I had downloaded The Twelve to my iPad for a trip, but didn’t get to it, and sort of forgot it was there until my son mentioned he was listening to it on audio-books, and it was good, maybe even better than the first book in the trilogy, The Passage. He had loaned me The Passage several years ago when it came out, and as soon as I finished, I got on the list to download as soon as the next book came out – it was that good.
Cronin’s gift is an ability to create a future world entirely different from our own, with a devastating enemy – the virals – who, literally, are us, transformed. Cronin can make the enemy terrifying, destructive, truly horrifying – and can make them also captive to their repugnant nature and even pitiable. I think that is an amazing dance for an author to accomplish.
The setting is post-apocalyptic USA; the government had a sector working on a secret weapon which – of course – was not able to be contained, creating 12 super vampire-like creatures called Virals, who in turn create hordes of minions. This volume, The Twelve, is set more than 100 years later, but shifts back to earlier times to help us understand how this disaster occurred, and how characters relate back to the earliest times of the disaster. The populations live in fear of sudden attacks; one family, out on a picnic, are almost totally wiped out by an eclipse for which the Virals were prepared – and the families were not.
As I read his books, I find them very cinematic, but, as my son and I discussed, too complex for a movie; it would need a gritty HBO series like The Wire, or OZ, or Deadwood to capture the subtleties, the nuances that make this a best-selling series. The heroes and heroines are all make for the screen, their relationships – and inter-relationships – make them interesting, and then, as we learn more, interesting again. We never know enough to make a final judgement on any character; the characters are complex and the relationships obscure until the author chooses to reveal. It makes it fun to try to spot them before he tells us. I missed a couple!
Although it can be read as a great-adventure stand-alone, you’ll be happier if you read The Passage before you read The Twelve. If you have a problem with postponing gratification, you might want to wait until the third and conclusive volume of the trilogy is published – and that may be a year or so.
July 13, 2013
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Adventure, Books, Character, Community, Fiction, Health Issues, Living Conditions, Political Issues, Relationships, Social Issues, Survival | Post Apocalypse, virals |
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“I miss the highs. . . ” my friend said – just before she went off her meds.
I totally understood what she was saying. We belonged to a quilting group, and when she was beginning a manic phase, she produced knock-out quilts, quilts combining colors in unusual ways, and she could stay up all night to finish one. She was a lot of fun to be around, totally up and enthusiastic and creative. As the phase progressed, however, she got thinner and thinner, fell in love with the wrong men, and I always knew when she was just about to crash because she looked fabulous – new clothes, lots of shoes, and she talked a mile a minute.
Then the crash. Her biggest fear was the credit card bills; when she was on a high, she felt like it didn’t matter. When she slid into depression, it was complicated by the fact that she had real things to be depressed about – STDs, huge bills, and concerns at her workplace and her security clearance.
As long as she was on her meds, she was fine, but the medications made her feel sluggish; she said even colors were less colorful on her meds. She said it was like spending your life underwater, where things were not so clear. She said it was dull.
It’s easy, when you are not bi-polar, to say “stay on your meds.” It’s really hard to do it when the meds can make you feel like you are living in a prison.
My friend recommended a book by Kay Redfield Jamison called An Unquiet Mind. It was one of the most helpful books I have ever read, helping me to understand just how hard it is to give up the mania in spite of the huge price you pay for it with the depressions.
I hope my friend is still alive.
This article is from AOL Health News:
4 Surprising Signs of Bipolar Disorder
Fewer than half of Americans with bipolar disorder are properly diagnosed and treated, recent research shows. Could you spot bipolar symptoms – in yourself or in someone close to you?
Many people with bipolar disorderdon’t even know they have it.
Fewer than half of people in the United States who show classic signs of bipolar disorder actually get diagnosed and treated, says a recent Archives of General Psychiatry report on a survey of more than 61,000 adults in 11 countries — the United States, Mexico, China, Japan, Brazil, Colombia, India, Lebanon, Bulgaria, Romania, and New Zealand. Bipolar patients in lower-income nations get even less treatment — in some cases, as few as 25 percent receive help.
Compared to the other 10 countries studied, the United States had the highest rate of bipolar disorder (4.4 percent of those surveyed fell somewhere on the bipolar spectrum). India had the lowest (0.1 percent). Overall, about 2.4 percent of those interviewed in the face-to-face survey could be classified as having bipolar disorder.
Bipolar Disorder’s Most Surprising Symptoms
It may be buzz-worthy these days, but many people don’t fully understand bipolar disorder and the symptoms that can lead to proper diagnosis and treatment. Bipolar, also sometimes called manic-depressive disorder, is characterized by shifts from extreme highs (known as mania) to emotional lows (depression), with “normal” moods in between.
It’s bipolar disorder’s manic phase that most sets it apart from other common mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety. While many people associate mania with high energy and exaggeratedly good moods, these other key symptoms are more subtle:
- Reckless spending. If a friend is blowing her paycheck on shopping sprees she can’t afford, watch out. A person in a manic phase of bipolar disorder is more likely to take big risks, including spending splurges that can lead to mountains of unmanageable debt.
- Super-charged sex drive. A sudden revving up of a person’s sex drive, obsessively thinking or talking about sex, or engaging in sexual encounters he otherwise wouldn’t (like a one-night stand or sex with someone he doesn’t know well) are all symptoms of hypersexuality, another less-obvious mania clue.
- Alcohol or drug abuse. These often go hand-in-hand with manic episodes: As many as 60 percent of people with bipolar disorder have abused alcohol or drugs at some point in their lives. Depressants such as alcohol or pain pills can send a person with mania straight into depression, while stimulants like cocaine can have the opposite effect.
- Skimping on shut-eye. Little need for sleep is another red flag that a person may be having a manic episode.
Keep in mind that bipolar disorder can vary greatly in severity, and not everyone experiences every symptom. In fact, some patients experience hypomania, a less mild form of mania. But even hypomania, if left untreated, could spin into depression or develop into full-blown mania.
One important takeaway from the Archives study is that across all countries, patients with bipolar disorder faced challenges in their daily lives and were at increased risk of such health problems as panic attacks, substance abuse, and suicide. Untreated bipolar disorder can also lead to troubled relationships with friends and family and problems at work. If you’re concerned about yourself or a friend or loved one, get more information here on the best treatments for bipolar disorder.
Last Updated: 08/08/2012
July 9, 2013
Posted by intlxpatr |
Arts & Handicrafts, Character, ExPat Life, Financial Issues, Germany, Health Issues, Relationships | bipolar disorder, manic-depression, Mental health issues |
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The first time I read anything by Jeannette Walls, I had not read her autobiographical best-seller, The Glass Castle. If I had, when I read the opening pages of one of my all-time-favorite books, Half Broke Horses , three young children out checking on the cows in America of the mid-1800’s, I would have said “Oh, yes, this is Jeannette Walls” instead of being so shocked that these three children were so far from home with a storm approaching. Not only does the storm approach – the oldest sister pushes her younger sister and brother up a tree and they are stuck there through a violent storm all night. No adult comes looking for them.
“Where is their mother?” in shock I thought, “a mother with three children out in the storm goes looking for them!”
Not if you are a Jeannette Walls mother. To ‘get’ Jeannette Walls, you really have to start with The Glass Castle, and learn about how she and her siblings are at the mercy of an alcoholic mother and father, both big liars, maybe with some attendant mental problems. Half Broke Horses is fiction, based on her own grandmother, who, at 15 rides 28 days across Indian territory to teach at a far-away school (What mother lets her 15 year old DAUGHTER ride for a month across dangerous country ALONE??)
I was on the send-as-soon-as-it’s-published list for Silver Star. And even once it arrived, I waited until I knew I might have a few free hours in the evening to read it – once you start Jeannette Walls, you can’t put it down. Her heroines in this novel are 15 year old Liz and 12 year old Bean (Jean) whose mother ran away from her hometown in Virginia to pursue a career in music. The mother has a small inheritance to sustain them; when life sours, as it often does for her, she packs the girls into her worn Dodge Dart and takes off. She isn’t always good about paying her bills. She talks to her girls about what a great team they are, and then takes off for a day or two, usually with some man, leaving them to eat chicken pot pies. Then, she abandons them with no sign of when she will be back.
The girls are pistols. They are survivors, much like Jeannette Walls grandmother in Half Broke Horses. When social services start coming around asking where their mother is, they take off headed for their Mom’s old home town, across the continent, in Virginia.
The heart of the story finds the girls living in the old family mansion, scouting for odd jobs, learning more about themselves and their heritage, and learning how a small community can smother, judge and support their community members in unexpected ways.
If you are a negligent, man-oriented, self-absorbed mother, you don’t want to have a writer for a daughter. Jeannette Walls is having a ball; her books are both sad and hilarious, and she has utter scorn for mothers who do not take the reins of motherhood and behave like grown-ups.
July 2, 2013
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Books, Character, Community, Cultural, Family Issues, Fiction, Financial Issues, Humor, Living Conditions, Parenting, Relationships, Women's Issues |
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I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did; from the first chapter I was hooked, so hooked I didn’t want to go to water aerobics of go to sleep until I had finished it. The title sounds girly and romantic, big yawn, but the book is anything but. The book is tough, and edgy, and tackles the foster care system without using sexual assault or out-of-the-ordinarily-cruel foster parents to bludgeon the point. She botches her one great chance at happiness when she sabotages her adoption by Elizabeth, who loves her dearly. The system can even be caring, but the effect of warehousing unwanted and neglected children damages their ability to trust, and to form relationships. We watch her as a child, self-destructive, angry, undermining her own chances of happiness.
Victoria even has a girly name to go with the title, but she is tough, and self-reliant, and very, very vulnerable, in spite of her toughness. Aging out of the system, she emerges a waif, with a hunger that stems more from emotional needs than physical.
She is greatly blessed to cross paths with people who look at her and truly see her, see her possibilities and her vulnerabilities, people who are willing to work with her, even to love her patiently, in spite of her prickliness and tendency to push people away. One of these is a florist, Renate, who recognizes in Victoria a gift for floral arrangement and is willing to work around her eccentricities. She gives Victoria a part-time job, in which Victoria flourishes.
In her emotional life, however, Victoria still has a lot of unresolved issues, stemming back to the very beginning when she was given up by a mother who, for whatever reason, didn’t want her. While she is hungry for love, she fears it as much as she wants it. Relationships overwhelm her. She abandons the love of her life, and then has to live with the consequences.
Watching her resolve her issues is cliff-hanging. You can’t stop reading. It’s not like watching a train-wreck; you know this girl has inner resources she has not yet tapped; you can read it in the loving evaluation of those who surround her. Every page of the way you are rooting for her to succeed.
July 1, 2013
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Books, Character, Circle of Life and Death, Cultural, Family Issues, Fiction, Health Issues, Living Conditions, Mating Behavior, Parenting, Social Issues |
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Rushing from one meeting to another yesterday, I had just an hour – but during that hour, Terry Gross was interviewing one of my favorite authors, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does GREAT interviews. She is funny, and educated and insightful; she can talk about painful topics and make you laugh and cry with her. That interview was a blessing on my day.
I started reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie when I was in Kuwait. A good friend approached me and asked me to form a book club. LOL. This is a friend I can’t say no to. Every introverted bone in my body was screaming “NO! NO!” and I smiled at her and said “Yes.”
God is good. He laughed when I said “yes” and through the book club, introduced me to authors I might never otherwise read. The club was made up of many nationalities, and we read books from everywhere, unforgettable books. We read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “Half of a Yellow Sun.” Once you read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there is no going back. I wonder if I will be able to hold out on Americanah until it comes out in paperback?
This is from the National Public Radio website, so you can actually listen to the interview yourself, should you want to get to know this delightful author a little better.
‘Americanah’ Author Explains ‘Learning’ To Be Black In The U.S.
When the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was growing up in Nigeria she was not used to being identified by the color of her skin. That changed when she arrived in the United States for college. As a black African in America, Adichie was suddenly confronted with what it meant to be a person of color in the United States. Race as an idea became something that she had to navigate and learn.
The learning process took some time and was episodic. Adichie recalls, for example, an undergraduate class in which the subject of watermelon came up. A student had said something about watermelon to an African-American classmate, who was offended by the comment.
“I remember sitting there thinking, ‘But what’s so bad about watermelons? Because I quite like watermelons,’ ” Adichie tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross.
She felt that her African-American classmate was annoyed with her because Adichie didn’t share her anger — but she didn’t have the context to understand why. The history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was not taught to students in Nigeria. Adichie had yet to learn fully about the history of slavery — and its continuing reverberations — in the U.S.
“Race is such a strange construct,” says Adichie, “because you have to learn what it means to be black in America. So you have to learn that watermelon is supposed to be offensive.”
Adichie is a MacArthur Fellowship winner and author of the novels Purple Hibiscusand Half of A Yellow Sun. Her new novel, Americanah, explores this question of what it means to be black in the U.S., and tells the story of a young Nigerian couple, one of whom leaves for England and the other of whom leaves for America.
The title, she says, is a Nigerian word for those who have been to the U.S. and return with American affectations.
“It’s often used,” she says, “in the context of a kind of gentle mockery.”
June 28, 2013
Posted by intlxpatr |
Africa, Biography, Books, Character, Cross Cultural, Cultural, Entertainment, ExPat Life, Kuwait, Travel |
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LOL, no, no, this is not going where you think it might go, but it got my attention, too!
AdventureMan was in the locker room with one of his exercise/aerobics buddies, cooling down from his water aerobics class when this story started, and was sharing the story with me later, at lunch, as we exchangin details of our mornings.
“. . . And he asked ‘do you know what today is?’ and I said ‘Yes! It’s the 63th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War,” AdventureMan responded.
Guy talk. Guys discuss their combat experience in different wars. Combat is so intense, it imprints memories the way childbirth does in women, or a huge traumatic event, like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, or 9-11, or the Kennedy assassination, or the Tsunamis that hit Japan and washed entirely over the Maldives – experiences when the earth beneath your feet shifts, and things you once took for granted are shaken forever.
Who said guys don’t connect? AdventureMan has another old friend he needs to get in touch with today, to tell him he is thinking of him; Korean War veterans are largely forgotten in the tallying of combat in our country.
Pensacola is a wonderful place to be a military veteran. There is a Veteran’s hospital, and veteran-friendly policies at the clinics, commissaries and BX/PXx. Today we had lunch at Mellow Mushroom, where every Tuesday they give 20% off to all active duty and retired servicemen and women. Home Depot and Lowe’s give 10% off on every purchase, even plumbers, electricians, contractors, banks, theaters and many stores often give military discounts. And they thank us for our service. :0
To those of you who served in the Korean conflict: Thank you for your service.
June 25, 2013
Posted by intlxpatr |
Aging, Character, Circle of Life and Death, Civility, Community, Customer Service, Exercise, ExPat Life, Friends & Friendship, Kuwait, Pensacola, Political Issues | Korean War Anniversary, Korean War Veterans, Veterans |
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Honestly, who would want to be King? All those events and ceremonies, living your life in a fishbowl? Never a week went by in Doha without rumors of a new wife, speculation about an old wife, and comments on the Emir’s appearance. He has ushered Qatar through perilous times; few “blessings” are as two-sided as new wealth. He is looking healthier and happier than I have ever seen him; maybe he is looking forward to a life of privacy and leisure 🙂 We wish him well; we wish him safety and health and all good things. From today’s Doha News:
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, will meet with members of the ruling family and several Qatari advisors today, government-funded channel Al Jazeera reports.
Over the past two weeks, several foreign diplomats have said that a transition of power in Qatar is imminent.
Citing “trusted sources” regarding its information about Monday’s meeting but not elaborating any further, Al Jazeera implied that the talks would revolve around the Emir’s succession plans.
Details about the upcoming changes in government are unclear. But the Emir is expected to cede power to his fourth son, 33-year-old Heir Apparent Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, while the Prime Minister/Foreign Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, is said to be stepping down.
If the reports are true, the succession would be a historic event for Qatar and the Middle East, a region where rulers normally reign until death.
According to AFP:
“The emir is convinced that he should encourage the new generation. He plans to transfer power to the crown prince, Sheikh Tamim, and to carry out a ministerial reshuffle to bring a large number of young people into the cabinet,” a Qatari official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The Emir himself was a young 43 years old when he took power from his father in a bloodless coup on June 27, 1995, according to the Amiri Diwan’s website.
Though Al Jazeera’s report came in around 1am Monday, online reaction has already been building, with many Qataris expressing sadness about the potential end of Sheikh Hamad’s rule.
UPDATE | 12:20pm
Two hashtags in English and Arabic, #ThankYouHamad and #شكراً_حمد, expressing gratitude for the Emir and his rule are trending in Qatar on Twitter.
Read more: http://dohanews.co/post/53723624652/report-qatars-emir-to-meet-with-ruling-family-members#ixzz2X8XZKABA
June 24, 2013
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Bureaucracy, Character, Civility, Community, Doha, ExPat Life, Family Issues, Health Issues, Interconnected, Leadership, Living Conditions, News, Political Issues, Qatar, Work Related Issues |
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This entry is a totally Here There and Everywhere moment; the impetus of which is today’s reading from Luke about the birth of John the Baptist, or as he is known in the Moslem world, the Prophet Yahya. We visited his tomb in Damascus; at our church in Kuwait on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, one of the readings was from the Quran. I love it when our worlds intersect and we can discover what we can learn from one another, to the advantage of all.
I also love it that each meditation from Forward Day by Day lists at the bottom the area of the world we are to include in our daily prayers. I love praying for Nigeria. I have old friends from my Kuwait church living there, and also a neighbor from Doha, a sweet book-club friend who lived across the street, who now lives in Lagos.
When I pray for Nigeria, I see the tiny flame of the holy spirit entering into each heart, and then I see God blowing lightly on each person, so that the flame grows. The flame helps them reach out and encourage one another, and others see, and are attracted, and thus the holy spirit spreads. I imagine it covering Nigeria, all believers, seeing one another as fellow believers, not as Ibo or Christian or village or . . . you get the drill. I pray that the light spreads through all Africa, and tiny embers spread out to join, and then further, so that sparks unite all over the world.
I pray, too, for Damascus, and for Syria, and all our friends there; I think of all the wonderful adventures and times we have shared in Syria, and I know and trust with all my heart that our good and loving God can bring good out of this horror. I pray for it to happen sooner rather than to allow this suffering to endure.
. . . And that was just ONE synapse connecting early on a Monday morning, LOL. Have a great day. 🙂
MONDAY, June 24 The Nativity of Saint John the Baptist
Luke 1:57-80.
On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, “No; he is to be called John.”
It’s interesting to me that the name John means “God is gracious” and the meaning of the name Zechariah is “God has remembered.” Not all that different, given the content of the Song of Zechariah that he immediately launches into, but the miracle of the loosing of Zechariah’s mute tongue at that moment makes the point of the story pretty clear: going with the divine flow is the only way to go.
Most of us don’t receive such pointed visions that show us the fork in the road—“this way, not that way”—but all of us are constantly cultivating either a disposition of “my will be done” or of “thy will be done” that will suddenly show up in those crossroads moments. It may appear like divine intervention, but it is long-term divine cultivation.
Living into a larger pattern is both exciting and terrifying, because it means letting go of convention and stepping into new territory. Like Elizabeth and Zechariah, we do not step forward blind but with a promise: God remembers, and God is gracious.
PRAY for the Diocese of Oke-Osun (Ibadan, Nigeria)
June 24, 2013
Posted by intlxpatr |
Adventure, Character, Community, Cross Cultural, Doha, ExPat Life, Faith, Interconnected, Kuwait, Lectionary Readings, Spiritual |
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A friend recently sent me one of Richard Rohr’s meditations and I was hooked. I especially love today’s meditation, which I will share with you. It reminds me of a song I have been teaching my grandson since the day he was born;
Jesus loves the little children,
all the little children of the world,
red and yellow, black and white,
we are precious in his sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
Seven Underlying Themes of Richard Rohr’s Teachings
Fourth Theme: Everything belongs and no one needs to be scapegoated or excluded. Evil and illusion only need to be named and exposed truthfully, and they die in exposure to the light (Ecumenism).
Implications of Monotheism
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Meditation 18 of 52
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| The Risen Christ is the eternal icon of the Divine Presence that is beyond any boundaries or limits of space or time, or any attempts to limit God to here or there. We cannot achieve our divine sonship and our divine daughterhood. All we can do is awaken to it and start drawing upon a universal mystery.
We live with an inherent dignity by reason of our very creation, a dignity that no human has given to us and no human can take from us. All things created bear the divine “fingerprint,” as St. Bonaventure put it.Our inherent dignity has nothing to do with our race or religion or class. Hindus have it, and Buddhists have it, and so-called “pagans” in Africa have it. They are just as much children of God as we are. Objectively. Theologically. Eternally. Where else do you think they came from? Did some other god create them, except THE GOD? Their divine DNA is identical to ours. We deny our supposed “monotheism” (there is one God) if we believe anything else. Far too many Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been anything but believers in “one God who created all things.”Adapted from The Cosmic Christ (CD, MP3) |
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If his very Franciscan meditations strike a chord with you, you can subscribe by clicking here.
June 22, 2013
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Character, Charity, Faith, Interconnected, Values |
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I danced when I saw the Amazon box; rarely do I buy hardcover (hurts too much when they fall over if I fall asleep reading, too bulky to carry on planes) but this one I was on the waiting list for, mail it as soon as it is published! Khaled Housseini, author of Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns has a new runaway best-seller; thanks to him I’ve just spent three days in Afghanistan, Paris and Los Angeles.
As the book opens, I am big brother to a baby sister whose Mom died in childbirth, living in a remote village in Afghanistan. Life is tough, but through the eyes of these children, life is idyllic, even though food is scarce and winters are cold. We have a huge oak tree with a swing, we play with the other children, and we have each other. Our father’s new wife is kind enough, but is busy with her own children, and the drudgery of cooking, cleaning and making do in a very small, poor Afghan village.
Later, I am Pari, living in Paris with an alcoholic, self-absorbed mother, making a life for myself, but always with a nagging feeling of something just outside my peripheral vision, another life . . .
The tale is told through the eyes of many, and on the way to the end of the tale we meet a wide spectrum of humanity, suffer the ills of war, callousness and unintended cruelties. We find that the man with superficial charm also saves and changes the lives of many, we find a doctor who finds fulfillment serving in the poorly resourced hospitals of Afghanistan, and we feel the agonies of a dutiful daughter watching her father fade into the world of Alzheimer’s.
It’s a wonderful, wild ride, richly textured, and when it finishes, you are not ready for it to end.
June 21, 2013
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Adventure, Books, Bureaucracy, Character, Circle of Life and Death, Cross Cultural, Cultural, ExPat Life, Family Issues, Fiction, Living Conditions, Marriage, Mating Behavior, Paris, Political Issues, Relationships | Afghanistan |
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Here There and Everywhere 