Soaked to the Bone

Soaked to the Bone

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 6 seconds

Jan and Oscar

Jan always worried that my commitment to walking every day would endanger me.

Rainy and snowy days were of most significant concern.

When Superstorm Sandy‘s eye landed, I walked our dog, Oscar.

Transformers were flickering off, and even though it was not raining much, the wind gusts wet Oscar and me from head to toe.

Today, I was soaked to the bones from a light but steady shower.

Returning home, I had to toss my sweats into the dryer along with my socks.

Although I am safe and sound, I accept that one day, I may not be able to walk in inclement weather.

My morning walk was shorter than most, only five miles.

I walk daily for mental and physical health.

Walking clears my head and allows me to remember Jan’s love.

I will be grateful for her love and support as long as I live.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Raindrops on My Head!

Today's walk was into two unequal timeframes.

The lingering showers of Tropical Storm Nicole had, I thought, played out overnight.

The tropical rain drenched me like a wet mop less than five minutes from home.

My desire to continue on the route undeterred by Mother Nature became impossible.

Jan always worried if I could adjust to circumstances beyond my control.

What if the weather turned on a dime, and you could not return home to me?

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Soaked to the Bone
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How Democracies Die

Read: January 2021

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How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt was on my reading list for almost a year. In late December of last year, I started reading it and was in the final chapter on January 6, 2021. Like many of us, I never in my life expected to see a day like that in our country.

This type of event is one the authors talk about in their book.

According to the overview in GoodReads,

Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang–in a revolution or military coup–but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.

Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die–and how ours can be saved.

Our democracy is too valuable for us to have it die. We all need to work to preserve and strengthen it. How Democracies Die is a book that everyone needs to read!

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A House for Alice: A Novel

Read: September 2023

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A House for Alice: A Novel

by Diana Evans

I just started reading A House for Alice: A Novel by Diana Evans. The story is set against a complicated political backdrop but is filled with hope, humor, and humanity. A House for Alice explores the scars of grief and betrayal across generations and reveals the secrets we keep from our loved ones.

The novel opens with two tragedies that occur in London. The first is the Grenfell Tower fire, which took many lives. The second is the death of Cornelius Winston Pitt, a family patriarch who dies alone. A House for Alice is a beautiful and poignant story about a family of women shaken by loss and searching for closure.

The family matriarch, Alice, has lived in England for fifty years but longs to spend her remaining years in her homeland, Nigeria. Her three daughters are divided on the matter. The youngest daughter, Melissa, is also struggling with the aftermath of her failed relationship. The family’s foundational pillars of trust, love, and cultural identity begin to weaken as they navigate these difficult times.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



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Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy

Read: November 2022

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Civil War by Other Means

by Jeremi Suri

Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy by Jeremi Suri is the perfect book to help us understand our failures at creating a multi-racial democracy in the nineteenth century and how this has weakened and divided our nation. Jeremi Suri chronicles the events after the civil war, from Lincoln’s assassination to Garfield’s, and how they were a continuation of the war by other means.

I purchased a signed copy and watched a video presentation by Dr. Suri due to my membership at One Day University. Civil War by Other Means is a vivid and unsettling portrait of a country striving to rebuild itself but unable to compromise on or adhere to the most basic democratic tenets. 

I highly recommend Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy by Jeremi Suri.

In addition, the documentary, on Apple TV+, Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power is a companion piece that illustrates the continued failure to create a multi-racial democracy. Jeremi Suri makes a convincing case that the eternal struggle for democracy continues in our time.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

In 1865, the Confederacy was comprehensively defeated, its economy shattered, its leaders in exile or in jail. Yet in the years that followed, Lincoln’s vision of a genuinely united country never took root. Apart from a few brief months, when the presence of the Union army in the South proved liberating for newly freed Black Americans, the military victory was squandered. Old white supremacist efforts returned, more ferocious than before.

In Civil War by Other Means, Jeremi Suri shows how resistance to a more equal Union began immediately. From the first postwar riots to the return of Confederate exiles, to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, to the highly contested and consequential election of 1876, Suri explores the conflicts and questions Americans wrestled with as competing visions of democracy, race, and freedom came to a vicious breaking point.

What emerges is a vivid and, at times, unsettling portrait of a country striving to rebuild itself but unable to compromise on or adhere to the most basic democratic tenets. What should have been a moment of national renewal was ultimately wasted, with reverberations still felt today. The recent shocks to American democracy are rooted in this forgotten, urgent history.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



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Aftermirth

Read: August 2022

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Aftermirth by Hillary Jordan

by Hillary Jordan

Aftermirth by Hillary Jordan is a book about grief as the two protagonists take a road trip that is a darkly funny journey of healing that takes them deep into the heart of their suffering and others, and then beyond it, to a place of peace and laughter. I had just finished reading When She Woke by Ms. Jordan and having enjoyed that book, reading a second one by the same author seemed reasonable.

When I selected this short novel to read, I questioned if it was a good choice for me.

I found it easier to read and, in some ways, helpful. It was like meeting fellow widows from my Zoom grief groups in person at Camp Widow. The ability to laugh about our loss and cry openly is essential to meeting fellow benefits.

Michael Larssen, the narrator, raised a question I have not and still do not want to consider. What if I am still alive, Jan was a great love but is not the love of my life?

“You can’t know that he was the love of your life, and do you know why? Because guess what, you aren’t dead yet. You may feel dead right now, and believe me I’ve been there, but the fact is, until you’re lying under a tombstone of your own you can’t be sure about anything. You could prick your finger on one of your roses tomorrow, and as you’re climbing the stairs to get a Band-Aid, you trip over one of the pugs and tumble to your death. Or you could meet a man in the checkout line at the grocery store–hell, you could meet a woman even and fall madly in love with her and end up with six kids and twenty grandkids. Michael looks over at Elena, then back at George. You just don’t know, George. That’s the thing. None of us does.”— Aftermirth (Kindle Single) by Hillary Jordan

Despite my anxiety about considering this disturbing question, I highly recommend Aftermirth by Hillary Jordan.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

I stopped being funny the day my wife was electrocuted by her underwire bra.” So begins “Aftermirth,” a dark comedy that explores the absurdity of death through the eyes of thirty-one-year-old comedian, writer, and actor Michael Larssen. What is funny to the rest of the world is devastating to Michael, who loves his wife deeply, exceptionally her bright, rippling, abandoned laughter, which captivated him from the first time he heard it. In the aftermath of her death, he loses his sense of humor and his career.

Then, after two years of mourning her, he sees an article in the paper about a factory worker named Julio Santiago who fell into a giant vat of dough and was kneaded to death. For reasons Michael doesn’t understand, he decides to go to the man’s wake. There he meets and bonds with Julio’s twenty-nine-year-old daughter Elena, a law student who is reeling from her father’s unexpected and preposterous death.

Three months later, she calls him out of the blue and suggests that the two of them drive to North Carolina to speak with another survivor like themselves Elena has found on the Internet. Their road trip is a darkly funny journey of healing that takes them deep into the heart of their grief and others and then beyond it to a place of peace and laughter.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

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Revolutionary Mothers

Read: February 2019

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Revolutionary Mothers

by Carol Berkin

Revolutionary Mothers by Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of American Colonial and Revolutionary History; Women’s History Professor at Baruch College, is one of four books I purchased after my first One Day University Class on February 9, 2019. It should be required reading!

The book explains how women of the Revolution were most active at home, organizing boycotts of British goods, raising funds for the fledgling nation, and managing the family business while struggling to maintain a modicum of normalcy as husbands, brothers, and fathers died.

It was not just the men who fought on the front lines, as in the story of Margaret Corbin, who was crippled for life when she took her husband’s place beside a cannon at Fort Monmouth. She explains the mystery of Molly Pitcher (she was not a person but a group of women), camp followers, women who spied for their country, Loyalist women, and the impact on African American and Native women.

This intelligent and comprehensive history brings these forgotten stories to their rightful place in the struggle for American independence. Dr. Birkin also highlights how their efforts set the stage for the continuing campaign for gender equality.

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The Corrections: A Novel

Read: September 2024

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The Corrections: A Novel

by Jonathan Franzen

Today, I embarked on a profound exploration of the human condition through Jonathan Franzen‘s ‘The Corrections: A Novel.’ It guides us from the heart of the Midwest in the mid-century to the bustling streets of Wall Street and the enigmatic landscapes of Eastern Europe. It’s no surprise that it’s hailed as one of The New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

Jonathan Franzen‘s ‘The Corrections: A Novel‘ is not just a family saga but a profound critique of our modern society. It’s a work of art that delves into the issues of our new century, enlightening us with its insights. Franzen masterfully juxtaposes the old-fashioned America of freight trains, civic responsibility, and holiday treats with the modern absurdities of neuroscience, home surveillance, hands-off parenting, DIY mental health care, and the anti-gravity New Economy. It’s a narrative that will evoke laughter, tears, and deep contemplation. Through ‘The Corrections,’ Franzen establishes himself as one of the leading interpreters of American society and the American spirit.

Enid Lambert is distraught. She conceals her anxiety from her neighbors and adult children, but her husband, Alfred, is slipping into a world of his own. Whether it’s the medication for his Parkinson’s disease or his pessimism, he’s becoming increasingly detached. His days are spent brooding in the basement, engaging in mysterious, unsettling actions, and struggling to understand Enid’s words. The depth of their struggle is palpable, drawing the reader into their world.

Trouble also brews in the lives of Enid’s children. Her eldest son, Gary, a banker in Philadelphia, has become callous and materialistic, trying to push his parents out of their old home and into a small apartment. The middle child, Chip, has abruptly quit his exciting job as a professor at D—— College for no discernible reason. He moved to New York City, seemingly embracing a “transgressive” lifestyle while working on a screenplay. Meanwhile, the youngest, Denise, has left her disastrous marriage only to waste her youth and beauty on an affair with a married man—or so Gary implies.

Enid, a lover of life’s pleasures, still looks forward to a final family Christmas and the upcoming Nordic Pleasurelines Luxury Fall Color Cruise with Alfred. However, his growing confusion and instability threaten these remaining joys. As Alfred’s condition worsens, the Lamberts must confront their family’s past failures, secrets, and long-buried wounds. Yet, in this journey of confrontation and reconciliation, the hope for a better future emerges.

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