Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio Carmelo

Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Río Carmelo

California Historic Landmark number 135.  We visited this mission on November 27, 2021.  The 2.5 hour drive from Fresno was pleasant.  The weather in Carmel was beautiful;  78 degrees.  It has been restored and is the nicest of all the missions we have visited to date.  Is is located on the south edge of Carmel and is minutes from Highway 1.  The rooms, of course, are closed off.  The courtyard is spacious and very inviting.  There is a museum and a small cemetery on site.  The cost was $10 per adult, and it was well worth it.  Visit about-the-mission for history on the mission.  Apart from being a California Historic Landmark, it is also a National Historic Landmark.  

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David and Goliath

 

I began this book on November 1st and finished on the 10th.  This 295-page book was an easy read, as far as sentence structure, vocabulary and so forth.  As far as flow goes, I wasn’t feeling it.  Gladwell jumps around from one topic to another, it seems.  I don’t feel the transitions were smooth.  The book is separated into an introduction and three parts.  Each part has three chapters and each chapter is devoted to one person, for the most part.  Gladwell interviewed most of these subjects.  

The introduction ties into the name of the book, telling the story of David and Goliath from the Bible.  As the story goes, two armies faced each other from opposites sides of a valley.  To avoid massive bloodshed and loss of life, each army selected one representative to battle it out in the valley.  One representative was David, the other Goliath.  Goliath was a giant.  Massively tall.  David was a small sheep herder.  What would have been the over under on that match?  David was clearly at a disadvantage, right?  So he gathered his faith and courage.  With no armor, he could run toward his enemy with speed and agility.  He came to the battle knowing that he could not take a "knife to a gun fight."  He did not have the weaponry Goliath had.  He would not have lasted in hand to hand combat.  He had a rock and a sling shot.   David could move quickly and precisely.  Goliath, with his massive size and heavy armor, could not.  Gladwell concludes:  sometimes that which is the source of one's greatest strength can also be the source of one's greatest weakness.  Here is a breakdown of the people Gladwell studied:

Part One - When a disadvantage becomes an advantage (and vice versa)

1.  Vivek Ranadive - had never played basketball, but is now an NBA team owner with a net worth of  $700 million

2.  Teresa DeBrito - a middle school principal who deduced too-small classroom sizes could be just as detrimental to a child’s growth as too-large classrooms sizes.

3.  Caroline Sacks - a brilliant student who did not realize her full potential in the field of science.  

Part Two - When difficulty breeds success

1.  David Boies - suffered from dyslexia, but became a wealthy and successful litigator. 

2.  Emil Freirich - overcame an extremely difficult childhood and developed leukemia treatment plans.  

3.  Wyatt Walker - a Baptist minister who partnered up with Martin Luther King.  He used some mischief and sneakiness to achieve his goals during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. 

Part Three - How far can absolute power really go?

1. Rosemary Lawlor - an Irish Catholic woman forced to leave her home in Northern Ireland because she was not Protestant.  

2.  Wilma Derksen - a Mennonite woman from Canada whose daughter was murdered. 

3.  Andre Trocme - a French pacifist and pastor who protected Jewish refugees during World War II.

As an afterword, Gladwell studies Konrad Keller, who warned we could not win the fight in Vietnam. 

As you can see, there is a wide variety of subjects here.  And within each chapter, Gladwell goes into stories about other unrelated people.  What I liked about this book was it ignited in me an interest in people I knew nothing about, amd I have determined to change that.  Mainly:  Emil Freirich, Rosemary Lawlor, and Andre Trocme.  

My next reading adventure awaits……

Insomnia and Apothekary UPDATED

If I’m not asleep by 2am, I lose all hope.  My insomnia used to let me sleep until midnight, but now it won’t let me fall asleep at all.  I don’t understand how I can’t sleep when my body is so exhausted and fatigued from multiple sleepless nights!  Some nights, I toss and turn. Some nights I figure I should be productive and do something.  The other night I was making candles at 2 in the morning!  

About two years ago my psychiatrist prescribed Restoril.  I have been taking that almost every night.  Two weeks ago, though, he advised me he could no longer prescribe that medication to me due to the fact it’s supposed to be a short-term remedy.  Why did it take two years for him to decide it had been longer than a temporary fix?  Hmm.  I have not had good experiences with any psychiatrist I have been in contact with.  

So now, I am off my meds!  I am averaging 3 hours sleep per night.  It’s terrible.  I have black out curtains.  I have lavender plants next to my bed.  I have a lavender sachet under my pillow.  I have a white noise machine.  I do yoga.  I listen to sleep meditation music.  Nothing seems to work!  I recently saw an ad on Facebook for Apothekary.  What the heck, I decided to try the products.  I purchased the following:  Ashwaganda, Chill the F*** Out, and Do Not Disturb. 

It has only been four days since I started these.  The site says to give 2-3 weeks before expecting any benefits.  I am willing to wait and see!  I mix one teaspoon with one cup of warm unflavored oat milk.  I don’t like sweet drinks, so this is perfect for me.  If you like sweet drinks, I would try a sweetened or flavored milk.  

I hope to return to this post in 2-3 weeks with a positive update and review on these products!  

UPDATE:  December 5, 2021

It’s been over a month.  I have been using these products every day.  My anxiety is much improved.  A true test of this was a visit to our local Costco the other day.  Often, crowded places are difficult for me.  I can be there for a short time before I have an overwhelming need to leave immediately.  To visit Costco during the holidays and actually ENJOY every minute there was amazing.  I have been keeping a sleep journal.  I am sleeping about seven hours every night now.  I usually wake up once or twice, but I am able to fall back to sleep, whereas before I would lie awake for hours.  I don’t know if there is a positive correlation between Apothekary products and my improved anxiety level and positive sleep pattern but I would like to think there is.  I plan to continue with these products.  I hope to try some of their other products as well.  I will update when I do! 

The Poisonwood Bible

I have had this book on my shelves for years.  I purchased it for probably 50 cents from the used books cart at our local library.  About 20 years ago, I read two other books by Kingsolver;  Animal Dreams and Pigs in Heaven.  Although I don't remember them, I remember loving her work.  I picked this book up a few times, wanting to give it a try.  However, reading about a Baptist family in the Belgian Congo of 1959 just did not appeal to me.  Not long ago, I read Stephen King's On Writing (a MUST READ!).  It concludes with a reading list.  On that list was The Poisonwood Bible.  It was then I committed myself to reading it.        

I began this journey on October 18, 2021 and finished on October 31.  WOW.  I'm sad to not have read it sooner, but firmly believe I read it at just the right time for me.  This book tells the story of a family of five.  The Price family.  Father Nathaniel, mother Orleanna, and daughters Rachel, Adah, Leah, and Ruth May.  The majority of the book takes place in the Congo and spans the timeline of 1959-1986.  It is written in first person and rotates from the points of view of the mother and the daughters.  The father's point of view is not given at any point.  

Nathaniel was a Baptist preacher and courted Orleanna at a young age.  Both seemed mostly happy.  Until Nathaniel was drafted into the war.  He was injured by a shell fragment and was collected to receive medical aid.  He later found out his entire company died on the Death March from Bataan.  He returns home a different man.  It's easy to see he suffered from PTSD.  He shames his wife for beaming with happiness for her pregnancy, because the men from his company would never get to see a child of theirs be born.  

Rachel was the firstborn, followed by twins Adah and Leah, and youngest Ruth May.  Nathaniel decides to take his family to the Belgian Congo as missionaries.  The children range in age from five to mid-teens.  They were plucked abruptly from their lives in the states, to a completely new way of life.  The story follows the mother and daughters for the span of 25 years from the time the father forcefully removed the family from their home, and placed them in a dangerous place at a dangerous time.  

The accounts given are beautifully and masterfully told by Kingsolver, giving a genuity to the speaker of each section.  When you read each section, you become the five year-old Ruth May, or the 16 year-old Rachel.  You can feel their sorrow, their confusion, their frustration, and their helplessness.  The accounts of the daughters are told in real time.  The accounts from the mother is told after the fact.  The story is told through the eyes of children, and that is all you need.  What is more raw and unblemished than the words and thoughts of innocent children?      

Adah, toward the end of this story, tells us the reason for this book title.  As an adult, she begins to collect old books that have become famous for their misprints; mainly, bibles.  She gives the example of one misprint that says "Rebekah arose with her camels" instead of "Rebekah arose with her damsels."  This came to be new known as the Camel Bible.  As for the Poisonwood Bible, it got it's name from her father's mispronunciation of the word bangala.  Her father ended each of his sermons with the following:  Tata Jesus is bangala.  The word bangala has more than one meaning, depending on how it is pronounced.  He means to say "Father Jesus is precious and dear."  However, given his incorrect pronunciation, he is telling the church "Jesus is poisonwood."          

As Orleanna Price recounts the day that impacted her life the most, she says:

"I had to keep moving.  I didn't set out to leave my husband.  Anyone can see I should have, long before, but I never knew how.  For women like me, it seems, it's not ours to take charge of beginnings and endings.  Not the marriage proposal, the summit conquered, the first shot fired, nor the last one either.... Let men write those stories.  I can't.  I only know the middle ground where we live our lives.... Don't dare presume there's shame in the lot of a woman who carries on.  Conquest and liberation and democracy and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.... Maybe you still can't understand why I stayed so long.... Is my sin a failure of virtue, or of competence?  I knew Rome was burning, but I had just enough water to scrub the floor, so I did what I could." 

As a woman who was abused violently by my mother and by my ex-husband, that last sentence means a lot to me.  Any mother will wonder what she could have done better.  I know of countless things I could have done better.  But I did what I could.  

Kingsolver ends the story from the perspective of a grown and matured Ruth May.  No longer alive, Ruth May speaks to her mother.  She offers her mother forgiveness.  Though, the forgiveness that Orleanna needs is that of self-forgiveness.  

 

     A Poisonwood tree.