February Prices Update

 Since I was in Walmart about 1 month after I last checked prices, I thought I would look back at the same items from before and see what, if anything, had changed.  Eight out of the 12 items had not changed prices in the past month.  But the other 4 had all increased.

Ground beef up to $5.34 from $4.94 a month ago.

A dozen large eggs up to $5.97 from $4.53 a month ago.  A dozen eggs is now more expensive than a pound of ground beef! The eggs prices are still high due largely to bird flu, but I read that the Department of Agriculture is looking into importing eggs to try to reduce prices.  Corporate greed is likely having some impact here too, though.  According to the New York Times:

But there is at least one winner in the current shortage, which began in 2022: the country’s biggest egg producer.

Cal-Maine Foods, which controls about a fifth of the egg market and sells to Walmart and other large retailers, reported that its revenues jumped to $954 million in the quarter that ended in late November from $523 million from the prior year — an increase of 82 percent. The company said those numbers “were primarily driven by an increase in the net average selling price of shell eggs as well as an increase in total dozens sold.”

The company’s net income surged more than 500 percent, to $218 million, from year-earlier levels, thanks to higher prices, the lower cost of feed and acquisitions of other operators. And prices have shot up even more since the company released its quarterly financial statement. [...]

But as consumers confront empty shelves in their grocery stores and prices soar in some places to over $10 for a dozen eggs, the concentration of egg production in fewer hands is raising concerns, stoked by previous findings. Two years ago, the largest producers were found liable for inflating prices in the 2000s. Now, some lawmakers are calling for federal regulators to investigate the industry.

A gallon of store brand whole milk is up to $4.67 from $4.02 a month ago.

A gallon of diesel fuel is up to $3.52 from $3.34 a month ago.

The interesting thing to me is that the items that have increased don't seem to be things that are imported, but things that I assume are at least mostly products of the USA.

January 2025 prices

I thought that I'd put this here so that I'd be able to find it easily in the future.  I wanted to document the prices of some staple groceries and gas prices at the beginning of this political term for a few reasons.  One, Trump campaigned on a promise of bringing down grocery prices.  Two, Trump campaigned on raising tariffs, which historically raises the price of goods.  And three, I'd like to have a record of what prices actually were here in Troy, Alabama at the beginning of this political cycle (presidential and congressional), so that if someone's campaign ads in the future reference price changes, I'll have something to compare to. In other words, I'll know if they are telling the truth or lying through their teeth. 

I had hoped to do this on Inauguration Day, but it was the day before a significant snow event in my area (where average seasonal snowfall is zero), and I didn't want to be in Walmart under those circumstances. So here are prices at my local Walmart on Friday, January 24, 2025.

1 pound 73% lean ground beef = $4.94

4 pound bag of Great Value Sugar $3.14

5 pound bag Great Value All-Purpose Flour $2.38

9.6 oz. can of Great Value Coffee $4.44

1 loaf of Great Value white bread $1.42

A dozen large eggs (which they were actually out of) $4.53 (Bird Flu is currently affecting egg prices and availability)

1 pound of Great Value salted butter $3.96 (unsalted was the same price)

1 gallon of Great Value whole milk $4.02

Regular Unleaded Gasoline $2.79/gallon  Diesel fuel $3.34/gallon

Bananas 50 cent/ pound.  I'm really curious what tariffs do to the price of bananas, because I assume they are mostly, if not completely imported.

Avocados 96 cent each.  These aren't exactly a staple item, but everything I've read suggest that tariffs will greatly increase the price of avocados.

My finger (or thumb) is in the pictures because I'm covering up the QR code on all the price labels.

Reading List 2024

Time for my annual reading list post. Pretty pathetic this year.  Here it goes:

1. Scaredy Cat - Sofie Ryan
2. Listen to Me - Tess Gerritsen
3. Fur Love or Money - Sofie Ryan
4. Lifespan: Why We Age - and Why We Don't Have To - David A. Sinclair & Matthew D. LaPlante
5. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
6. The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy

So I got caught up on my Second Chance Cat Mystery books by Sofie Ryan and the Rizzoli & Isles books by Tess Gerritsen.  I read one non-fiction book that was health related and two classics that I read with my husband.  Not a lot to see here.  No deep dives this year.  In fact, the last book I finished was all the way back in August.  My husband and I are currently reading a novel together, and we originally thought we would finish it before the New Year, but that didn't pan out.

I was much more productive in my creative endeavors in 2024 than I was in my reading.  And that's okay.

2023 Reading List

 

 Time for my annual reading list post.  Exactly the same number as last year - interesting.  Here it goes:

1. The Risk Pool - Richard Russo
2. Surviving Death - Leslie Kean
3. Life Before Life:Children's Memories of Previous Lives - Jim B. Tucker, MD
4. Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives - Jim B. Tucker, MD
5. Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife - Eben Alexander, MD
6. After - Bruce Greyson, MD
7. Infinite Awareness - Marjorie Hines
8. Mindfulness for Beginners - Jon Kabat-Zinn
9. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness in Plain English - Henepola Gunaratana
10. The Map of Heaven - Eben Alexander, MD
    

The first book of the year was a novel that I read with my husband.  I enjoy it when we read things together and discuss them.

Everything else on the list was the result of a deep dive into the afterlife and spirituality.  Reading the books on life after death were inspired by a discussion at parent's house about children remembering past lives.  My parents sometimes get information from questionable sources so I wanted to try to find something academic on the subject.  I really wasn't impressed by Leslie Kean, but Dr. Tucker and Dr. Greyson I found very interesting.  Dr. Alexander was a bit of a mixed bag for me.  I read a couple of his books.  There are more, but I don't think I'll read them.  I don't feel like they really say much in the end.

The Jon Kabat-Zinn book I had actually started a few year ago and didn't finish.  I decided to pull it out and start over with it.  This time I read it all the way through with my husband.  It's still not one that I would exactly recommend.

The books by Hines and Gunaratana were interesting because they were coming to mindfulness and awareness from the viewpoint of eastern religions. 

2022 Reading List

 Time for my annual reading list post.  A couple more books than last year.  Here it goes:

1. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
2. Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens
3. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
4. Persuasion - Jane Austen
5. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
6. Totally Pawstruck - Sofie Ryan
7. The Last Curtain Call - Juliet Blackwell
8. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
9. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
10. Howards End - E.M. Forster

The first two books of the year were real disappointments.  Many people really love both books, but I was not positively impressed.  Neither seemed very believable to me.  I found the whole premise of "Crawdads" unrealistic and the end was bothersome.

All three of the Austen novels were re-reads with my husband.  I enjoy it when we read things together and discuss them.

The Sofie Ryan novel and Juliet Blackwell novel were parts of the only two series that I'm still keeping up with.  They are fun distractions.

The Remains of the Day was definitely my favorite of the new novels I read this year.  I thought it was very well written and insightful.  I would absolutely recommend it.

The last two novels on the list are part of a little mini-course that I asked my husband to make for me on the modern novel.  We have a few more to go in our course before it's done.

There probably would have been an eleventh book on the list, but I decided that I didn't want to finish it.  My husband and I started reading Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, but I had a very strong emotional reaction to a couple of the chapter in the middle of the book, and I decided that it wasn't worth it to keep reading.  I had enjoyed it up until that point, but I was just put off after that.  I have enjoyed the other Vonnegut novels that I've read, but it was just the wrong time and place on this one, I guess.

The Little Things

Two months ago today, Dec. 6, our contractor tore out our kitchen - no appliances (except the refrigerator that got moved to the dining room), no cabinets, no countertops, no running water.  We had been told we would be without a kitchen for 3 weeks.  We knew it would take longer, but we weren't expecting it to take over 8 weeks, but it did.  Things still aren't back to normal, but as of Friday the kitchen now functions with cabinets (that still need some work), countertops, a working stove, and running water.  When the countertops went in on Tuesday I actually kinda hugged them and said to my husband, "I never want to be without countertops again."  

When you have to go for an extended period of time without the things that you normally take for granted, you really appreciate them once you get them back.  I know that remodeling is a luxury that many people wish for and don't get to do.  And for that, too, I am thankful.  But living through this whole process (which still isn't finished), has really made me come to appreciate the little things in life.

Be

"Be" is a very simple word, but it's a word I've been thinking a lot about lately.  Hozier has a song by that title with the following repeated lyrics and they keep going through my head:

Be, be, be, be, be
Be as you've always been

And while I don't really want to be as I've always been, since how I've always been seems to be anxious, fearful, and self-doubting, I do think that the idea of just being who you are and how you are is a good idea.  In my case, I interpret that as simply allowing myself to behave in the way that comes naturally to me instead of trying to be like I think others want me to be.  It's harder to do than it sounds.

Another way I've been thinking about the word "be" is being something as opposed to simply "acting" that way.  Today I was looking a list of things to do in order to put other people as ease.  The last item on the list was "be interested."  And it struck me that it is important to actually be interested, not just act interested.  I know people who are willing to act interested in other people and what they have to say because they want to be polite, think it will get them something, or want the other person to like them, but unless you actually are interested, it is just a form of manipulation or deception.  Honesty is important to me, so I feel like it is important to either change your mindset and actually be interested, or just be honest about your lack of interest and move on.  

And this goes for other areas, too.  You may act patient, but really be quite impatient.  You might act easy going, but really be uptight and anxious.  In these cases, you aren't really doing yourself, or anyone else, any favors.  You are just giving a false impression of who you are to the people around you.  You are also denying your own needs and not giving others the opportunity to meet, or at least account for, those needs, because they can't see what they are.

So ultimately I've been trying to remind myself to just take a deep breath and be.  That's all I have to do - just be.  That should be good enough.  But like I said before, it's harder than it sounds.

Growth and Expectations

My two motivational thoughts for today:

Growth is incremental not exponential.

Perfect is not an option - do the best you can as often as you can.

Maybe later I'll add pictures and make them into motivational posters.

On Expectations

I've been thinking today about expectations.  In the YearCompass that I still haven't completed, it says that before you begin filling it out you should let go of your expectations.  Ever since reading those directions I've thought off and on about the role of expectations and what it means to let go of them.  It seems like a really hard thing to do.

For me, I feel like expectations have had the tendency to cause me fear, anxiety, and disappointment.  They have also lead me to give up on things without even trying them, because I just assume that it won't work, won't make any difference, no one will like it, no one will care, etc. etc. and the list goes on.  If I do allow myself to have hopes or higher expectations, that can and often has led to disappointment.  

I've been thinking today that while it is likely impossible to completely rid oneself of expectations, it is probably a good idea to try to minimize them.  To begin to try to re-frame my thinking away from expectations (which I think of as prejudging the outcome of a situation before it actually happens), I need to focus on my goals and my actions and leave the evaluations until afterward.  That seems like a more productive approach.  You don't know how it will be until you've done it, and you really have to focus on experiencing it while it's happening in order to really know how it went anyway.  If you get too caught up in your expectations they can cloud your judgment and affect your experience.

Also, when your expectations are about how other people will act or react, you are really setting yourself for disappointment and frustration.  Yes, sometimes things will go just like you hoped, but often times they don't.  You think that someone will really like something that you do, but they hardly seem to notice.  You think a comment will get a particular response, but it doesn't.  You think a person will laugh at your joke, but it falls flat.  You have to remember that you only control your own action, you can't (and shouldn't try to) control other people's actions.  Make your plans and set your goals based on what you can control, not on what you can't.

So, what are we?

So the other day I was on Facebook and saw the old Kool-Aid Man meme - is he the liquid or the jar?  I thought about it for a minute, but then moved on without too much mental energy lost - doesn't really matter to me either way.  Then the other night, after my shower, I was noticing all the hair on the floor (and walls) in my bathroom and I started thinking about how our bodies renew themselves. This brought me back to the underlying question attached to the Kool-Aid Man question, are we, as humans, our body, our mind, our spirit?  If we are our bodies, but our bodies renew themselves, what are we really?  Does any part of us remain constant throughout our whole lives?  This took more mental energy.

I did a little (very little actually) looking on the internet, and found out that there are just a few things that we carry with us for our entire lives without them being replaces.  It seems that materially, we are our central nervous system, our tooth enamel, and our eye lenses.  If you happen to be female, you don't get more eggs either.  Even our heart muscle, which was once thought to be permanent actually slowly replaces itself over time. Since a person can live without there teeth or without eggs, and science can now replace the lenses in our eyes, it seems that we are basically our central nervous system.  Maybe that means that we are our minds, after all.  Everything else is like George Washington's axe, we've had to replace the head and the handle a few times.  I find that kinda interesting.  Okay, that's all, carry on.

2021 Reading list

 Here is my very short list of books I read in 2021.

1. Undercover Kitty - Sofie Ryan
2. Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett
3. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
4. The Garden of Eden - Ernest Hemingway
5. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
6. Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut
7. Going After Cacciato - Tim O'Brien

So only one series book this year, which is not really a bad thing.  I begin to get a little burned out on series after a while.  They become so formulaic and predictable.  The main reason I continue to read them is for the small threads that the authors weave through them to keep the reader interested.  After a while it gets to be too little to hold my interest, I'm afraid.

Waiting for Godot was one that I read because I'd always heard of it and wondered about it.  My husband and I read it together.  He said that he's glad I pulled him through it.

I decided to read The Sun Also Rises because I had started it in high school and not finished it.  My husband is a retired English professor who did his dissertation on Hemingway, so I've always felt bad about not having read Hemingway.  Together we read the three Hemingway novels on the list and I think it was good for both of us.  I really enjoyed reading The Sun Also Rises this time around.  I only made it about 4 chapters in on my first attempt all those many years ago, and I really didn't understand what was going on in the novel back then.  Now I get it.  The other Hemingway novels were really good, too.  I know that Hemingway gets a bad rap these days, but his writing really is very good.  We also read some of Hemingway's short stories, but I didn't keep a list.

Timequake was not what I expected, because it wasn't really a novel in the traditional sense.  It was more just Vonnegut throwing out ideas - some in the form of story synopses and some just as simple musings.  It was still interesting.

Lastly, Going After Cacciato is a story that my husband used to teach and suggested that I read it.  I enjoyed it, too.  O'Brien sort of blurs the line between reality and fantasy in an interesting way, while also telling a very powerful story about his experience in the Vietnam War.

A Retrospective, of sorts

Yesterday I got my second Pfizer Covid 19 vaccine shot.  So in either 2 weeks (via CDC guidelines) or 1 week (via Pfizer guidelines) I will be fully vaccinated.  That is good news and I am thankful for that.  But I can't decide what that really means for me.  After a year of life being on hold, what activities will I actually resume?  What degree of "normal" will I be comfortable with and how soon?  I really don't know and I don't know how to know.  That got me thinking about the past year and the future.

By chance, I happened to watch a video this afternoon that really just had an affect on me.  It actually brought a little tear to my eye (full disclosure, if you know me, you know that's not especially hard to do).  The video was of Hozier singing Bridge Over Troubled Water last June in a dark, empty stadium with a socially distanced orchestra playing.  And while I still ultimately prefer the original Simon and Garfunkel version of the song, to me, this version just seemed to so embody this past year - the darkness, the emptiness, the distance, but also the message of the song, that you have someone there for you in the darkness.  It was just very moving.

I can't help but wonder, when I look back on this time in my life, how will I remember it?  If my grandchildren ask me what it was like to live through the Covid 19 pandemic (because they will likely all be too young to really remember it for themselves), what will I tell them?  I would love to be able to show them that video, and maybe I will be able to. There has been a lot of darkness and uncertainty, with more yet to come, I'm sure.  But there have also been points of light.  While we lost my mother-in-law to Covid in January, we also found out we are going to have another grandchild this coming August.  While we have lost a whole year of being able to visit with one granddaughter, and much fewer visits with our other granddaughter, my husband and I have grown even closer than we were before the pandemic started.  In many ways we've been able to return to what our relationship was in the beginning, when we first met and fell in love, and that has been a wonderful blessing.

Also, one year ago yesterday, I wrote a post about putting the pandemic's death toll numbers in perspective with other causes of death.  According to the New York Times, as of today the US death toll stands at 541,037, which puts it within the estimated range given a year ago, and stands at slightly less than the 2017 total for cancer deaths.  Somewhat interesting to look back at, for whatever it's worth.

Reality is a Jar of Almonds

This is my new attitude about life: Reality is a Jar of Almonds!  Now I recognize that, on the surface of things, this assertion makes no sense, which would probably be sufficient in and of itself to explain life, but I do have an explanation.  The explanation is rooted in logical fallacies, mindfulness, and Whose Line is it Anyway?.

So here we go.  I have a tendency toward assuming that when I look at a situation I can explain it in one of two ways, or maybe three ways (usually somewhere in between), and that one of those ways must be correct.  This type of thinking employs one, or two, logical fallacies.  When I assume that there are only two options, I'm engaging in the "black or white" fallacy (aka false dilemma or false dichotomy).  If I allow for a third option that is somewhere in between, I am undoubtedly falling prey to the "middle ground" fallacy.

The truth of the matter is that reality is so much more complex than I can imagine. This is where mindfulness comes into the picture.  In the book Mindfulness of Beginners by Jon Kabat-Zinn that I have (partially) read, the author states, 

We can feel victimized by our thoughts, or blinded by them.  We can easily mis-take [sic] them for the truth or for reality when in actuality they are just waves on its surface, however tumultuous they may be at times. (p. 36)

When looking at a problem or situation, there are undoubtedly factors that I have not taken into consideration at all that were actually contributing to whatever it is that I'm trying to understand.  I can't know it all, so I can't consider it all, therefore I will never fully understand the thing that I wish to understand.  This is a fact that I need to learn to deal with, but it's not easy. 

So how does this bring me to the assertion that reality is, in fact, a jar of almonds?  Well, that is where Whose Line is it Anyway? comes into the story.  There was an episode of the show where they were improvising a game of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?.  Brad Sherwood, in the role of quiz-master, asks Ryan Stiles a question, followed by four possible answers, in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? fashion.  But he then suggest that Ryan can go off the board and choose option E - a jar of almonds.  

So when I am trying to remind myself that I don't have all the information and my hypothetical explanations don't cover all the options, my new shorthand is to simply remind myself that reality is a jar of almonds - that alternate explanation that I never even thought of.

2020 Reading List

As we all know, 2020 was not a good year.  For many people, it might have been a good year for reading.  For me, it was better than last year (with only 9 books), but I still had long stretches when I wasn't reading.  Apparently reading was not my coping mechanism any more than sewing was.  I'm not sure I really had a coping mechanism, but I made it through the year in one piece, so that's at least something.  Without further ado, here is my 2020 reading list.

Books

1. No Escape Claws - Sofie Ryan
2. Civil War Sampler - Barbara Brackman
3. Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman - Patricia C. & Fredrick McKissack
4. Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
5. Alabama: One Big Front Porch - Kathryn Tucker Windham
6. Claw Enforcement - Sofie Ryan
7. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
8. Tongues of Flame - Mary Ward Brown
9. The Boyfriend School - Sarah Bird
10. Lady Susan - Jane Austen

Short Stories

1. "Neighbor Rosicky" & "The Sculptor's Funeral" - Willa Cather
2. "A White Heron" - Sarah Orne Jewett
3. "Babylon Revisited" - F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. "Rip Van Winkle" & "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" - Washington Irving
5. "Young Goodman Brown" & "The Maypole of Merry Mount" - Nathaniel Hawthorne
6. "Rappaccini's Daughter" & "Bartleby the Scrivener" - Herman Melville
7. "My Contraband" - Louisa May Alcott
8. "The Queen of Spades" - Alexander Pushkin
9. "A Simple Heart" - Gustave Flaubert

Four out of the first 5 books were read for Women's History Month.  

The last two books were read because of watching the movie version of the books. 

I got caught up on my Sofie Ryan series.  

I read Rebecca because it was on a list somewhere, but I forget what list or why I was reading said list.

Tongues of Flame is a collection of short stories that I read as an undergraduate and wanted to reread it.  It also led to reading the non-collected short stories, which I read with my husband (a retired literature professor).  I was thinking that I might want to try to write some short stories, but I never did.

Fear and healthy respect

Things are really getting to me.  The funny thing for me is that my life really hasn't changed that much because of the pandemic.  Before all this started, I went out a little more than I do now, but not much.  My life was mostly spent at home with the people who live in my house, and it still is.  But all the uncertainty has really begun to weigh on my mind.  I find myself doing COVID-19  math with Alabama's numbers and the US numbers -  what percentage has been tested, what percentage of those tested are testing positive, what percentage of those testing positive are dying.  The percentage are relatively small (for Alabama they are 2%, 7%, and 3% respectively), but somehow that still isn't comforting. 

I wish that we could transition from fear (or denial) to a healthy respect for the virus and the situation.  I wish that I knew what activities were actually safe and which weren't.  Is it really okay to get take-out from a restaurant?  Am I really safe if I wear a mask in public and wash or sanitize my hands once I'm out of public?  Does wiping down my groceries really do any good?  But with so little reliable information out there it seems difficult to know, so fear remains the dominant emotion and healthy respect is difficult to achieve. For society as a whole it seems even more difficult, with some groups in total denial of gravity of situation and, as with most things these days, people's opinions being influenced by their political inclinations. 

I know that in general, people just want things to return to normal as quickly as possible, but as my priest said earlier in the pandemic, things won't go back to normal.  There will be a new normal, which is, as of yet, unknown.  Unknown is hard to deal with, at least for me.

Putting things in perspective

As I've mentioned here before, I have generalized anxiety disorder.  One way that I try to combat my anxiety is to put things into perspective.  That's not always easy to do, mind you, but I try.  With all the fear and speculation swirling around due to the coronavirus (SARS CoV2) and it's resulting illness (COVID 19), my brain has been tending to waffle between "It'll be okay" and "We're all going to die."  So in order to deal with that, I've been looking at some numbers to try to put things into perspective.  Here is what I have found.

A New York Times article from March 13, 2020 reports a possible US death toll for the virus ranging from 200,000 to 1.7 million people,

Between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected over the course of the epidemic, according to a projection that encompasses the range of the four scenarios. That could last months or even over a year, with infections concentrated in shorter periods, staggered across time in different communities, experts said. As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.

These are disturbing numbers, no doubt.  The article does, however, say that these numbers were from the end of February and do not take into account the measures currently being applied to mitigate the situation.

Taking these numbers as my guide, I started looking at some statistics.  The most recent absolute numbers I could find for US mortality on the CDC website were for 2018.  In 2018, the total mortality in the US from all causes was 2,839,205 (source).  This is an increase over the previous year and our death rate has continued to increase, slightly, from 2008 to the present, according to Macrotrends.net.  For a breakdown of the numbers among the top 10 leading causes of death, I had to look at the 2017 numbers (no idea why those are the most recent on the CDC website).  These are the numbers I found:

Heart Disease = 647,457
Cancer = 599,108
Accidents = 169,936
Chronic lower respiratory disease = 160,201
Stroke = 146,383
Alzheimer's = 121,404
Diabetes = 83,564
Flu & Pneumonia = 55,633
Kidney disease = 50,633
Suicide = 47,173

A little perspective.  The lower number of the estimate (200,000) would be more than those who died in accidents, but less than those who died of cancer or heart disease.  If it was the higher of the estimated numbers, it would be comparable, though slightly below, the total of the top 5 causes of death combined.  These are all staggering numbers, but at least now I have a little perspective of what those numbers actually mean.

I did find another article, this one from the Washington Post dated March 11, 2020, that had a much wider range in its estimate.

His team put together a simple table that looks at various scenarios using case fatality ratios ranging from .1, similar to seasonal flu, to .5, a moderately severe pandemic, and 1.0, a severe one. The infection rate ranged from 0.1 percent of the population to 50 percent. That put the range of deaths at 327 (best case) to 1,635,000 (worst case). The deaths would not necessarily happen over a month or a year, but could occur over two or three years, he said.

What struck me (other than the wildly lower best case numbers) were that these deaths could take place over a period of 2 to 3 years.  If it were the worst case scenario numbers but over 3 years, it would actually make it lower than the number of death from heart disease in that same period.  Still a terrible loss of life, and I'm a firm believer in the "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee" philosophy.

Hopefully a little perspective will help me to keep calm and carry on.  But as Douglas Adam suggested, the last thing a person really needs is perspective...

[Upon putting his wife into his newly created "Total Perspective Vortex"] To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.  (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe p. 77)

2019 book list

Here we are again, halfway through January, and I'm just now getting around to posting my meager book list from 2019.  Over all, 2019 felt like a lost year.  My husband needed cancer surgery and radiation treatments.  There were multiple visits to family out of state.  It seemed like there was very little time for enjoyable pursuits.  Here's to better things in 2020.  So now, without further ado, the list of books I read in 2019.

The Story of the Trapp Family Singer - Maria Augusta Trapp (the inspiration for The Sound of Music)
The Weans - Robert Nathan
Ghostly Paws - Leighann Dobbs
Island of Time - Barbara Kent Lawrence
The Gospel According to Mark - New Revised Standard Version (yes, the book of the Bible)
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
The Other Island: Ben's Story - Barbara Kent Lawrence
A Tale of Two Kitties - Sofie Kelly
The Cats Came Back - Sofie Kelly

I found the Trapp Family Singers book very inspiring, but little like the movie, really.
The Weans was something I remembered hearing about when I was an undergrad in college and read it on the airplane flying to visit family in Washington.  It was a bit disappointing and very short.
Ghostly Paws was also disappointing.  A little too much magic and too little logic.
Island of Time and The Other Island were sort of two sides to the same story.  I liked Islands of Time better.
Reading St. Mark's gospel was my Lenten discipline for 2019.  It was interesting.
I read Good Omens because of the Amazon Prime series (starring David Tennant) based on the novel.  I enjoyed and finished the novel.  Less so for the series - we didn't finish watching it.
The two Sofie Kelly novels were the latest installments in the Magical Cats series that I have been reading for the past few years.

A Few Words About Walls

"People have been building walls all through history.  Why do you assume walls don't work?"  This is a question I've seen asked recently on Facebook (I'd provide a link, but I can't find the post).  Here is my answer.

First and foremost, walls in history have usually been built primarily for military purposes - to stop military invasions.  One very famous wall that sometimes gets mentioned is the Great Wall of China.  This is what China Travellers website has to say about the purpose of that wall:

The Great Wall of China was built to protect China from its enemies and invaders from the North, especially the Mongols. The Mongols were a tribal group that would regularly conduct raids into China. Despite the wall, the Mongols eventually conquered China. The Wall also kept Chinese citizens from leaving China.

I would draw your attention to the fact that "Despite the wall, the Mongols eventually conquered China." It was big, and beautify, and ultimately didn't work.

Another example of a wall built for military purposes is the Maginot Line between France and Germany.  Built after WWI, this wall was supposed to deter another German invasion of France.  And while the wall itself was well made and strong, it obviously didn't stop the Germans from invading in WWII.  In fact, it was so unsuccessful in producing its ultimate goal that it has become synonymous with a false sense of security.  In fact, Merriam-Webster defines Maginot Line as follows:

1 : a line of defensive fortifications built before World War II to protect the eastern border of France but easily outflanked by German invaders

2 : a defensive barrier or strategy that inspires a false sense of security

These walls were built primarily for defensive, military purposes and they ultimately failed.  So let's look at a wall that was built primarily for immigration purposes - the Berlin Wall.  The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 to stop people from leaving East Berlin for West Berlin.  According to Wikipedia:

Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin; from there they could then travel to West Germany and to other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989 the Wall prevented almost all such emigration.^[7]

Ah ha!  A successful wall you say.  Yes, it was a successful wall, but it was also a very well guarded wall. Again from wikipedia:

The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls,^[4] accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses.

It was also only approximately 87 miles long.  Trump is asking for a much longer wall to be built - anywhere from 234 miles to 1000 miles according to a report from cnbc.com. And even the very effective Berlin Wall was not perfect.  Going back to the Wikipedia article:

During this period over 100,000^[6] people attempted to escape and over 5,000 people succeeded in escaping over the Wall, with an estimated death toll ranging from 136^[8] to more than 200^[9][6] in and around Berlin.

And let us not forget who wanted that wall torn down.  I believe it was the much revered (in some circles) Ronald Reagan who famously said "Tear Down This Wall."   In the late 1980s, a wall built for retarding illegal immigration was seen as a threat to freedom and liberty.  So why is one such a good idea now?

These are some examples of why I assume walls don't work and are a bad idea.  Where there is a will, there's a way.  People will always find a way around, over, through, or under a wall.  Building a wall doesn't get to the root of the problem, it just spends a lot of time, money and effort to reroute the problem. 

Let us remember also that walls in the past have not just been built to keep people out, but also to keep people in.  I'm reminded of "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost, in which he says:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.

And, as Reinette (aka Madame De Pompadour) reminds us in "The Girl in the Fireplace" episode of Doctor Who:

A door once opened may be stepped through in either direction.

A wall, once built, blocks passage from both directions. Think about it.

2018 Book List

Here is the list of books that I read in 2018:

The House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Keeper of the Castle - Juliet Blackwell
Give Up the Ghost - Juliet Blackwell
The Fast and the Furriest - Sofie Ryan
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
A Ghostly Light - Juliet Blackwell
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
The Bone Garden - Tess Gerritsen
My Antonia - Willa Cather
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

I read 13 books in 2018.  Not too bad for me.  As you can probably tell, I took a turn into the classics this year, with only a few light reads thrown in.  Well, Alice in Wonderland was really both - a classic and a light read - but it was on the list of classics that I found online and I had never read it, so I figured "what the heck."  I was hoping there would actually be more to it than what you always here about it, but no, not really, just a kids story like you'd expect.  I had actually read A Christmas Carol before, but I was in middle school at the time. My husband and I watched "The Man Who Invented Christmas" and it inspired me to re-read it.

I think I'm all caught up on my murder mystery series - Magical Cats, Second Chance Cats, and Haunted Home Renovations.  I think there may be some new ones coming out soon, though.  The one Tess Gerritsen novel that I read this year was one of her "stand alone" books, not in the Rizzoli & Isles series, although Isles did make a cameo appearance.

Obsessive Thinking

I have an issue with obsessive thinking.  Sometimes, when I get an idea in my head, I just have trouble getting it out of my head.  It could be a problem that I'm trying to solve or an issue that I am wrestling with.  Or it could just be the lyrics to a song that I'm puzzling over their meaning or what they mean to me.  Whatever the subject, it tends to stick around and monopolize my mental energy.

On a couple of recent occasions, the thoughts/issues that I was wrestling with lent themselves to sending an email to someone to express my thoughts on a subject.  In each case, I felt that the person I was emailing wanted to know, or needed to know, or would benefit from knowing my thoughts.  In those cases, I felt better after sending the email.  It's not that I completely stopped thinking about the issue, but I felt that my mind could rest from the subject at that point.  The obsessive nature of the thinking subsided.

My catharsis in writing down my thoughts made me think of the lines to a song - Breathe by Anna Nalick:

Two AM and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, its no longer
Inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to

Now I'm no poet or lyricist, but I do feel that getting my ideas carefully thought out and arranged in writing is helpful.  In many cases, however, there isn't necessarily an individual that I can, or want to, email about the topic on my mind, so I'm thinking that I will try do that here on this blog.  I haven't blogged regularly in long time, and I still may not do it regularly, but I think it's worth giving it a try.  I could just write my thoughts in a journal or diary, but I think there is also value in the knowledge that I am sharing my thoughts with someone else.  Even if no one actually comes across them and reads them, they are out there.  Maybe that matters somehow. 

I have to be aware also of what Anna Nalick goes on share in the next few lines of the song:

And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
'Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to

I know that sometimes people will come along and take offense at the things that are said on the internet, but I suppose that is the risk that I'm taking.   And, it's my blog, so if the comments get annoying, I can always disable them for an individual post (as has only happened once).