#RightMatters

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#RightMatters, Adam Schiff, Impeachment Trial

You’ll be forgiven if you found the impeachment hearing too mind numbing to watch. After all, a good number of Senators on both sides of the aisle couldn’t sit still the last few days and needed props like fidget spinners, crossword puzzles, and chocolate. On Thursday Adam Schiff gave his closing remarks in an eloquent and passionate oratory which perfectly sums up why Donald J. Trump should be impeached. Please, if you watched nothing else, watch this.

Here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what made us the greatest nation on Earth. No Constitution can protect us if right doesn’t matter anymore. You know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. This is why, if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise we are lost.

Gong Hei Fat Choy!

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Lunar New Year 2020, Year of the Rat

Happy Lunar New Year Everyone!

If you were born in the year of the Rat, you are adaptable, smart, cautious, acute, alert, positive, flexible, outgoing, and cheerful. So embrace your inner rodent!

Lovely Lyrical Lines

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”White Rabbit”, Grace Slick, Jefferson Airplane, Lovely Lyrical Lines

One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small  

And the ones that mother gives you, don’t do anything at all

Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you’re going to fall

Tell ‘em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call

And call Alice, when she was just small

When the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go

And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom, and your mind is moving low

Go ask Alice, I think she’ll know

When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead

And the white knight is talking backwards

And the red queen’s off with her head

Remember what the dormouse said

Feed your head, feed your head

~ White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane ~

Lyrics by Grace Slick

Ban The Books!

This is a great post regarding a bill in Missouri that proposes not only forming “parental library review boards” for public libraries, but also threatens to strip libraries of funding and to fine and imprison librarians!

In Saner Thought

Closing Thought–24Jan20

First I wish my mother a Happy Birthday…she would have been 99 today….I miss you Mom!

I was never told what I could read by my parents so I have a real problem with the government in any shade that wants to do what my parents never did.

I bring this up because of some ruling in Missouri…..

The bill was introduced earlier this month by Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker (R), who has argued that the measure is meant to protect children when they visit their public libraries.

“The main thing is I want to be able to take my kids to a library and make sure they’re in a safe environment, and that they’re not gonna be exposed to something that is objectionable material,” Baker told local news station KOAM. “Unfortunately, there are some libraries in the state of Missouri that have done this. And that’s…

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Girl At the Edge, by Karen Dietrich ~ 5.0 Stars

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Psychological Suspense, Substance Abuse, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: March 3rd, 2020

368 Pages

Synopsis: A thrilling nature-vs-nurture psychological suspense novel about a daughter trying to deny her worst impulses and distance herself from her violent and dangerous father.

Not a single resident of St. Augustine, Florida can forget the day that Michael Joshua Hayes walked into a shopping mall and walked out the mass murder of eleven people.

He’s now spent over a decade on death row and his daughter Evelyn—who doesn’t remember a time when her father wasn’t an infamous killer—is determined to unravel the mystery and understand what drove her father to shoot those innocent victims.

Evelyn’s search brings her to a support group for children of incarcerated parents, where a fierce friendship develops with another young woman named Clarisse. Soon the girls are inseparable—and by the beginning of the summer, Evelyn is poised at the edge of her future and must make a life-defining choice: whether to believe that a parent’s legacy of violence is escapable or that history will keep repeating itself, whether we choose it or not.

Dark, creepy, and disturbing are the three adjectives that immediately spring to my mind after reading Girl At The Edge in one sitting last night. With some deeply unsettling scenes, this may not be a book for everyone, but I found it mesmerizing from the very first page and was unable to put it down until I came to the end. Dietrich’s writing is beautiful and quite visual which adds to the enjoyment. This isn’t an action-packed story but rather a thoughtful look at how two girls cope with living with the knowledge of their fathers’ monstrous actions. Whether nature or nurture forms the essence of who we are is an age old question, and I’m not sure if anything new is added to the debate here, but Evelyn’s battle with her own inner demons is fascinating and her story is perfect for book discussion groups with older teens. I highly recommend this with one caveat: don’t read this immediately before bed because I guarantee you’ll be up thinking about it for hours.

The Body In The Garden(Lily Adler Mystery #1), by Katharine Schellman ~ 4.5 Stars

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Adult Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Regency England

Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: April 7th, 2020

Synopsis:

London 1815. Newly widowed Lily Adler returns to a society that frowns on independent women, but she’s no stranger to the glittering world of London’s upper crust. At a ball throw by her oldest friend, Lady Walter, she expects the scandals, gossip, and secrets. What she doesn’t expect, is the dead body in Lady Walter’s garden.

Lily happened to overhear the man just minutes before he was shot: young, desperate, and attempting blackmail, but she’s willing to leave the matter to the local constables, until Lord Walter bribes the investigating magistrate to drop the case. Stunned and confused Lily realizes she’s the only one with the key to catching the killer.

Aided by a roguish navy captain and a mysterious heiress from the West Indies, Lily sets out to discover whether her friend’s husband is mixed up in blackmail and murder. The unlikely team tries to conceal their investigation behind the whirl of London’s social season, but the dead man knew secrets about people with power. Secrets that they would kill to keep hidden. Now Lily will have to uncover the truth, before she becomes the killer’s next target.

My third book of 2020, and another pretty cover. I’m happy to say that after a slightly slow beginning, The Body In The Garden more than lives up to its appealing packaging.

The best way to describe Lily Adler is to say she’s like a female Sherlock Holmes, only without his annoying attributes. She could have come across as too good to be true, but the author skillfully makes her likable and relatable whilst also being a woman very much ahead of her time. Captain Jack Hartley and Ofelia Oswald are equally appealing and well-rounded characters who perfectly complete the team. I’m looking forward to seeing how the relationship between them continues to develop in subsequent books. While I’m not a historian, I think Schellman credibly captures Regency London in her physical descriptions and the way Society worked. Best of all, the mystery was intriguing and kept me guessing as to the villain’s identity almost right up to the very end.

Overall, The Body In The Garden is a promising beginning to this new historical mystery series. I highly recommend this to fans of the genre, particularly if you like authors such as Deanna Raybourn and Tasha Alexander. 

Whimsical Wednesday

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“Hair Love”, Matthew Cherry, Oscar-nominated animated short, Whimsical Wednesday

 

I’m Back!

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Internet Issues

Hi Everyone! I’m sorry I’ve been missing for the last week and a half. We had a bad storm here in Alabama which knocked out our electricity, and shorted out the circuit board that proves our internet. For some reason it’s taken this long for the company to get a new one. It’s going to take me a couple of days to catch up with everyone, but rest assured I will be visiting you all. I also want to thank my friend Pete at https://beetleypete.com for letting people know I was okay.

R.I.P. Neil Peart ~ September 12th, 1952 – January 10th, 2020

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Music Legend, R.I.P. Neil Peart, Rush

I always thought, if I could just put something in words perfectly enough, people would get the idea, and it would change things. That’s a harmless conceit. With people, too, you constantly think, ‘If I’m nice to people and treat them well, they’ll appreciate it and behave better.’ They won’t, but it’s still not a bad way to live.

Music legend Neil Peart, who along with Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, made up the popular Canadian rock band, Rush, lost his three year battle with brain cancer on Tuesday. Peart was the author of seven non-fiction novels and a gifted lyricist who drew inspiration from classic literature, philosophy, and science fiction. But what he will go down in music history for is his prodigious talent with the drums. Combining elements of hard rock with jazz and big band, Peart had a jaw-dropping style all his own. There are so many Rush videos available to watch, but I chose two that I hope will showcase his genius.

Some are born to move the world

To live their fantasies

But most of us just dream about

The things we’d like to be

Sadder still to watch it die

Than never to have known it

For you the blind who once could see

The bell tolls for thee

The bell tolls for…

For you the blind who once could see

The bell tolls for thee

The bell tolls for thee

From the song Losing It

Songwriters: Neil Elwood Peart, Gary Lee Weinrib, and Alex Zivojinovich 

R.I.P. Professor. You will never be forgotten.

 

Literary Lines ~ Sanditon

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Andrew Davies, Jane Austen, Lovely Literary Lines, Masterpiece Theater, PBS, Sanditon

Those who tell their own story you know, must be listened to with caution.

~ Jane Austen, Anne Telscombe, Marie Dobbs, Sanditon: Jane Austen’s Last Novel Completed ~

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen fans (at least here in the U.S.), will watch anything that’s connected to her books. As a fan of Andrew Davies’ 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, I’m excited for this eight episode mini-series, based on her last unfinished novel, which is beginning Sunday night on PBS. If you haven’t see the trailer, check it out.