Trish > Recent Status Updates

Published in 1991, I discovered and picked up this book in 2025. I wondered if my life would have been different if I had read it in 1992 or 1993 as I graduated college and started out in my career.

So far in chapter 2, I feel like very little has improved in American society, and in lots of ways, things are worse for women in 2025. So, we'll see how depressing this book is on that level, too.

It breaks my heart. I can’t finish listening to the report. It's now January 2025 and it makes me angry and sad and scared for the US that trials didn't happen to lay out the evidence against the ring-leaders.

Highly recommend. The art really adds to the experience.

This books started out talking about men's role in society & while women have been pushing the glass ceiling, the men now need to navigate a new society. The concepts along with statistics were setting up some interesting discussions. I'm approaching the middle, and it is turning into something of a parenting/fathering book, but staying at arms-length somehow. Very likely I will start skimming at some point.

"Again Nazis did the Soviets' work. ...The Soviets wanted to kill national movements throughout eastern Europe. As the national armies would, eventually, turn against the liberators, they had to be eliminated. The liberation of Poland would take place on Soviet terms. Those who might resist communism had been killed. The nation was abandoned by the West."

Appreciating he historical commentary.
5/5

"In the last hours of resistance the Soviets finally responded to the desperate radio calls. The Poles were told to storm toward the river, where they would be evacuated by boats under cover of smoke and fire. There was no alternative. But when the fighters reached the shore there was no covering fire, no smoke, no boats. They were mowed down by the Germans.
3/5

"The Poles fought heroically..., while the Red Army waited and watched more civilians die...
"The Home Army held for sixty-three days, until they were beaten back...Near the end the Soviets began limited drops of supplies, but they used no parachutes and the ammunition that survived the fall was Russian-made, incompatible with the stolen German guns.
2/5

2 powerful pages, especially in Mar 2022:
"By the summer of 1944 Hitler's armies were in retreat...The Polish Home Army planned uprisings in advance of the Soviets, to speed their passage to Berlin...Young men and women armed with stolen weapons took the Germans by surprise...After five years of hunger and darkness Polish flags waved in the sunlight. Warsaw was free...But then,...Red Army halted its advance.
1/5

Starting to wonder if this is actually fiction.
The author and his aunt Zita meet up with Zita's sister Vera. Also his aunt. They have a brother Oto, and his uncle. But how is he connected? They don't seem to have another sibling to be his parent. Zita is from central Europe. The author's dad is Scottish Canadian and his mom is English. How is he actually related to these people?

Genealogy is a hobby of mine, so when the author goes to his Aunt Zita after the death of his Uncle Peter, I'm following the familial connections. Was he related by blood to Zita or Peter? Eventually it was clear it was Zita.

"Fundamentalist mindsets offer to shelter people from destabilizing situations and exchange for a kind of existential quietism. They offer you in attitude and a single, closed way of thinking, as a substitute for the kind of thinking that opens you to truth. Whoever takes refuge in fundamentalism is afraid of setting out on the road to truth. He already "has" the truth, ..."
Wow.

" Journalists have had a key role in helping us to make sense of what is happening...."
They really do show us what is going on and direct our mental proccessing.

p. xv: "...the ways in which political expediency corrupts moral integrity, language, and truth itself."

" You know, you really should start reading more science fiction, Boss. Otherwise, how are you gonna know the future has happened when it sneaks up on you?"
😂

Oh, man this is dragging.

Sweet Potato Turkey Boats
Yummy and not complicated. Vegitarian version for daughter was also well received.

Cauliflower Steak Salad &Homemade Ranch Dressing.
I was apprehensive about the Ranch dressing, which is made with coconut cream. It tasted fine, not wierd ir coconut-y. The "cauliflower steaks" are cross-sections if the cauliflower grilled.
Tasty.

Tillerson, a year after being ousted as secretary of state, describes Trump as "a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn't like to read, doesn't read briefing reports, doesn't like to get into the details of a lot of things, but [says] 'Look, this is what I believe and you can try to convince me otherwise, but most of the time you're not going to do that.'" ...apparently even if what Trump wants to do is illegal.