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Part 6 Chap 2: a lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old

Chp 35: It is another of life‘s great mysteries that sadness and joy can coexist so compatibly with each other. I wonder if on this side of heaven, either one can be complete without the other.

Chp 35: Theo, I appreciate that you are such a sensitive man. You have a tender heart.
Not tender, Asher. Broken. My expertise with sadness is hard earned. But I realize more and more that it is a gift. Living with sadness, accepting it, is easier than trying to pretend it isn’t there.

Chp 26 While Mrs. Ocie Van Blarcum fit in comfortably in the highbrow world of St. James, she was no stranger to the soup lines and homeless shelters in Golden. She and Ellen had seen each other often in such places. She understood the difference between troubled mind and troublemaker. And she recognized in Ellen all the signs of the former. A wounded soul, a lost sheep, a “least of these.”

Chp 26 Mrs. Ocie Van Blarcum was a matriarch of St. James, a venerated and lifelong member whose family name was empaneled in a grand window that covered most of the sanctuary’s west wall. She knew well and lived devotedly the ethic of James “faith without works is dead” she was not merely capable of saintliness, she was saintly. Some would have argued that she was a saint.

Part 1 Chp 3: He kissed the infant’s fluffy skull and said, “I shall be as tender to you as my father was not to me,” for what is the point of having children if each generation does not improve what went before?

This was a quick reread. I started at the beginning and then skipped to the middle and continued to the end from there. I had a few questions after reading When He Was Wicked

We need to ask better questions. Does this woman have help? time? space to reconnect with herself? Because desire is something we have to make room for. Desire is non-binary. Desire is a relational experience. It thrives in environments of safety, curiosity, tenderness, and mutual care. When those conditions begin to erode, through fatigue or resentment, desire doesn’t necessarily disappear, it just gets quieter.

Cp 11: In truth, many cases of low libido aren’t just about hormones, they are about context. They are about a life that has crowded out autonomy and rest.

Cp 11: it is not just about stress. It is the kind of fatigue that sleep doesn’t fix. The kind of emotional depletion that comes from carrying the invisible weight of everyone else’s needs. Women in midlife are often the emotional center of their families, workplace, & communities. and when that mentalload collides with hormonal shifts that affect mood energy & sleep, the result is a perfect storm for low desire

Part 3: Libido isn’t a light switch. Responsive desire versus spontaneous desire.

Chp 47: I was afraid to take this job. Before now I was able to call upon reserves of courage. But this was a fear that I could not grapple with. Not merely a fear of failure a fear of leaving behind a terrible legacy in my wake. Every mistake I make will be used to attack me for getting above my place as a woman. They will blacken my name and sully all of my good work. Why should I open myself up to that?

I know how they will treat the first woman Cabinet member. I won’t be taken as an individual. I’ll be a lightning rod simply because I am a woman. If ever I do anything the least bit out of step, if I make some error about my political responsibilities, there will be a terrible public hysteria about me.

I was afraid to take this job.

F: all my daughter wants in the world is a normal mother.
M: then she should’ve been born to someone else! Do you really want Susanna growing up to believe it is normal for women to play no part in the highest levels of their own government? Would a man, any man, turn down this opportunity?

If I said no, the door might close on other women. Is that reason enough to agree? I cannot go just to be a symbol for women. FDR will have a cabinet full of national figures. Powerful and accomplished men will be vying for his attention and they will edge me out.

Mary: Oh, men have been trying to edge you out your entire life and it hasn’t worked yet.

Chp 47: Francis: I’d make a mess of it in the federal government. I know who to trust in New York. I haven’t any idea how to manage in Washington.
Mary: Francis, if you don’t take this appointment, it might be another hundred years before another woman is asked. You’ve been the first to do so many things. So the other women could follow in your footsteps.

Chapter 1: James Hinckley

Martha Ballard (1735–1812) was a pioneering Maine midwife and diarist, Clara Barton (1821–1912) was her grandniece and founder of the American Red Cross.

Ballard recorded over 800 births and Barton provided medical aid during the Civil War. Ballard kept a detailed 30-year diary (The Frozen River), Another descendant Mary Hobart, became one of the first female physicians in the US.

Epilogue: no man should be judged only for his best act or his worst, by only his greatness or his flaws. And no woman either.

Chp 98: Fort Benton mention

Chp 93: Miles City mention

Chp 68: “…Well, I’d rather rob banks,” Little Eddie said. “Then you’ve got the money right in your hands. And you don’t have to sell no cows.”
“Well, you are lazy, Ed,” Dan said, looking at his brothers as if he were mad enough to shoot them. In fact, the Suggs brothers seemed to live on the edge of fratricidal warfare.”

“fratricidal warfare” 😂

Chp 37: Louisa the farmer to Deputy Roscoe: I won’t have no pigs around. Too smart. I won’t bother with animals that I have to outwit. I’d rather just farm.

Chp 28: “‘If I ain’t back in a month, you girls feel free to start without me!’ Augustus said. Then he drove off, amused that Dish Boggett’s looks so out of sorts just for being in love with a woman who didn’t want him. It was a peril too common to take seriously.

Chp 8: “Non sibi sed aliis”

It translates to:

“Not for oneself, but for others.”

Cp 6: Jake Spoon: I was up to Montana two years ago. You ought to see it! A prettier country there never was. [I went up] Way up past the Yellowstone. I was near to the Milk River. You can smell Canada from there.

Chp 1: “… took a swig just to rinse the dry from his mouth”
That’s a fun sentence to imagine

Cho 62: …timidity passes for folly, and gentleness for dullness, and silence, which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit Protestantism above all finds no mercy at the hands of the female inquisition.

Chp 62:I like to dwell upon this period of her life that she was cheerful and happy, you see she has not much of that existence and has not fallen in the way of means to educate her tastes or intelligence. She has been domineered over hitherto by vulgar intellects. It is a lot of many a woman, and as every one of the dear sex is a rival of the rest of her kind timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgments.

Chp 59: Nobody had ever heard of these grieves which had been part of our poor little woman’s [Amelia Sedley] life, she kept them secret from her father, who’s improvidence was the cause of much of her misery. She had to bare all the blame of his misdoings. And indeed was so utterly gentle and humble as to be made by nature for a victim.