Stephen Yoder > Recent Status Updates

Whew. Profound book.

“Soft front / strong back” compassion and empathy combined with an inner strength, as I take it. This was presented as a great strategy for attending to the dying, but why limit it to that arena?

Very nifty. My kind of chatty.

Freud looking for the reproductive organs of male eels and failing. History and ichthyology are both so fun.

The introductory story has really struck me. I have a feeling I will reread this book once I finish it. Depressingly timely.

I found this article after asking the great Google about what Tolstoy would have thought about Russia's invasion of Ukraine:

https://kansasreflector.com/2022/06/0...

I cannot get over the fact that Hunter created his own concept of reanimating people (aka CPR) in Georgian England and his contemporary doctor/competitors were like “nah, bro, just blow tobacco up their rear and that will work.”

Wow, John Hunter trained Edward Jenner. Hunter was really in the thick of things in Georgian England.

During a drive yesterday to a stressful situation I fired up the youtube video where an Irish Buddhist read chapters of this book aloud. It was so thought-provoking, so emotion-provoking. Pema talked all about going toward what we fear. I wept a few times. And then (twice!) there was this ad, "DO YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW TO GET POOP OUT THAT'S STUCK IN YOUR BODY?!" I have not laughed that hard in a long time.

If I were a sexually transmitted infection I would *truly* enjoy this book on a carnal level. Georgian England is replete with STIs. John Hunter, a man who introduced *very* basic concepts of observation, incremental improvement, and placebos to English science in the 18th century, did his best to learn about STIs but the incredible preponderance of disease clouded his vision.

I tell you, it is a definite win to read this book amidst the tall aisles of Kroger. Walking among the endless columns and rows of candy, chips, and apples is a delightful counterpoint to this overwhelmingly carnal novel.

Marquez gets the challenges of being married and having in-laws.

After a bit of reading drought I'm enjoying this. So many verbal dalliances by Marquez to describe so many dalliances. I'd love to read this twice in a row and then write my own imitation based upon the few things I know.

Not an uplifting read so far. Damn.

Yeah. This seems like a good time to take this book out of my To Read pile.

I seriously emailed the author to say (basically) “can’t we assume that some trans people got away with what these people in your book were caught doing?” Because this book is such a bummer thinking of these people’s lives torn apart by being discovered.
Really fascinating book.

I thought the mention in the foreword that gender would be treated more as a practice rather than something mutable/immutable was rather fascinating. It could be said, to mangle an Elvis Costello song, that every day we write the book of our gender. What will I do today that will enforce or shift my expressed gender?
I'm pretty amazed at these 18th and 19th century stories of people transed, as Manion mentions.

I swear I found this book in a Goodwill. You never know where you'll find your next book.

Worms. Worms.

Are you itching? I think I'm itching a little.

A wild Nate Silver appears

I’m just making my way thru the preface and I already feel implicitly called out. Pretty funny

Mr Colfer is having some fun here w/ these established characters, plus adding a few new wacky ones. I mean, it is obvious that Colfer writes a bit differently than Douglas Adams would have. . . but everything here still feels like it is in the spirit of the Hitchhikers Guide books that Adams wrote.

Good god. After Ukraine is taken over by the Soviet Russians and starved, then come purges, next comes WWII and the Germans. The Germans kill so so many Ukrainians….and next the Russians retake Ukraine and view everyone who survived skeptically. This is overwhelming. And yet people survived all of this. Incredible.

A few pages ago I had to chuckle when a wild Unitarian appeared. I mean, how is it that a Unitarian, of all people, would affect Ukrainian history?

I'm starting to see the various intertwinings & origins of the "Little Russian" diminutive description of Ukrainians and Ukrainian culture. That certainly ties into Russian assumptions & behavior regarding their invasion of Ukraine.

Wow. I'm only up to about the 11th century and there have already been so many different invading/influencing groups sweeping across Ukraine. What took the Slavs so long to appear? And I had no idea that the Vikings ruled over Kieyvan Rus (which I'm sure I am misspelling).

Eventually everything converges, or at least gets really close to something else. As I read Womb all sorts of language appears that I'm rather accustomed to hearing from my spouse, who is an OB/GYN. And then there's the mention of a book by a fellow Yoder where birth is seen as a violent act. Oh, man -- I have to research that one 19th century surgeon who (upon his death) was found to be anatomically female.