy) until nearly the end.  And a story of being different in a world that is not fond of different.

 

The story is magical in and of itself – beauty is everywhere in this book.

 

Filed Under: Cultural Commentary, Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc.

Book Review: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

February 15, 2021 By pgarry

As you know, I have been working my way through Jane Austen all this long summer. Summer is going, autumn is nearly ready to turn into winter – and I am nearly finished with this journey. Elinor Dashwood, the sister with Sense, and Marianne, who is all Sensibility, are the protagonists of this novel, first published in 1811.

Filed Under: Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc.

Book Review: Sanditon, by Jane Austen and Another Lady

February 15, 2021 By pgarry

Sanditon was Jane Austen’s last novel – the first 11 chapters completed before her death in the summer of 1817, and the book, unfinished, bequeathed to her niece. Over a century later, Marie Dobbs, born in Australia in 1924, finished the book in the 19—-s. And I must say – she finished it with Jane’s rather wicked sense of humor, and some outright laugh out loud pages. What a treat!

Filed Under: Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc.

Doing Most of My Eating at O Pie O

October 23, 2016 By pgarry

It is amazing how quickly O Pie O, East Walnut Hills’ just barely a year old restaurant has become my favorite, my go to place.

Last Tuesday, Shaheen and I had dinner in between working on my computer and doing readings for each other. Then on Friday, with my Florida sister Kathleen and her significant other Rob in town, it ws again the right – comfortable, relaxed, easy – choice, after spending the day riding the streetcar and wandering Findlay Market.

Long may it reign!

Filed Under: Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc.

Book Review: Emma by Jane Austen

October 9, 2016 By pgarry

I can check another of Jane Austen’s masterpieces off my list. Last night, I finished Emma, which Jane wrote and which was published in 1816, the year before she died.

It includes the dedication which is a major part of the Jane Austen mystery, Jane and the Waterloo Map, by Stephanie Barron. The dedication says: To His Royal Highness The Prince Regent, This work is, by his Royal Highness’s Permission, most respectfully dedicated, by His Royal Highness’s dutiful and obedient humble servant, The Author. No wonder the royals were so sure they were always right!

The Cincinnati Library provided this in a large type edition – it was 684 pages. And I now know probably almost all of the prevailing rules about who calls on whom, when, how and why in English manners and society in the early 1800s. Whew! I am glad life is so much simpler now. And texting doesn’t involve a lot of social rules.

Emma is a 21-year-old member of the gentry, wealthy in her own right, sweet and naive in some ways, but also quite sure she knows who belongs with whom, how things should be done, and is very willing to act on those beliefs to arrange and fix the lives of her friends. We definitely would recognize Emma today, though this book is over 200 years old. She is also living in a fairly backwater part of England, which gives her just a small segment of society to work on, and we get to know them all very well.

Needless to say, Emma is almost always, and flamingly, wrong. So there is a lot of Jane’s subtle humor in these pages. Emma is, though, very good hearted, and very smart in some ways, while also missing clues right in front of her. As well as always insisting she herself, while working to marry off friends and acquaintances, will never marry.

The book ends well, which I always appreciate. And is fairly lighted-hearted and fun. It also could have been written yesterday or tomorrow, thus demonstrating Jane’s genius and gifts. Enjoy!

Filed Under: Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc.

Book Review: Jane and the Waterloo Map, by Stephanie Barron

September 26, 2016 By pgarry

So here it is, the latest Being A Jane Austen Mystery by Stephanie Barron. Jane and the Waterloo Map features one of the heroes of that battle, and the action occurs only a few months later. Her writing gets better and better, she invents interesting and challenging characters, loves quirky and impossible situations, and is not particularly worried about shedding a little blood here and there. In this case, there is also poison – the needles of the yew, which, brewed in a tea, cause paralysis and death.

Jane is not here the gadabout Londoner, but is herself injured, and is also caring for her brother, who is ill, and whose bank is in trouble. There are fewer characters and less social activity than in many of these mysteries – and so more focus on particular interactions, mostly around Carlton House, the fabulous home of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent. There are also a couple of wonderful historical painters, and Jane’s now grown up niece, Fanny, has a part to play.

Great writing, great fun, smart – but who knows when the next one will appear? Besides, Jane has only a year and half to live (the books are true to where she was and what she was up to, as the background of these mysteries), so the series is nearly done, no matter what.

P. S. If you are going to read these superlatives mysteries – start with the beginning and work your way through. They build on each other. Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor is the first.

Filed Under: Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc.

Book Review: Persuasion by Jane Austen

September 26, 2016 By pgarry

This book, one of the six completed by Jane Austen, was published in 1818, after Jane’s death. It is the story of the Eliot family, much of which is not nearly as talented and smart as it thinks it is, and of what happens to gentry in that state – they lose their money, their home – but not always their status, because if they continue to say they are great, most folk seem to believe them. And those who don’t probably don’t see the point in undressing that emperor. Ah, well – that continues even today.

The only reason I bring it up is that Anne Eliot, the one member of the family not a social climber, and who actually has redeeming social value, is our heroine – and is looked down on and devalued by a fair number of her own family. She is pushed away from the love of her life, and pushed toward men who have no way to comprehend who she is, only that she will have an inheritance.

Luckily, that original love – from whom she was pushed away – is back on the scene, now rich and successful: Frederick Wentworth. Much of this book is about Jane’s views on marriage – marry only for love is her motto, and the social constrictions on women. It also has deep lessons on speaking up and out, not waiting on others; on being clear and direct as much as possible; and on having your own life, not someone else’s. Although those reading this in the 1800s may not have taken these lessons from the book.

Once Jane has the lovers back in love, she rushes on to the end – which I have noticed is a habit of hers. I would not have minded a few more long walks, more head on the shoulder time. But once Jane got them paired off, she wrapped up a few loose ends and was done. So I had to imagine the rest – which is also one of the characteristics of a great book, is it not? Aaaaaahhhhhh.

Note:
The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has all the Jane Austen books – but most of them seem to be in large print, which makes them big, awkward and gawky. And many pages longer and heavier. Seems odd to me. But the books are terrific, and so we readers just deal with them.

Filed Under: Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc.

My Jane Addiction

September 14, 2016 By pgarry

I first wrote about My Jane Austen Craze with a blog post on May 30 of this year, 2016. I recounted my misunderstanding of Jane’s work and writing – and that I had just read Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible (a modern re-telling of Pride and Prejudice) straight through – twice. And had then gone to the library to pick up the P.D. James mystery based on P & P, Death Comes to Pemberley. Little did I know at that time what I was in for!

I had also not read a word of Jane’s actual writing. I had seen two plays at the Cincinnati Shakespeare based on two of her books – Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility, over the last several seasons. I have a vague recollection of seeing a movie some years back called Mansfield Park, which I’ve only discovered is a Jane book. Also, since one of my great pleasures at the holidays is just to read mysteries of the particular season (be it Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s, Thanksgiving or Halloween), I had read Stephanie Barron’s Jane and The Twelve Days of Christmas. Which I then gave away the following year as a present. That likely wouldn’t happen now. Unless and until this condition has abated.

Since May 30, my extremely busy self, also coping with family tragedy, delight, and more tragedy, has managed to read a book (also made into a movie, which I have not seen) called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; read Jane Austen Made Me Do It – Original Stories Inspired by Literature’s Most Astute Observer of the Human Heart, edited by Laurel Ann Nattress; read eleven more of Stephanie Barron’s mysteries with Jane Austen as the detective (the most recent and currently last one is on my bedside table); and three of Jane’s six books (just finished Persuasion last night).

And now, I am facing the end of this journey. Jane and the Waterloo Map was just published, with a lapse of several years since the last one – and Stephanie Barron has wandered off to write a mystery about Queen Victoria, among other work – besides which, her series, which mirrors Jane’s life and travels, is running out of available time, since the most recent book is set in November of 1815, and Jane left the planet in July of 1817. Only a year and a half to go.

And I have a mere 3 of Jane’s books left – Mansfield Park, Emma (which I’ve read an Alexander McCall Smith re-telling of) and Sense and Sensibility.

I have no idea how this addiction ends, but somehow I don’t see myself reading all the pastiches and parodies, short stories, science fiction, books about Vampire Jane and other works based on hers. I may just have to go cold turkey.

Wish me luck!

Filed Under: Reflections, Reviews: Books, Plays, Events, Etc.

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