Be a Cactus Podcast

Hello Friends,There are some things I wanted to discuss about this crazy week, so I’ll put off the final discussion of Enshittification. Next week we’re starting the new schedule of alternating the “Library and Banned Books News” with these review posts rather than having both within one week. So—next Sunday is about libraries and censorship.¡Sí, se puede! Yes, we can!I read in two newspapers that California is changing its Cesar Chavez holiday to “Farmworker Day/El Día del Campesino.” I’m glad my state is continuing with the honor. I’m over being heartbroken over the loss of idols. I think it’s best to celebrate ideas and movements that have helped people rather than any particular man. If you need some helpful reading on the Chavez abuse news, these may be useful:This guest post on the Contrarian by Maria Cardona.Let us be absolutely clear: none of these horrific revelations erase the very real gains made in farmworkers’ rights through years of grueling, backbreaking organizing. Those victories belong to an entire movement. Yes, Chávez was a leader — but so much of the unacknowledged credit belongs to Dolores Huerta and to the women who powered that movement from behind the curtain.And this:However, the farmworkers movement is not defined by an individual — and never has been. As Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi noted, “A movement is about the people — not any one person — and its strength lies in the values it upholds. We can honor the farmworker movement — and the generations who sacrificed to build it — while also confronting painful truths. No legacy is above accountability.” While we are shaken to our core, we continue to honor the tens of thousands of farm labor activists.Anne Lamott gives us hope, as always.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.And here’s some good news from this week’s Reasons to be Cheerful because it’s important to remember that everyday people work to correct past mistakes, even devastating ones.The Native Seed Farm Safeguarding California’s FutureAt Heritage Growers, every acre is being cultivated to repair ecosystems and help the Golden State meet its ambitious conservation goals.California is widely recognized as one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots, supporting thousands of endemic plant and animal species, more than any other US state. However, California’s Biodiversity Initiative notes that its wetlands, riparian woodlands and forests have “suffered extensive losses,” with “an estimated 80–90 percent” of its biologically diverse landscapes altered or lost in the past 150 years. Development, agriculture, invasive species, climate change and increasingly intense wildfires are among the culprits. Reestablishing native vegetation is crucial to reversing those trends.Right after I posted Friday’s “Library and Banned Books News,” the librarian in Rutherford, TN said she will not move those 190 YA (mostly LGBTQIA) books out of the teen section because it violates the First Amendment Rights of the teens. We’ll see what ensues, but it’s a reminder that good people are out there fighting.Iran and Its PeopleI read a couple of articles this week about the choices Iranians are now having to make.Iranians Weigh Tough Choice: Stay or Flee from the LA TimesWhat the War Has Done to Iranians from the New YorkerAnd one closer and more personal, a text convo between the New Yorker Journalist Cora Engelbrecht and “Hadi” in Tehran. There’s Hadi’s early sense of hope about the war, the fulfillment of a lifelong wish for the death of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which later turns to despair when the regime itself stays in place. I’m not sure whether you can access the article if you’re not a subscriber, but it’s very worthwhile. Here.“As for me, my situation is clear,” he added. “I want to remain close to what’s happening. I’m staying here in the middle of the war until the very end, until my home, what I consider my home, is taken away from me.”After reading these, I thought of a wonderful memoir about Iranian culture and history, about leaving Iran after the 1979-80 revolution. Exit Prohibited deals with the same question: should we stay or should we go? I know the author, Ellen Estilai, through the Inlandia Institute, a literary nonprofit.Opening the Door on Iranian CultureExit Prohibited by Ellen EstilaiAt the end of July 1980, Ellen Estilai, her husband, and their two daughters are leaving Iran. The decision isn’t easy. Ellen met and married her husband, Ali, in Davis, California, a decade earlier when they both attended university. Ali always planned to return to his homeland after earning his PhD in genetics. As a “first student,” his foreign education was paid for by the Iranian government on the promise to return and with his father’s house as collateral. After Ali graduates, Ellen goes with him, later giving birth to their children. Though she plans to spend her life in Iran, the 1979 revolution and its repressions make staying impossible. And while all four members of the family have permission to leave, Ali is detained at the airport. His passport is confiscated, and he is told he’s on the mamnou’ol khorudj — exit prohibited — list.Ellen and her daughters take off for Switzerland with plans to continue on to the United States. But they’ve no idea when they will see Ali again. She wonders: “Who would want to prevent Ali from leaving Iran? Which officious bureaucrat, which backbiting colleague, which sly neighbor could have written the letter or made the phone call? And just what is Ali being accused of? Having an American wife? Not being Islamic enough? Working on saffron?”The author moves from these thoughts to an examination of her life in Iran. Though hijab is not required under the shah’s rule, many Iranian women continue to wear headscarves, knee-length coats with long sleeves, and pants underneath. Those that don’t are eyed suspiciously as too westernized. As one of them, and a foreigner to boot, the author is sometimes distrusted. Yet she immerses herself in the culture and learns Persian. Her in-laws are a large, happy group who welcome her without hesitation. Their open-heartedness and gatherings, “a celebration of connectedness, of old roots and new growth,” satisfy a need that is not met in her small family of origin. Unlike her mother’s anxiety over hosting gatherings or guests, Iranians believe that a guest is God’s gift.Life in Iran is far different from what the author is used to. With few convenience foods available, she finds herself cooking much of the day. Itinerant street vendors call through the neighborhood selling coats and pants, watermelon, crystal dishes, and more. Though she is not convalescing, Ellen feels like Jimmy Stewart’s character in Rear Window. As she watches the drama in the courtyard and on the balconies, she discovers a good deal about her neighbors’ lives.The author also learns cultural norms. Taarof is the necessary offering of compliments and ceremonial courtesies (“these endless streams of pleasantries took so much valuable time”). The fatalistic worldview that everyone has their own ghesmat (kismet) prevails. Nonetheless, this view allows for a tradition of warding off the evil eye by preparing hot coals in a brazier and tossing in esfand (wild rye) seeds. And, of course, there is the ever-present samovar because tea is a part of all interactions, business or pleasure.Ali lands his dream position as a professor in the Biology Department at the University of Tehran. He secures funds to create a new department, the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology, and to purchase new equipment. Though his hopes of improving Iranian education appear to be coming true, some people are envious of him.Meanwhile, Ellen completes her education in English Language and Literature and begins working at the new Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art as Manager of Education. The author’s discussion of the museum — architecturally, it’s a paean to Iranian culture, but the artwork has dual foci in Iranian and western art — peeks into, and is a harbinger of, the cultural conflict that comes to consume Iran a few years later.As the author learns about Iranian culture, readers do as well. They are immersed in the beauty of Isfahan, its art and its “exquisite, sublime, and ethereal” interlocking patterns. The friendliness of Kerman, Ali’s hometown, is on display as is the routine of daily life, of being a working mother and being part of “a large, boisterous family that was endlessly interested in one another’s business.”The narrative is infused with humor. (“As dull as it was, Days of Our Lives provided me with many random but potentially useful phrases, such as ‘Mickey aqim-e?’ [Mickey is sterile?]”) Like most Westerners, Ellen knew little about the modern political situation in Iran. Along the way, she unearthed historical imperialism. During the previous century, both Britain and Russia/the USSR had meddled in Iranian politics. The CIA led a coup in 1953 that overthrew a democratically elected prime minister. After moving to Iran, the author hears stories of the SAVAK, the shah’s secret police, and its engagement in political repression. With her newfound knowledge, she wonders — along with everyone she knows — how life under Khomeini could be any worse.During Ali’s sabbatical of 1978–79, Ellen and Ali travel back to the home of their alma mater and their meeting place, Davis, California. Thus, they are out of the country during the fall of the shah and the installation of Khomeini. Uncertain of the reality of daily life in Iran, they choose to return to Iran at the end of the sabbatical.Still, overall, readers understand the melancholy of Ellen’s departure from Iran. While she has enriched her life in a new landscape, with a new language and new traditions, and with a large, loving family, there’s no doubt she must exit. She’s worried about the future of women with talent and energy in the Islamic Republic, including her own daughters. “I knew what I wanted for them. I wanted them to know their foremothers. I wanted their voices to be heard. I wanted them to have a place at the table.”With their dreams no longer attainable, the Estilais have a new challenge in negotiating Ali’s exit. The complexity of the author’s experience and her relationship to Iran before and after the revolution makes a compelling memoir. Readers learn not only about a culture and its history but also about the dual immigrant experiences of Ellen and Ali and their inspirational ability to restart their lives.Writer Issues, Reader IssuesAIThe NYT posted a little quiz with five sets of two paragraphs. The object is to pick the one of the two paragraphs in each set that you think is better. One is AI-generated. One is from a fairly well-known writer. It’s interesting to see how good AI paragraphs are—keeping in mind that they are generated from a vast store of real human writing. But I wonder if AI generation could sustain a complete short story, an essay, a novel, memoir, or any nonfiction book. What’s the cumulative effect?Apparently Hachette found a horror novel worthy of publication which it has now canceled after reports that parts were AI-generated. The author claims that someone she hired to edit the self-published version used AI. She is pursuing legal action.Horror Novel ‘Shy Girl’ Canceled Over Suspected A.I. Use from NYT (Gift link)On Thursday, a day after The New York Times approached Hachette citing evidence that the novel appeared to be A.I.-generated, the company said it was pulling the book from publication. By Thursday afternoon, the novel was removed from Amazon and the Hachette website.And Here’s the quiz if you’d like to try it. (Gift link) Great literature may not strike us as the best reading in a single paragraph:Thanks for reading! Take heart. I believe the old ‘darkest before the dawn’ proverb. We’ll see you out on the streets on Saturday. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,While the frightening and exhausting aspects of life seem to overtake us, let’s not forget that good people do good work and we should keep up with that, too. Remember, every Sunday, Jess Craven posts lots of good things happening. Here’s a little thanks I got for giving blood in 2025. That felt good. Although I am still mostly reading research books for a novel I’m working on, I’ve had a chance to listen to a few wonderful novels. I finished A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. It’s that story of Nomi Nickel, whose life in the Mennonite colony of East Village, Manitoba is without fun and without prospects (unless slaughtering chickens as a job counts). Both her sister and her mother were excommunicated and left three years earlier. Full of grief for her missing family members, Nomi breaks all the rules, numbs herself to pain, and longs for escape.I also listened to Whose Names are Unknown by Sanora Babb thanks to a recommendation by Beth Peyton. It’s a realistic look at farmworkers’ lives in the Great Depression. The characters in this novel flee the Dust Bowl and find an equally difficult situation on California. While the novel I’m working on has characters coming from Mexico during the same time period, they share some of the same issues with an abusive labor system. Sadly for Babb, her book was scheduled to be published, but just before, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath launched and was a runaway best seller. Babb’s book was finally published in 2004.Enshittification Part TwoFor Part One, check last week’s post.Let’s look at Cory Doctorow’s discussion of how we ended up in the internet platform mess. There are obvious issues with companies that can act as monopolies with no serious oversight (lax government regulation). But additionally, various companies figured out how to override the interoperability of computers at the same time that their work force became less valuable to them.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Getting Past the Interoperability of ComputersPretty much every computer in existence is capable of running every computer program that people know how to write. This has been beneficial to industries and customers with computer technology becoming faster. Computer chips also became faster and cheaper. Great stuff until companies started planting chips in everything including your car, your thermostat, your medical implant, even in the ink that goes into your printer. Suddenly, they can control your options in relation to that product. An example: You can’t buy a third-party ink cartridge that’s safe for an HP printer because it has a computer chip installed that will only read its own cartridges. Doctorow says that this allows HP to charge $10,000 a gallon for ink. While this sounds like hyperbole, he appears to be serious about that cost.Changes in the Work ForceWhen companies like Google and Facebook were new, tech workers had a lot of power because if they quit, they could easily find a job elsewhere. This is no longer true. These workers had a sense of mission and were spending all of their time at work, dedicating their lives to companies whose mottos were “Don’t be evil” (Google) and “Connect every person in the world” (Facebook). Today workers don’t feel any sense of ownership over the products. They are more likely to feel betrayed.Enough Money to Acquire EverythingThe root of the problem goes back further than these companies to the 1970s when Democrats and Republicans both declined to enforce antitrust laws. (Joe Biden embraced the ‘consumer welfare standards theory’ of antitrust law, but then he was out of office.) Unregulated, companies like Amazon are able to create monopolies in many areas. For example, diapers.com was an e-commerce leader. To put them out of business, Amazon sold diapers significantly below cost, losing $200 million over a single month on these products. Diapers.com went bankrupt. Amazon picked it up and then shut it down. So now they exercise a great deal of control over the diaper market. This takeover also sent a message to companies: if Amazon makes you an offer, you have to sell or else you’ll go broke.While Google has only made one great product (a search engine), they have been able to acquire many other people’s inventions. So Google Docs, Google Maps, their navigation system, their satellite images, their server management, and their customer service were all other people’s or other companies’ inventions that Google bought and integrated into their own company.Enshittifying That One Great ProductThe great product that Google created, its search engine, has been enshittified.According to Google internal documents displayed by lawyer Megan Gray in the Google DOJ trial in October 2023, Google uses a semantics-matching technology to invisibly append brand names to queries. An example Doctorow gives is a search for kids’ snow pants. The customer query is “kids’ snow pants.” Google would add the words “North Face,” unseen by the customer. Ads for North Face come up first. North Face pays Google a lot of money to have their ads triggered when their name is searched. Google gets paid. “Depending on your point of view, this is either merely very sleazy, or it’s actual fraud.” (79) Google claims that this is not true and that Gray misunderstood what was going on; however, they refused to explain themselves any further.Google also makes a lot of money by selling its search engines to other companies. This matters if you are an Apple user who believes you are not being tracked when you use Apple products. If you search using Safari, you’re actually using Google search. “Google has a non-consensual dossier on the behavior, social ties, purchases, economic status, employment history, and physical location of virtually every Internet user.” (81-82) Google gets $20 billion a year for this service.“It turned out that ‘If you are not paying for the product, you’re the product’ was wishful thinking. It is true to say, ‘Even if you pay for the product, you’re the product if the company can get away with treating you as the product. ‘” (83)There’s no end to bad actors running similar scams. Apple requires app makers to exclusively process payments through Apple’s system which takes a 30 percent commission on every purchase. (To place this in context, that’s ten times as high as the fees credit card companies charge merchants, which are already “sky-high.”) (84)Adobe planned to train AI on the work people create on it until creators rebelled en masse and moved to smaller company’s products.“The ability of purveyors of cloud-based products to alter their terms, prices, and features at will enables one of the most beloved Enshittification tactics of tech business leaders: bait and switch.” (100)Use an App; Do as You PleaseThe most common tactic tech companies use to flout regulation is to break the law with an app, and then insist that the law hasn’t been broken at all, because the crime was committed with an app. (111)One of the best examples would be Uber’s argument that it’s not an employer because it directs workers with an app. Companies can also say that they’re not committing wage theft if they do it with an app. Again Uber is an example with their algorithmic wage discrimination. When they offer jobs to all the drivers in the neighborhood, they calculate a different wage for each driver based on the driver’s recent behavior.Uber can raise the cost of a taxi for riders if their phones are about to run out of batteries. That’s called twiddling, the process of changing the price (recommendation weights, search rankings, etc.) through automated or semi-automated means. Like ‘We’ll just twiddle all of these knobs in order to make more money.’ Offline companies can’t do these kinds of things. Doctorow imagines a gas station owner seeing someone leaving a vehicle that’s stranded in the snow and coming toward the station to get some snow chains. He doesn’t have the opportunity to change the prices on all of those before the customer walks through the door. In digital business, they can change everything all the time instantly and do that based on their surveillance data and other information.Amazon takes the app scam to a whole other level. Since it uses delivery service partner (DSP) companies for its vans, it has fired the companies when their drivers unionize. If those workers were employees of Amazon that would be illegal, but Amazon can claim that it exerts control over the drivers through an app. So it’s an intermediary.Amazon surveils delivery drivers with sensors in the vans that record the traffic around a vehicle. Inside the van cameras monitor the drivers down to the motion of their eyeballs and mouth. So if they’re singing along with the radio, Amazon can tell them they’re not paying attention to driving. They tell the drivers what route to drive and set crazy quotas for deliveries. Since they demand the dismissal of drivers who don’t live up to the standards it sets, Amazon drivers end up urinating in bottles. The fix? They get in trouble if they come back to the depot with bottles full of urine, so they throw them out the window and then you have roads leading to Amazon depots that are littered with sealed bottles of human urine.Twisting Intellectual Property LawWhen big tech companies say it’s impossible to run code of your choosing on their computers, what they’re really saying is it’s illegal to run code of your choosing on that computer. Now, there isn’t a law that would make it illegal for you to install non-company approved software on your computer. That, according to Doctorow would be like saying you had to put Nike approved laces into your air Jordans. Once you buy them, they’re your shoes and then it’s none of Nike‘s business what laces you put in them. Everything you buy that uses digital technology is also your property. So what’s the issue with tech?The issue lies in intellectual property (IP) law.Companies can design their products in such a way that they have a legal right to reach beyond the things themselves to control the conduct of their competitors, their critics and their customers.There’s one section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or the DMCA that receives a lot of discussion in Enshittification: section 1201. It’s an anti-circumvention law, and it regulates bypassing access control for copyrighted work. It prevents you from breaking a digital lock. Think of the HP printer cartridges discussed above. The ink isn’t copyrighted. But you can’t fill the cartridge with your own ink because the printer cartridge has a chip in it that runs a copyrighted program. That program authenticates with a printer to verify that you bought HP ink. If you have the computer know-how to defeat that program on the chip, then you have gotten access to a copyrighted work illegally. Which is a felony. This may be the reason why more devices are becoming ‘smart.’ They can only be used in ways the manufacturer approves.I haven’t had a baby in the house in decades, so I’d never heard of the SNOO smart sleeper, but it is a great example of this ploy. For those like me who are not in the know: the SNOO smart sleeper is a bassinet with a high-tech self-rocking cradle. When the baby cries, the cradle goes into rocking mode (back to sleep, dear little one!) while playing some sounds. It’s wildly expensive, about $1700. And like most expensive baby products, people reuse it—on second and third children, lent out to friends and family who are expecting.The parent company 😊wanted to extract new revenue from owners after the purchase. Bait and switch—suddenly you’re going to lose the advanced features unless you pay $20 a month (not in the original bargain). Value moves away from the end users and back to the shareholders. Well, lots of companies would like to make money off of old things that they’ve already sold. The reason why SNOO can do it is because the product has a continuous internet connection that they simply downgrade if you don’t pay (for the thing you’ve already paid for—feels like mob protection, doesn’t it?) Again, if you try to make an alternative app that restores the features, then you are breaking the IP laws/committing a felony.Are We Now Serfs to Techno Overlords?Doctorow has an in-depth discussion of his belief that we have moved away from capitalism to something he calls technofeudalism. Technofeudalism’s understanding of ‘free markets’ is not that they are free from regulation but that they are free from rents. And now we are serfs in the digital environment, renting our space from the overlord. The argument requires a review of Econ 101. It’s more than I can get into here, but it’s worthwhile reading. As a quite incomplete summary of the idea:In the years after the great financial crisis of 2008, tech was transformed from a primarily profit-seeking enterprise to a primarily rent-seeking enterprise and the things that make the giants powerful is that they control the factors of production that they rent to actual productive businesses.We work in a monopsony, an economic system where markets are dominated by powerful buyers like Apple, Amazon, etc. These platforms (rentiers) have enormous control over software authors and anyone who wants to place their products for sale on these platforms (the actual productive businesses). The law comes down on the side of the rentier over the capitalist via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, section 1201.In our next discussion of Enshittification, we’ll look at what we can do to change things. (There must be some kind of way out of here…)The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower (Official Audio)WritersPublishers Charge Anna’s Archive with Copyright Infringement from Publishers WeeklyA group of publishers including the Big Five is taking legal action to prevent the pirate website Anna’s Archive from illegally copying and selling their copyrighted material.In a filing made March 6 in the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 13 book and journal publishers filed suit seeking a permanent injunction to stop Anna’s Archive from copying and distributing millions of infringing files. The suit highlights the magnitude of the material Anna’s Archive has stolen and the unorthodox methods it uses to monetize the material. …The lawsuit also asserts that Anna’s Archive “publicly claims to have given ‘high-speed access’ to its illegal collection of more than 140 million copyrighted texts to companies in China, Russia, and elsewhere, many of them LLMs. One court in the Northern District of California recently found that Meta Platforms torrented the contents of Anna’s Archive for use in developing its LLM model Llama.”In an e-mail exchange with a researcher inquiring about the cost of the collection for AI training, Anna’s Archive offered premium access for $200,000 and suggested payment be made using cryptocurrency, the complaint states. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,Tonight, I’m picking the winners for the book giveaway and will be sending the books out ASAP (hopefully tomorrow). Thanks to those who participated.Today, I’m discussing Enshittification by Cory Doctorow and then following up with some links for writers. This is a ‘Part One’ because there are many issues Doctorow illuminates, and then he concludes with some ideas for changing online culture. These deserve a discussion as well.Also—I mentioned this in Friday’s “Library and Banned Books News,” but if you only read Sunday’s book discussions: I will be changing the schedule in a week or two so that there is only one post per week, on Sunday. The Library/Banned Books News will alternate with the book discussions. Two reasons for this:* I feel the world is just so much right now and people are dealing with an onslaught of information.* I want more time to work on a novel that I have finally started! (Yay!)Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory DoctorowI’d like to explore Enshittification in depth because I think the story it tells is important for all of us. There may be three parts to the discussion (not sure). I encourage you to get your hands on the book ASAP and read along. If you want to borrow it from the library, it probably has a hold list, so put your name in now. 😊“You Are Not Just an Ambulatory Wallet”“It’s not just you. The Internet is getting worse, fast. The services we rely on, that we once loved? They’re all turning into piles of s**t, all at once. Worse, the digital is merging with the physical, which means that the same forces that are wrecking our platforms are also wrecking our homes and our cars, the places where we work and shop. The world is increasingly made up of computers we put our bodies into, and computers we put into our bodies. And these computers suck.” (3)Doctorow notes that he is an Internet activist who’s been working for digital human rights for decades. He calls our era the Enshittocene, which has been caused by specific policy decisions at ‘middlemen’ platforms that connect business customers to end users or connect workers with their customers. Some of the bad actors he discusses are eBay, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Google (connects publishers and advertisers to searchers) and Facebook (connects people who want to socialize rather than search).So, what is enshittification?Doctorow names it in four steps:* First, platforms are good to their users.* Then they use their users to make things better for their business customers.* Next, they abuse those business customers to clawback all the value for themselves.* Finally, they have become a giant pile of s**t. Why Do We Stick Around if the Platform is So Bad?There’s a cost for leaving these spaces even though it’s become a hassle to be there. For example, if you leave Facebook, it’s likely the people you hang out with will not be available to you on another platform—it’s hard to get other people to switch. So when Facebook realized that it could make money from advertisers and publishers, they did so by spying on the users and then using an algorithm to target advertising based on what the users were interested in. Eventually, Facebook stopped being good for business customers as well by increasing the price of targeted ads and, at the same time, not showing the ads to the users that the advertisers had selected.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Is It Truly Evil?All the platforms discussed have engaged in downright evil behavior, but Amazon is among the most egregious in that their policies affect everyone, including people who have never used their platform. Let’s look at their story. Other platforms are variations on the Amazon theme.Amazon also started out as good for users. It had a lot of investors with a lot of money which it used to subsidize goods (sometimes selling them below cost) and shipping. It had a generous ‘no questions asked, postage paid’ return policy.Early on, Amazon couldn’t lock people into using it the way Facebook could. So it came up with the idea of Prime membership, which creates lock-in because customers are paying for shipping a year in advance. Quite the incentive to shop on Amazon. In addition when you buy audiobooks, movies, and most e-books and e-magazines from Amazon, you’re permanently locked into Amazon‘s platform because the projects are sold with digital rights management. There’s a form of encryption that will force you to view or to listen to those products using apps that Amazon controls. If you leave Amazon and delete those apps, you lose all the media you’ve bought from their platform—an incredibly high cost of switching.Amazon was good to its business customers until it wasn’t. Because Amazon tracks so many users and people stop there for almost anything, Amazon has been able to extract higher discounts from the merchants who sell there. This brings in more users, which, again, makes the platform even more indispensable for the merchants. They have to go there—allowing Amazon to keep requiring deeper discounts, and on and on.It finally comes to stage three, the pile of s**t stage: Amazon using tactics to shift value from the business customers to itself. It started tracking merchants’ best-selling items and cloning them and, at the same time, moving the original seller’s items far down on the search results. The original product doesn’t show when a person searches for it specifically. It shows the Amazon clone instead. Amazon also charges merchants a lot of junk fees that are pitched as optional, but in effect, they’re mandatory. Prime is an example. If a merchant doesn’t include prime shipping, then people won’t pick them. They are pushed so far down in the search results that they’re basically nonexistent. Yet another thing merchants must do: Use fulfillment by Amazon, a service where the merchant sends items to Amazon’s warehouse, where they’re packed and then delivered. It’s more expensive than comparable or even superior shipping services from other shipping companies, but if a merchant ships through a third-party company, then it gets dropped down in the search and ceases to exist. Amazon is gouging its merchants so much that it pays nothing to ship its own goods (which compete directly with those merchants’ goods).All this turns into higher prices for customers. Merchants pay Amazon “through the nose.” Amazon junk fees add up to 45 to 51 percent of what it earns on the platform. So merchants raise prices on their products, not just for Amazon customers, but as a whole. For reasons that are unclear to me (seem like a loophole and a cheat at the same time), this is necessary for Amazon to stay clear of the US Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against them. So, we’re all paying the ‘Amazon tax’ no matter where we shop.Doctorow makes similar enshittification arguments for Apple, for its iPhone, and for Twitter. (However, many people were able to leave Twitter when Musk came along and turned into the Nazi platform it is.) Enshittification is well worth reading to see how Apple and Google are in cahoots. (Don’t believe Apple when they say they are not tracking you.) But, wait! There’s more!How Did We Get HereDoctorow shows why this Enshittocene spread so far and so fast by looking at the world that companies operate in.Any company would want to charge as much as possible for goods and services while they spend as little as possible, paying the lowest possible wages, giving customers the lowest quality products, and selling them with the highest prices. What stops them is if workers could quit over low pay; if their suppliers would stop shipping products when their invoices are unpaid; and if the customers would turn away because of the high prices. But our enshittifiers are effectively monopolies, so the markets and the competition to stop them don’t exist. Add to this that they’re not regulated by the government.Part Two will discuss how all this happened: how competition, regulation, interoperability of computers, and worker power all slipped away. Meanwhile, repeat reminder: I recommend you get your hands on the book. If you want to borrow it from the library, it probably has a hold list, so put your name in ASAP.A Few Links of Interest for WritersWhat is AI Voice?Authors and Money (or Lack Thereof)Authors Hoping to be Published This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I decided to celebrate, dive into gratitude, and relax this weekend rather than write an essay. And read a bit of a book about Mexicans in the 1920s fleeing the Cristero War as research from the novel I’m just starting.I want to celebrate that we here on Be a Cactus are now a group of over 500 subscribers, a thing I am very grateful for! So—I’m having a book giveaway for U.S. subscribers. (I once gave away a book that went to Europe, and I paid $38 for the shipping. Yikes!)I’d like to send out two copies each of Acts of Contrition and Keep Sweet along with fabric bookmarks that I handmade. Read the descriptions below, and if you are interested, click the link to message me, indicating which book you would prefer. If there are more than two people who are interested for either, I’ll put names in a hat and draw.Keep Sweet (Crossover Novel)Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Acts of Contrition (Feminist Literary Short Fiction)The women in Acts of Contrition face society’s devaluation, from parents, from elders, from all who assume authority over them. They battle oppressions as simple as gender stereotyping, as complex as prerequisites to friendship or love. Some can look back and laugh, some find luck in their escape from harm, some engineer their own good fortune, all the while riding a wave of dark humor. What all the characters come to understand is that silence places them at greater risk than speaking out. They progress toward freedom through the telling of their stories.GratitudeIt’s great seeing books of poetry coming from friends I’ve met through various literary organizations and writers support groups. I truly loved Here to Be Remade by Lavina Blossom (Bamboo Dart Press), who is also an artist. Just arrived is Anna Gasaway’s My Mother’s Husbands from Finishing Line Press.I’m also grateful for lifelong friends. One sent me a ‘blind date with a book’ surprise this week. The wrapping was so beautiful, I waited a day to open it. Part of my relaxing this weekend will be doing literary word searches. (I think I’ll start with Margaret Atwood.) Thanks, Kathy!A deeper dive into The Little Magazine for those interested:The Little Magazine That Defied American CensorshipMargaret Anderson’s Little Review fought to bring the great works of modernist literature to the United States.WritersWriters, did you read this? If not, you should.Thank you for reading, for being here, and for subscribing! Jo Scott-Coe Jo’s Substack Mary Camarillo Life With Riley This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.— Coretta Scott KingHello Friends,I hope you have been enjoying the Olympics. We had a birthday celebration this weekend, and I got to try a Himalayan restaurant (Indian, Nepali, and Tibetan food) and have ultra-chocolatey cake (recipe below). I’m also happy that my vision has cleared up a bit. Today I want to chat up A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature by Adam Morgan. After that I have a little on the new author scam industry, abetted by AI, which allows the scammers to act like they’ve read books they know nothing about.A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls“The Red Scare made Americans paranoid that anyone they passed on the street could be a bomb-wielding anarchist, and Comstock and Sumner’s book-banning campaigns stoked fear that reading modern fiction and poetry could turn young women into disease-ridden lesbians and prostitutes.” (3)On October 4, 1920, Margaret Anderson was arrested and charged with publishing a ‘filthy, indecent, and disgusting’ work of fiction—an excerpt from James Joyce’s Ulysses—in The Little Review and distributing copies through the Post Office Department in violation of the 1873 Comstock Act. A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls is the story of what led to this incident and what followed.Anderson was born in Indianapolis to an affluent and conventional family that included a depressed father, a controlling mother, and two sisters who shared some of her adventures. In 1908, she headed to Chicago, which was in artistic and literary bloom. At the time, Anderson was supported by her parents, who sent her sister to live with her in an effort to keep her on the safe side of societal norms.Margaret worked at various journals, increasingly more prestigious, eventually landing at The Dial, the most influential literary magazine of the time. There, she held various positions and learned many of the practical aspects of publishing a magazine. She met the “most prolific artists and writers” and by 1913 was gathering support to launch The Little Review. She did so in 1914. Though she was unable to pay contributors, she published many great writers because “[m]ost … magazines and publishers that could afford to pay poets and writers in those days were not—yet!—interested in the bizarre, mystifying, sexually explicit, or politically radical writing Margaret would champion in The Little Review.” (38) The list of contributors include the literary rockstars of the period. Conrad Aiken, Amy Lowell, and Sherwood Anderson were early contributors.In a stroke of luck, in 1916-17 Ezra Pound, who had previously been published in The Little Review, petitioned Anderson to publish him and T. S. Eliot in each issue, James Joyce when he liked, and Wyndham Lewis if he “comes back from the war” (93)—all writers “too odd and obscene to be published in major magazines that paid contributors.” (94)Pound wanted a guarantee of 5,000 words per issue and eight issues per year. If he could get this, art collector, patron of the avant-garde, and lawyer John Quinn, would pay the authors. (They needed a source of income.)The deal was made and began in April 1917. In 1918, The Little Review started to publish sections of Ulysses serially. By 1919, it was being censored—copies were held at the post office and later burned—and by 1920, Anderson and her co-publisher and life partner, Jane Heap, were on trial. This period contains the heart of A Danger, which includes long quotes from the published sections of Ulysses which were deemed obscene, as well as what Anderson and Heap self-censored in an effort to continue the serialization.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Supporter of the avant-garde, lawyer John Quinn (mentioned above as the one who paid Little Review contributors Pound, Joyce, Eliot, and Lewis) ended up representing Anderson and Heap at their trial. While he was on the cutting edge in art and literature, he was socially conservative—it may be more true to say homophobic and racist. He, therefore, resented working for Anderson and Heap as he didn’t approve of their relationship. In truth, he hoped to have the case dropped if the women agreed to stop publishing Ulysses. He believed this would help sales of the novel when it was published because Little Review readers would want to finish it.Over the life of the magazine, Anderson’s choices sometimes threatened its existence through the loss of her patrons. Her support of the anarchist Emma Goldman was especially controversial among her early donors and subscribers. In 1914, Anderson’s father died at the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane in Indianapolis of a hemorrhagic stroke caused by a ruptured blood vessel in the brain. His death ended Anderson’s parental support. Her mother, whose conventional morality was ruffled by everything Margaret did, cut her off when she refused to abandon the magazine. They never saw one another again.Anderson is courageously undeterred. I feel that her early (extreme) privilege was necessary to her undaunted sense of the importance of her work. Still, she proves stalwart. Out of money and evicted from their apartment after expressing support of Emma Goldman, she and Heap create an encampment on a Lake Michigan beach north of Chicago. Later, they break into a house in California. When they learn the owner is the local sheriff, they convince him to rent it to them.In fact, much of what takes place in Danger feels like the story of another world, both the weirdness and the luck. At times, Anderson and Heap live in French castles. When Anderson’s sister divorces, she and Heap adopt her children only to later leave them in Paris with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, who then adopt them. (Wouldn’t you love to read the biography of those boys?) Unbelievably, Anderson, an accomplished pianist, gets the Mason & Hamlin Company to give her a new piano in exchange for free advertising each time she moves into a place where she has room for one (by my count, four pianos).Anderson and Heap published their last issue in 1929. Ulysses would be published as a complete novel in Paris by Sylvia Beach, who didn’t fare much better than Anderson for all her support of Joyce.In her introduction to the 1972 edition, Flanner describes the process by which “Ulysses,” …. was brought about:Ulysses was the paying investment of his lifetime after years of penury, Sylvia said, while hardly acknowledging the fact that the publishing costs almost wiped out her Shakespeare and Company. The peak of his prosperity came in 1932 with the news of his sale of the book to Random House in New York for a forty-five-thousand-dollar advance, which, she confessed, he failed to announce to her and of which, as was later known, he never even offered her a penny. “I understood from the first that, working with or for Mr. Joyce, the pleasure was mine—an infinite pleasure: the profits were for him.”( Janet Flanner, introduction to “Paris was Yesterday,” quoted in “By way of Books and Their Makers: Sylvia Beach and James Joyce” by Macy Halford, March 5, 2010, “The New Yorker.”)After they end publication of The Little Review, Anderson and Heap both join a cultish group of followers of George Ivanovich Gurdieff.“By following him, his students could evolve their minds into something semi-divine—and if enough human beings did the same thing, their collective consciousness could prevent the destruction of the universe.” (190)After a serious car accident, “Gurdjieff spent most of his time writing and dictating a manuscript that would become Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, an allegorical representation of his trackpads that reads like a Byzantine science fiction novel.” (192)It’s a strange turn in their previously admirable lives.A Danger includes a good deal of background for each major character or influence that we meet. We learn what William Carlos Williams wore and that Ezra Pound was engaged to Hilda Doolittle twice. While the lives of literary superstars might interest English majors, I think some readers will find the book a bit saggy and off point in these interjections.We also get the background of the many women that Anderson and Heap conduct affairs with and of those they partner with after their breakup. (Opera singer Georgette Leblanc is Anderson’s second significant love, and they remain together until Leblanc succumbs to cancer.) So many people circle one another in a dance of changing partners that it’s hard to keep them straight, and I’m not sure they all contribute to the story.Ultimately, though, Anderson’s life is worth the tale. Wild and wonderful as it is, it makes a good read and adds to the literary history of Chicago of the first quarter of the 20th century.I had requests for strawberry shortcake for the last two birthdays. This time, there was no special request, so I felt like going back to an old favorite—Hershey’s Cocoa Cake. This is super easy to make. I plan to make a slightly more complex chocolate cake for St. Patrick’s Day (Guinness stout, coffee, ganache filling are all involved), but this week, I just wanted something straightforwardly sweet and moist that screamed chocolate.Here’s the cake recipe. Here’s the frosting recipe.For WritersAI Aids Publishing Scams- If you’re a writer with any published work, I’m sure your used to the emails that say, “If you’re interested in having a book featured in our upcoming campaign, please reply with up to three titles you would like to include.” Or something close to that. And you know that it’s a scam because they don’t mention you specifically or the title of any of your works.Now that scammers are using AI, they can name books and say something about their themes or plot. But it doesn’t take much wariness to I figure out that someone is just trying to get into your bank account. I saw two interesting Stacks about that this week.Phil Christman published about it this week, but it’s behind a paywall.While Cati Porter knew she was being scammed, she decided to engage with more than one of these emails. As she said “Doing my due diligence--so you don’t have to.” Then she goes a little deeper. (NOT recommending you engage with scammers—just check this out to see what happens.) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,Here’s another set of quotes from Sojourners I thought you’d like:There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.- 1 John 4:18may the tide / that is entering even now / the lip of our understanding / carry you out / beyond the face of fear- Lucille Clifton, “blessing the boats”And another I read on John Fugelsang (adjacent to fear, I think—kind of a ‘do the right thing even if you’re afraid’ quote.):Temporary power is never worth permanent disgrace. —John FugelsangSpeaking of perfect love, I hope you had a happy Valentine’s/Galentine’s/ Palentine’s Day yesterday.I’m a bit down that I can’t see well in my left eye four weeks after surgery, but am still hopeful that I’m not in the 5% of people who have no improvement. To chipper myself up, I thought I’d try something different today and see if you’re up for a challenge and then follow that with some good news.The ChallengeI’ve been thinking a lot about how I wish I had better known some of my friends and family who’ve died. And now I can’t ask them anything. This feeling has helped me to understand what I’d like to do that will leave a sort of personal record for loved ones when I am dead.I periodically write a ‘literary journeys’ article for the So Cal News Group newspapers. I wrote this for last Sunday. Have a read and see if you’d like to try it.Make your family’s life story meaningful for future generationsI haven’t made New Year’s resolutions for many years for the same reason most people stop doing so. My follow-through is pretty bad, so I end up feeling worse than when I started.If you’re like me and already feeling bad about a lack of progress on your literary resolutions for 2026 or even about not making a resolution, I have a challenge for you. You don’t need to read 100 books this year or write a novel draft in three months. Instead, kickstart your creativity with something that will be a gift to your most important readers — your family. Explore your life story in a way that will be meaningful for the next generation. In a way that will be meaningful for you.In the last five years, which have been full of loss for me, I’ve come to realize the importance of family stories. My parents, brother, half-sister, lifelong friend, two sisters-in-law and others close to me are gone. I’ve realized that I know almost nothing about my parents’ childhoods, about their early years, their hopes and dreams. They were not ones to write letters or have a video recorder. They didn’t leave a record for us to look back on. My brother died far too young, but I have a single voice message he left me, wishing me a happy birthday. I keep it to play periodically. To hear his voice.I happen to have made one recording of my parents’ voices about five years before they died. I’d received a recorder-microphone as a gift so that I could quickly save my thoughts and ideas for the stories I would write. On a whim, I decided to bring it to my parents’ house one evening along with dinner. After we ate, my husband took to the kitchen to wash the dishes, and I started asking questions. One of my dad’s funniest and most moving stories was about his grandmother’s dog, who waited for him at the bus stop each day after school. I forgot about the recording, but after my parents had died, I happened upon it in my computer files. I was excited to play it, but was unable to hear anything. However, I could see that something was there. I sent a copy to my son, who realized the loud noise of the pots and pans clanging in the kitchen at the beginning of the recording had set the sound range. He removed it, and my parents’ voices came to life. I was reduced to a puddle of wonder and tears. I emailed it to my siblings. One of my sisters started to listen to it while driving, but was so emotionally overwhelmed that she had to pull over.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.So, here’s what I’m hoping you will do: if your parents are still alive, ask them the following questions. And then answer these questions for yourself, both in writing and in a recording. When you or your family are ready, listen and read.These questions are a bit different from the usual writing prompts, but I think they can open the door to related memories and to buried emotions, hopes and dreams.* Who is the bravest person you’ve known? Not someone you’ve read about or can find in the history books. Someone in your life: a friend, relative, coworker, etc.* Who was your best childhood friend?* Did you have your own bedroom growing up or did you share with a sibling? Describe your room. (This can lead to interesting reflections on sibling relationships.)* Describe your favorite childhood hideaway. Why did you go there? What did you do there?* Discuss your childhood pets.* Think of a time when you did something you shouldn’t have done. Describe how it made you feel.* Have you ever needed stitches, broken a bone, or been hospitalized?* Who was your favorite relative?* Who was your most interesting neighbor?* What was your most beloved toy?* What was your mother’s favorite perfume? Does it trigger any memories?* How did you spend holidays with your extended family?* Describe a time when something went completely wrong while your family was traveling.* What was the best home you lived in growing up? Why?* What major world events do you remember from your childhood and young adult years?* Describe your earliest jobs. What did you do? What was the environment like? What were your coworkers like?When we talk about the ordinary events of our childhoods, we illuminate how full of possibility and imagination we have always been. Be known to your loved ones. It’s a gift.Authors Connect with Me, Their ReaderI mentioned recently that I’m writing thank you notes to authors. Two YA authors have emailed me responses that were very kind— Chris Crutcher said he admires people who had a career in public education. That made me want to go back a grab something he wrote. I found a short story as a stand alone audiobook for a series called “Guys Read” edited by John Scieszka. The story is “The Meat Grinder.” The publisher’s description is: If Devin Mack can’t actually fight his father, he’s going to fight everyone he can find on the football field.This doesn’t do it justice. The abused Devin Mack, who has been in and out of foster care, is actually forced into high school football and just wants out. He’s small and no athlete. But a star player wants him to believe in himself and works to make that happen. It’s a fun story, not least because of Devin’s voice. A great story for teens, including those who find sports humiliating. Also—a great story for writers who want to see how character voice is done!I also wrote an email to Jonathan Maberry, who is a NYTimes bestselling writer of horror. He has a YA series entitled Rot & Ruin that I used to booktalk to our students. (I wrote a bit about it here.) It’s creative and creepy. I told him how much the students liked his books. He wrote back a thank you and mentioned that Rot & Ruin is in development for a film. He said that his middle school librarian “absolutely changed the course” of his life. (Yay, librarians!)I mentioned last week that my friends and I had seen George Saunders on his book tour. In Story Club with George Saunders he had told the story of his dog, Guin, being very sick. It was an ongoing issue that we clubbers were following. Apparently, she had a UTI and, now treated, is doing much better. But I was moved by the story and took a copy of The Mortality of Dogs and Humans to him as well as a bookmark I’d made for him from fabric with a dog print. He saw my name on the book and said, “Is this you? I feel like I know you.” (Because I comment on the stories etc.—I am an active member.) That made me smile.So—if you’re feeling blue, why not write a little note to an author whose work you appreciate? They are often kind and respond.What I’m ReadingI’m reading some good books and will discuss them soon. I finished A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls by Adam Morgan. It’s about Margaret Anderson as the creator of the literary journal The Little Review, which serially published sections of James Joyce’s Ulysses until Anderson and her partner (Jane Heap) were arrested and charged with mailing obscene literature. I will probably discuss it next week.I’m in the middle of Enshittification by Cory Doctorow. I know some tech companies are led by horrible people doing horrible things, but I didn’t realize how horrible they actually are. Doctorow is good at explaining the who, what, and why. But I’m getting a little down and looking forward to the last section of the book where he will discuss what we’re supposed to do about it.Here’s a great Substack post I read this week: I’m listening to A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. The publisher’s description is unusually long, but here’s the beginning: Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel longs to hang out with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull in New York City’s East Village. Instead she’s trapped in East Village, Manitoba, a small town whose population is Mennonite: “the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager.” East Village is a town with no train and no bar whose job prospects consist of slaughtering chickens at the Happy Family Farms abattoir or churning butter for tourists at the pioneer village. Ministered with an iron fist by Nomi’s uncle Hans, a.k.a. The Mouth of Darkness, East Village is a town that’s tall on rules and short on fun: no dancing, drinking, rock ’n’ roll, recreational sex, swimming, make-up, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities or staying up past nine o’clock.This is a different dive into the Mennonite religion and life than Women Talking. ( A great book! The film is very good also—follows the book closely.)Note: on my author website, I put together some great quotes from three Toews books; All My Puny Sorrows, Women Talking, and A Complicated Kindness. They are good idea generators. If you are a writer, A Complicated Kindness is another piece that’s great for studying voice.More NewsExecutive editor Michael Luo announced on X that book critic Becca Rothfeld, who was laid off from the Washington Post, has joined the New Yorker. Here’s a link to her essay about that. You might like it.The Death of Book World by Becca Rothfeld from The New YorkerWhat the closing of the Washington Post’s books section means for readers.There are still plenty of places to read about literature, many of them excellent. There are older and more established outlets, like the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books; cult favorites, like Bookforum; and irreverent newcomers, like The Drift and The Point, the latter of which I edit. These magazines are delightful and, in their own way, consistently surprising; I love reading them, and I have loved writing for them. But they are produced for an audience that already knows it cares about literature. The books section of a newspaper plays an altogether different role. It does not cater to aficionados; it seeks new recruits.Good NewsMinnesota Authors Team with Bookstores to Support Immigrants from Publishers WeeklyIn yet another show of solidarity, mystery authors Jess Lourey and Kristi Belcamino have organized Authors for Minnesota Day, slated for February 28, in which more than 50 Minnesota-based authors—including Allen Eskens, William Kent Krueger, Bao Phi, Margi Preus, and Curtis Sittenfeld—will stop by more than two dozen indie bookstores around the state to sign copies of their latest releases and give them out, along with swag kits in some cases, to anyone who donates to either the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota or the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota Immigration Rapid Response Fund. (Heid Erdrich is also participating; she intends to give art and poems to donors at Birchbark Books in Minneapolis.) …“I want as many people as possible in bookstores,” Lourey said, explaining why donations had to be made onsite. She noted that foot traffic and sales have plummeted at one Minneapolis bookstore that is located half a mile from where Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE agents. “We need to support our indie bookstores: we can’t have them suffering,” she added.Well, I could go on about books forever, but it’s not my goal to try your patience. Let me know what good books you’re diving into. Thanks for reading! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I’m writing this a bit early because I’m going out of town, first, to attend the life celebration of a friend’s mother, and then to go with my friends to hear George Saunders in Santa Cruz as he tours for his new novel Vigil. I confess: my husband wanted the audiobook, so I listened to Vigil the day it launched. My friends and I will be getting signed copies at the event, and then we’ll read and talk about it together. Lovely.I’ve wanted to discuss Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang for a while. If you enjoy Be a Cactus, please click the heart and/or comment. It helps others to find us. Okay, here we go!Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds by John Fugelsang“The primary driver of most global conflict, oppression of women, suppression of science, persecution of gay people, and abuse of power is not religion. It’s the extreme fundamentalist wings of all the world’s religions that provide this drama for the rest of humanity.” (6)“Paul’s a bit edgier than Jesus in ways that make him more attractive to a certain kind of right-wing believer. While the gospel teachings emphasize love, compassion, and inclusivity, Paul’s personal opinions about women and sexuality just couldn’t help but bleed through his writings. Which means that over the last two thousand years, many Christians have been taught to prioritize certain passages from Paul’s letters that suit their personal biases over Jesus’s irritating orders to love everyone.” (46)The inside book jacket of Separation claims that “the son of a former Catholic nun and a [former] Franciscan brother delivers a deeply irreverent and Biblically correct takedown of far-right Christian hatred.” I found the bits of humor less irreverent than refreshing. Generally, the book is a defense of Jesus’s ministry. Fugelsang takes down Christian Nationalist and fundamental evangelists’ arguments one after another, showing that they are not based on the words or actions of Jesus, but simply self-serving baloney. He reminds us that context matters—and he gives that context.“He was the most famous innocent brown skin man ever to be wrongly executed by the state, and he was deliberately killed in the most painful and humiliating of ways.” (21)Separation is for anyone who wants to debate far-right Christians on the hot-button topics of the day. This includes anyone from true believers to atheists. (You don’t have to believe in a God to prove that what Christian nationalists say about him is not based on the text of the New Testament.) Fugelsang includes many chapter titles that begin with “Thou Shalt Not” and include: Take All This Too Literally; Hate Feminists; Hate the Gays; Hate People Who Have Abortions; Hate “Illegals”; Hate on Poor People; Kill People Who Kill People to Prove that Killing People is Wrong; Hate Gun Control or Worship Warrior Bro-Dude Jesus; Hate Jews, Muslims, or Even Atheists; Be, or Defend, a White Supremacist.“Jesus, disdained wealth, and earthly power, and challenged traditional laws of his own faith. He rejected earthly materialism, renounced the idea of revenge, and commanded us to welcome the stranger.I know, right? Just like Donald Trump.” (23)What Fugelsang tells us will be familiar to people with knowledge of the Bible. I was raised as a Catholic, as was Fugelsang—though his family was far more liberal than mine. His parents “tried to raise us to be progressive, free-thinking, sexually-repressed Catholics” 😂 Of his father, Fugelsang says, “His overall parenting strategy was to guarantee that I’d be way too liberal to ever fit in with the Christians and far too Christian to ever blend in with the liberals. And almost every therapist I’ve ever been able to afford has agreed that his plan worked perfectly.” In general, mid-to-late-twentieth century Catholics were never encouraged to read scripture. Specific Bible stories are on rotation in the Mass, each week delivering something from the Old Testament, something from the Gospels, and something from the Epistles (letters, New Testament, but not the Gospels). However, many Bible stories are left out of the rotation—perhaps because they are too dull, too crude, or too sexually explicit for the listeners (yes, really).When I was a teen, I decided to read the Bible. Later, I also took a ‘Bible as Literature’ class in college, which covered only a portion of the text. However, from these studies and from the weekly readings in church, I knew the stories that Fugelsang addresses and why far-right Christianity has them wrong. For example, when someone tells me things like the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about the evils of homosexuality, I know it’s about accepting the stranger. But I would never be able to quote chapter and verse to prove it. In fact, in most cases, I couldn’t even tell you which book of the Bible they are in. For that, you need someone like Monte Mader, who can quote anything in the Bible from memory and tear any Christian Nationalist argument to pieces.This is also what Fugelsang offers his reader. He reminds us that Jesus brings about a New Covenant through his life, teachings, death, and resurrection, fulfilling and superseding the Abrahamic Covenant. This means Fugelsang is not worried about previous guidance. “With this New Covenant, the emphasis shifts to love, grace, and compassion (John 13:34).” (40)Fugelsang points out what should be obvious to those who have read the New Testament—that the apostle Paul is Jesus’s PR man and was dispensing advice in letters as he tried to keep the early church together. Some of his advice contradicts the word of Jesus and many Christians have based their tenets on it. Yes, Paul is why so many of us are so screwed up. (The Sermon on the Mount/the Beatitudes play pretty big in Separation.) But in Paul’s defense, he was just writing letters to various Christian enclaves and communities (and these letters sometimes contradict one another—women can lead, no women need to be quiet in public, etc.). He didn’t know they would be gathered together and included in the canon. The main point: stop taking Paul’s advice over Jesus’s commands. “If Jesus was the game-changing rock star, Paul was his hardworking, deeply uptight, conservative PR guy.” (43)“Now remember, Paul also ordered slaves to be obedient to their masters. Most of us would disregard that admonition as coming from a flawed man from an archaic era, right? Take note of anyone who thinks Paul’s order for women to submit shouldn’t be weighed in a similar context. Paul is not, in fact, Jesus.” (99)Separation is organized by discussions of popular fundamentalist arguments and the words of Jesus that dismantle them. So: There is the claim of the far-right and the scripture it is based on; then there is the actual context of that scripture. (This is very helpful if you want to back up your arguments.)Beyond all this, it’s nice to read and be reminded of what Jesus was actually like. It is, dare I say, refreshing? “I was taught…that Christianity was about the things Jesus prioritized: Service to others. Forgiveness. Caring for the poor, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner. Fighting injustice with nonviolence, like Dr. King and Gandhi. Standing up for the less fortunate, like Dorothy Day and Catholic Charities. Love. Empathy. Compassion.” (3)“And if there’s one thing the Bible shows us, it’s that authoritarian government, aligned with some extreme conservative religious fundamentalists, literally killed Jesus.” (9)Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Some Interesting Discussions in Separation of Church and Hate that will upset the fundamentalist apple cart:Jesus and WomenThere’s a discussion of how women kept Jesus’s ministry afloat financially.* “We know that Mary Magdalene, along with Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, were fellow travelers. To a sane person in the twenty-first century it might seem obvious that there were actually fifteen apostles, at least.* “Wrong, says the church. Those women might have always been with JC and the twelve, but they didn’t have full apostle passes. They just followed Jesus from gig to gig, working the merch tables like it was a boy band tour. The church continues to treat these women as secondary figures rather than leaders.” (105)* “All four Gospel writers specifically cite Jesus rejecting the accepted cultural norms and treating women with respect. Not only did he break rabbinic laws of his day by teaching and talking to women, but he allowed women to touch him—including those considered ‘unclean’ by the culture at large.* He begins in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:28, by essentially telling men, “Stop looking at her like that.”* “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’* This could be the first recorded biblical utterance of ‘Eyes up here, buddy.’ Jesus’s admonition to not look on women lustfully is not anti-sex—it’s anti-sexual harassment.” (90-91)Abortion* Fugelsang argues that the Bible never forbids it and Jesus never mentions it. “Again, nobody’s saying Jesus is pro-abortion. But there’s zero reason to believe that if Jesus met a woman who’d made that choice he would’ve shamed her, or tried to have her jailed. And that’s another difference between Jesus and some of his unauthorized fan clubs.” (146)“Pro-Life”* “Only in America can you be pro-death penalty, pro-war, pro-drone bombs, pro-torture, pro-cutting services for the poor, pro-for-profit privatization of healthcare, pro-dismantling USAID, and still call yourself’ pro-life.’” (148)* “In recent years we’ve seen 150 death row inmates freed by DNA evidence or recanted testimony, some after decades in prison, all appeals exhausted.” (226)Science* “Science and biblical literalism don’t mix, but science and faith can and do coexist. Both can answer different questions: Science explores how the universe works, while the Bible addresses why it exists.” (76)”I’ll never say Jesus was a socialist. But I will say if he were alive now and preaching the exact same message, ring-wing Christians would call him one.” (190)Other Reading (or Watching)I enjoyed reading the receipts (chapter and verse) for liberal Christian beliefs. If this is all a bit more than you want to indulge in, you could take a super short cut and watch Jordan Klepper interview Fugelsang on the Daily Show:John Fugelsang - “Separation of Church and Hate” | The Daily ShowFugelsang Is also the host of "Tell Me Everything" on SiriusXM Progress and has a Substack. Here’s an interesting post:“Offering thoughts and prayers for the poor is typically done by politicians who don’t think and don’t pray. It’s a convenient substitute for tangible help or systemic solutions. Prayer is supposed to be a way to seek guidance, not an excuse for inaction.” (199)If, on the other hand, you want to dive in and read about examples of lefty politics in Christian leadership, The Contrarian has some.* Pope LeoPope Leo has certainly met the moment. This year, he castigated xenophobia, challenged hateful rhetoric, and rebuffed phony excuses to ignore the plight of our neighbors. NPR reported on his discussion with journalists in November:His plea to care for immigrants inspired or impressed upon Catholic interfaith organizations, non-religious community activists, and ordinary individuals to aid and defend their neighbors. …Pope Leo also consistently spoke out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (even decrying efforts to impose Russia-friendly terms on Ukraine and Europe) and denounced starvation in Gaza. He insisted that concern for the poor get translated into action. …Pope Leo sounds as if he is directly criticizing Trump, because Trump exemplifies evils that the pontiff decries—neglect of the poor, crass materialism, embrace of violence, and bigotry. While Trump oppresses; the pontiff stands with the oppressed, bringing light and hope to the dark Trump reign.* Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde of The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Episcopal Diocese of Washington (commonly referred to as the National Cathedral)After reminding Trump these are people of faith, she implored him to “have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and … those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands, to find compassion and welcome here.”In our interview, I witnessed how Rt. Rev. Budde models grace, humility, and kindness. She affirmed, as Contrarians have grasped, that “courage is contagious.”* Pastor Jamal Bryant of Georgia’s New Birth Baptist Missionary ChurchThe Contrarian’s April Ryan interviewed him twice this year. One central topic he spoke about with notable passion was his leadership in the national boycott against Target. While he did not start the boycott, he quickly became the face of the movement responding to Target’s cowardly compliance with Trump’s assault on DEI. “I wanted to bring a spiritual dynamic to it,” he told April. The movement had a stunning impact, inflicting $12B in losses and prompting the CEO’s exit (unfortunately, the COO replaced him), although Target persists in its anti-DEI stance.Pastor Bryant recently posted on Instagram:I’m amazed how @target is willing to do everything except the right thing. Making the staff smile won’t do it! Fake sale prices won’t do it! Giving checks to black churches won’t do it! Paying black influencers to post won’t do it and bribing HBCU students with discount cards won’t do it. … We don’t want to hand you violins to play on the Titanic. This is fixable … just do the right thing!Just for FunRecently, I posted on LitHub’s best book covers of 2025. They decided to post the best covers of the last decade. Fun stuff.https://lithub.com/the-best-book-covers-of-the-last-decade/Thanks again for reading! As I said, I’m putting this together early and can’t know what fresh hell might arrive in the next several days. None, I hope. Take care. Be well. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. - Galatians 6:9“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” —James Baldwin“People can cry much easier than they can change.” —James BaldwinHello Friends,I missed posting last Sunday because I was sick for a week over the holidays. I have a lot to catch up on, but have been feeling down and not exactly hopping to it, as they say. I’m missing those in my generation who have died—my brother, my lifelong friend, my sisters-in-law, and others. I miss my parents and their generation as well, but their exit feels more natural. With others, I have the irrational desire to call them and say, “Okay, that’s enough of missing you. You need to get back here right now!” Do you feel this way about loved ones who are gone too soon?Friday, I was thinking about the three quotes above. I’d like to believe the first, am more inclined to believe the second, and worry about the third. All this was on my mind before the Venezuela debacle.I was planning to post some gift links to things you might enjoy, but this Venezuela invasion made me think that a discussion of Nobody’s Girl —which I’d planned for next week—connects to the news right now. I know that the invasion is about so much more than the Epstein files (Heather Cox Richardson has a great assessment in this video showing the move toward ‘spheres of influence’ a la Putin). But Epstein is a piece. Pulitzer Prize winner Ann Telnaes points to it:So—I’m going to put the book discussion first. I’m certain you know there are triggering events in the memoir. I need to include some of that here. Links to 2025 round-ups follow, in case you are up for that, too.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.“I mean, seriously: Where are those videotapes the FBI confiscated from Epstein’s house? And why haven’t they led to the prosecution of any more abusers?” (366)From Publishers Marketplace’s Publishers Lunch newsletter on December 17, 2025:Nobody’s Girl’ Sells 1 Million CopiesVirginia Roberts Giuffre’s NOBODY’S GIRL, her posthumous memoir of sexual abuse and trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein, has sold 1 million copies around the world ….“This is a bittersweet moment for us,” Giuffre’s family said in a statement. “We are enormously proud of our sister, and the impact she continues to have on the world. We’re also filled with so much sorrow that she couldn’t be here to witness the impact of her words.…”Giuffre died by suicide in April. Before publication, Giuffre’s family asked for revisions to the manuscript to reflect the author’s relationship with her husband, who she accused of abuse and from whom she was getting divorced.Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre“Today I know that Epstein liked to tell friends that women were merely ‘a life support system for a vagina.’ I didn’t know that then.” (140)Nobody’s Girl begins with a note from Giuffre’s collaborator, Amy Wallace. She lets the reader know that Giuffre had called her early in 2025 to tell her that her husband, Robbie, had assaulted her during an argument. She also mentions that Robbie was arrested in 2015—ten years prior to the publication of the book—after assaulting her. This is the edit that Giuffre’s family asked for. Throughout the book, Giuffre only has positive things to say about her husband. He appears as a rescuing hero.Those frontloaded facts about the two assaults change the way the reader sees the couple’s relationship, the way we engage with the entire text. Between this and the knowledge that Giuffre died by suicide in April 2025, we read under a black cloud.It isn’t just the sections on being trafficked by Epstein that are a rough go. Giuffre was abused from childhood, starting with her father, who began molesting her when she was only seven years old, letting her know that if she told anyone, he would kill her younger brother and bury him in the woods. A pedophile neighbor, who seems to have an understanding with her father, also rapes her repeatedly. She finds some solace in caring for and riding horses.When, as a mere child, Giuffre has repeated UTIs and can’t hold her urine at school, she sees a doctor who tells her mother that her hymen is broken. Her mother replies that she rides horses.Giuffre shares that she believes her mother knew early on what was happening to her but didn’t want to face the truth. Decades later, when she tried to address the issue, her mother would tell her that she couldn’t bear to hear about it.“But if I was going to finally call Dad out, I wanted to make sure at least my uncles and aunts could hear. ‘This guy has been fucking me for years, since I was a little kid,’ I yelled in their direction, ‘and no one‘s done shit about it.’ I wish I could say they all stood up then to form a protective barrier around me. But they didn’t move. So after a startled silence, Dad grabbed me by my neck with one hand and punched me in the face with the other. Then he shoved me into the borrowed camper where we’d all been sleeping and continued beating me until my lips were split open, and one of my eyes was swollen shut.… The next morning I woke up thinking that since I’d finally revealed my father‘s abuse out loud, something would have to change. Maybe, at the very least, someone would acknowledge what I’ve been through. Instead, before we left to drive back to Florida, the entire extended family acted as if nothing had happened.” (47)Giuffre’s trajectory is textbook abused-kid stuff: she begins starving herself, drinking and doing drugs, and acting out. She’s sent to a reform camp for juvenile delinquents, Growing Together, where kids supervised and restrained the ‘newcomers’ in what Giuffre describes as a Lord of the Flies atmosphere of hazing, physical, and sexual abuse.Her ‘reform’ program includes such helpful exercises as being forced to stand in front of a mirror and hurl insults at herself. She runs away repeatedly. After being raped and nearly killed by a man who picked up Giuffre after asking her if she needed a lift, she escapes from a seedy motel room and is back on the street, afraid he will come back and find her (he has a gun). A limo stops and an old man with a young girl tells her he will help. She’s picked up by modeling agent Ron Eppinger, who rapes her, keeps her, calls her ‘baby’ and asks to be called ‘daddy.’ He trafficks her to a man in his fifties.She thinks this is what all men do—this is what life is. And who wouldn’t, in her shoes? She accepts it.“I didn’t know then what a therapist would tell me a decade later: that when children are abused by people they love, as I had been by my father, they start to believe that love and pain, love and betrayal, love and violation all go together. I didn’t know that abuse victims struggle to see red flags because they become desensitized to inappropriate behavior.” (74)Not long after an FBI raid leads to the arrest of the fifty-something ‘boyfriend,’ her father, who was a groundskeeper at Mar-a-Lago, helps her get a job as a locker room attendant at the spa.One not-very-busy day, she sits at the reception desk reading an anatomy book. Her dream is to become a masseuse, and thereby escape the trap of her life. She’s studying. In walks Ghislaine Maxwell (who had seen her walking and targeted her). She chats Giuffre up, tells her she knows a man who wants a massage therapist to travel with him and is willing to train her. Excited, the sixteen-year-old gets her dad to give her a ride to Epstein’s pink mansion.Maxwell thrives in the same swamp as Epstein. She, too, is an apex predator, convincing countless girls that she can be the caring mother they never had. She often participates with Epstein in raping and abusing victims.“From the start, they manipulated me into participating in behaviors that ate away at me, eroding my ability to comprehend reality and preventing me from defending myself. From the start, I was groomed to be complicit in my own devastation. Of all the terrible wounds they inflicted, that forced complicity was the most destructive.” (75)Like Giuffre’s father. Epstein threatens to harm her little brother. “‘We know where your brother goes to school. … You must never tell a soul what goes on in this house.’” (83) He and Maxwell sometimes take Giuffre on outings, just as parents would do, buy her little gifts, have her hair done and her teeth whitened, all of which make the abuse more confusing to her. She takes up to eight Xanax a day to cope.The book continues with a detailed account of Giuffre’s abuse and trafficking by Epstein and Maxwell, in various countries, to academics from prestigious universities and to powerful and famous people, including Prince Andrew. Giuffre endures sadism. She is one in a vast corral of young women and girls caught up in Epstein and Maxwell’s predation. She escapes by marrying Robbie ten days after meeting him in Thailand, where she had been sent by Maxwell in order to go to massage therapy school.The book turns its focus to the quest for justice (and quest is not hyperbole here). The reader can finally cheer what Giuffre and her fellow victims achieve while being defamed by Maxwell and maligned by the British tabloids and the conservative press (New York Post—my God!)But the reader is feeling so sorrowful so early on that getting to this point in the text is a rocky journey.“I know this is a lot to take in. The violence. The neglect. The bad decisions. The self-harm. Imagine if a trauma reel like this played in your head all the time, as it does in mine, and not just on the pages of a book you can put down if you need to, just for a moment, to steady your nerves. But please don’t stop reading. I know exactly how to help you get through these tough parts just as I help myself: by focusing on the present.” (49)Giuffre gives the reader the present with details about her marriage, the births of her three children, and the highlights of family life.But as she begins to win in courts and receive validation, she also starts to experience terrible health problems—bouts of pneumonia, meningitis, a serious staph infection, ovarian cysts and uterine polyps.It seems her immune system is failing, turning against her. She falls and breaks her neck and is later required to have surgery to remove a shattered disk and attach “metal swivels” in its place. It feels that all of this must have contributed to her death by suicide.“I have told you how cunning an enemy trauma can be. It hides in the shadows, then takes control of one psyche without warning. That’s what happened as I lay in that hospital bed in Perth: all my feelings of sadness and shame overtook me. I was worn out by the near constant pain in my neck. I was weary of defending myself against vicious, hurtful, words… I was sick of the nightmares… Alarmingly, I see now, I wasn’t afraid anymore; instead, I just felt hollowed out. So when my trauma tricked my brain into telling me lies, I listened.” (348-9)Near the end of the book, Giuffre’s attorney, speaking of Ghislaine Maxwell, tells her:“‘She is going to prison for a very, very long time, Virginia, and all of that has to do with you. You started this, sweetheart. You did everything to keep it going. There’s no way this could’ve happened without your bravery and your commitment. That is heroic – and I watched you go through it. It was a horrible, difficult job, and you did it. And you took some serious hits along the way. I’m so incredibly proud of you right now.’” (342)We, too, feel pride in Giuffre’s courage. If only that had been enough.Links to 2025 Round Ups and Surprises2025: The Year in Pictures From the NYT (gift link)Quiz: Do You Speak 2025? From the NYT (gift link)An assortment of absurd, useful and funny words and phrases entered the vernacular this year. How well do you know them?Alta Journal ’s Top Book Reviews of 2025From timely social histories to joyful writer memoirs, here are some highlights from this year’s book reviews.Dragons, Sex and the Bible: What Drove the Book Business This Year from NYT (gift link)Nonfiction and Y.A. are hurting, but genre fiction and the Good Book are booming. Here’s how book sales looked in 2025.This year brought more blockbuster books about sex and magic along with best sellers nobody saw coming. Yet while sales are solid and bookstores are generally flourishing, the book business still faces a dizzying set of challenges.Rising costs ate into profits. Nonprofit presses lost federal funding. A.I. disrupted online search results and flooded Amazon with poorly written copycat books and slapdash genre fiction, making it harder for books written by humans to stand out from the slop. Major retailers ordered fewer books than they used to, and there weren’t as many companies distributing books to stores. And book bans threatened to limit collections in schools and libraries.A thing that surprised meMarjorie Taylor Greene-Trump MAGA Split interview in the NYT (gift link)For writers:Jane Friedman’s 2025 Year in ReviewThanks for reading! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

I had finished writing this post but hadn’t gotten a chance to record it yet when I heard the news that people were shot, injured, and killed at Brown University. Thoughts and prayers, yes, but without systemic change, our “unthinkable nightmare” will continue to be routine.Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me. - Isabel AllendeHello Friends,I don’t know what to think this holiday season when I see Santa dressed in camouflage, looking happy to go to war. Hasn’t this year been hard enough? Who thinks this is fun?Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz RyanImmigrants have been on my mind both because of what is happening to them under the Trump administration and because I hope to write a novel with IRL elements of some relatives. This week, while I was baking a lot of cookies, I decided to listen to a children’s audiobook because I wanted to see how the migrant child’s POV was handled. Here’s a little summary from a banned books poster on the Intercultural Research Development Association website.Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz RyanThe novel focuses on Esperanza, the only daughter of wealthy Mexican parents, and follows the events that occur after her father’s murder. It is a story of love, loss, and hope, set in Mexico during the 1930s, just after the Mexican Revolution. Grade level: 5-6.Actually, a lot of the book takes place in Southern California after Esperanza and her mom are forced to flee Mexico and their privileged lives there. They become farm workers. And that’s why I was interested in the novel.Esperanza has been withdrawn from schools in various states and districts. I’d say I can’t imagine why, except that I can. What I mean is, there is no good reason for the bans. No foul language, no sexual content (not even ‘clean’ romance), no violence, nothing age inappropriate. But, like most banned books, it empathizes with ‘the other.’ The migrant farm workers. It also discusses unions and strikes in a simple way. It looks at racial and cultural prejudice. On the whole, it’s a very good novel that helps pre-teens understand desperate people in the Great Depression and what it is like to work on a vast agribusiness farm. The only fault I found in it—this is a spoiler, but I can’t imagine you are going to read a book for ten and eleven-year-olds—is that a teenage friend of Esperanza’s somehow goes all the way back to Aguascalientes in Central Mexico (over 1,600 miles one way) and retrieves Esperanza’s grandmother (abuela) and returns with her to Kern County, CA. I wanted to know how in the world he achieved that, but there are no details. I think even a ten-year-old might question it. However, on the whole, it’s a wonderful book for kids. So if you’re looking for a gift book, thumbs up. (If you’re looking for a teen/YA gift book, consider mine, Keep Sweet.)Digression: I’m thinking about my sentence “Esperanza has been withdrawn from schools in various states and districts.” In Spanish, esperanza is hope. So, yeah. And while you might not think of a book being removed from a school district as a ban, the book is banned from that district. It doesn’t have to be a national ban to use the word. In addition, in Utah, if a book is banned in three districts, then it is removed from all public schools, AND they didn’t allow students to bring copies of those banned books on campus to read until advocacy groups pressured them into changing the rules. Big bans! It’s like they can’t tell the difference between reading and smoking weed. Between bringing your favorite book to campus and bringing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. * Catholics in power in the Trump administration and the Supreme Court ignore Catholic leadership from the Pope on down about the treatment of immigrants (fun fact—61% of those deported are also Catholic).Stop in the Name of God by Charlie KirkA book I’m not going to read is Charlie Kirk’s Stop in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life. Apparently, it is a big bestseller. In his Book Club newsletter, Ron Charles discusses it, and I thought you might be interested in what he has to say. While he points out the lack of editing resulting in many errors such as having the exact same, word-for-word, sentence on consecutive pages (Donald Trump is a co-publisher, so …), he also gives Kirk credit for pointing out that people need down time as part of a spiritual practice.[M]uch of this posthumously published book is committed to theological arguments, devotional reflections and practical advice on reclaiming the Sabbath to restore spiritual balance in a culture overstimulated by technology and consumerism. … But “Stop” is also a strange, uneven volume that sometimes gets lost in the wilderness.His grasp of world history and religious history is spotty; his philosophical analysis displays the rigor of a late-night bull session after the pizza has grown cold. False choices, straw man arguments, cosmic leaps — it’s a Macy’s parade of inflated fallacies. When he speaks from the heart about the blessings of setting aside a day every week, he can be genuinely moving; when he tries to make a case for Intelligent Design, he should be moving on.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Awake by Jen HatmakerWikipedia describes Jen Hatmaker as an American author, speaker, blogger, and television presenter. Apparently she is very well known in the evangelical/conservative Christian world, which canceled her (literally—her publisher stopped publishing her books) when she came out as supportive of the LGBTQ+ community. According to Hatmaker herself, she was also canceled when she got a divorce in 2020 after discovering her husband’s affair. I guess that can happen twice.I put Awake on hold at the library because I read something about it which gave me the idea that it discussed purity culture in the evangelical space. I don’t follow evangelical celebrities, so I didn’t know any of the above background on Hatmaker. This put me at a disadvantage in reading the memoir.The first 100 pages make the assumption that the reader knows who Hatmaker is and what she’s done. She starts with waking from a dead sleep to hear her husband talking on the phone to his lover, saying he can’t quit her. So, a compelling beginning. But then she talks about being the wife of a pastor of a small church. When she then mentions calling her personal assistant to ask her to make some travel arrangements, I thought, ‘How does a pastor’s wife—of a very small church, that is—have the money for a personal assistant?’ And, yes, I had similar questions throughout those 100 pages.Hatmaker gets through her trauma with some very good friends, ones who seem to have a lot of money and can offer her cool getaways. They are also handy. At one point, a group of them rebuild her porch and decorate it beautifully. While these women are generally in the Christian community, some of them are also pretty New Agey. They do things like sage her house to get rid of the bad vibes from the broken marriage.While Hatmaker continues to be a believer, she decides to leave her church and hasn’t joined another. She does write a bit about the purity culture—she married as a teen who was still in college, partly so she could have sanctioned sex. Mostly she goes from that first moment when she awakens to her husband’s betrayal to the moment when she is awakened to her authority over herself and her responsibility for her own life. This well-worn trope is nice—the reader is glad for her—but this wasn’t the book I was looking for.* On church, purity, and sexual abuse: I read that victims of the Catholic clergy in the New Orleans Archdiocese are to receive $230 million.AdventAs I think of the theme of being awake, I realize I have sort of been sleeping through the season of Advent, which saddens me because I appreciate the sense of renewal it brings when I pay attention. My son introduced the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer to me, and I like how there is a prayer in there for just about everything. Last week, someone asked me to pray for their ill/injured dog. Yes, I found a good one specifically for that. For Advent, there are prayers for being in the presence of grace and love (for Christians, in the person of Jesus).Rather than take myself to task, as I write this, I figure I have two weeks left of the traditional Advent season, and I don’t want it to be a Santa in camouflage holiday. So I’m tuning in to what can be meaningful for me. Here’s something I loved:Anne Lamott posted a difficult Advent story that helped me remember what beginnings often look like. Birth is rough, friends. Absolutely read this!Happy Holiday StuffWe have holiday-adjacent birthdays in our family. I like to bake and ask what the birthday folks would like. This year, I’ve had two requests for strawberry shortcake. Although strawberry season begins early in warm So Cal, it’s usually February before good ones can be found. Fortunately, we got some—from the grocery store, no less—which were pretty good. Hint: I freeze the butter and then grate it into the flour, which makes the shortbread much easier to make.I also stopped to sew small things as a way of calming down. I have a friend for whom we are having a party tomorrow as she leaves one job to work on another project. She loves books, poetry, tea, and cats. So I got her some Good Store tea, a literary trivia game, and a chapbook of poems about cats. Then I made her some shortbread cookies from a recipe she gave me. And lastly, I found some cat fabric and made her some cup coasters and a bookmark with it. I hope she rests over the holiday with some tea and cookies while she reads poems.Thanks for reading! Since I’m feeling a bit of the season’s overwhelm, I might take a break next week and just post photos of my dogs, Loki and Curiosa. I know in my ‘About Page,’ I mentioned that I would periodically have dog posts, but it seems like there is always too much going on, both in censorship (Friday’s “Libraries and Banned Books” posts) and in the reader/writer realm (Sunday’s posts). But sometimes—don’t we just want to look at dogs?Let me know what you’re reading! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,Everyone I know is focused on giving right now, which is pretty nice. However, I found myself getting stressed out on ‘Giving Tuesday’ because there were innumerable worthy groups I wanted to contribute to. I did manage many by carrying over to Wednesday. One thing I don’t like is when I donate to a charity, and they send me an email the next day saying something like ‘There’s still time to donate!’— making me look back because I think I must have screwed up.My latest blood donation was in November. They gave me these crazy PAC-MAN socks. Thanksgiving time seems to be sock time for the Red Cross. (Last year it was socks with the TV sitcom Friends theme.) If you’re in the middle of deciding what to give to which charities, giving blood is one of the nice things to do. 😊Gifts for Book Lovers/Gifts that Do GoodNovel TeasA friend gave this tea to me as part of a book launch gift when Keep Sweet came out. It’s fun for book lovers and authors. The tea itself is good enough (though not great) and each bag tag has a quote related to books.Good StoreEveryone I know in the teen/YA book sphere loves John and Hank Green. Their books are lovely. I booktalked them frequently and got high school nonreaders to give reading a try! Most teen readers love, love their books. They’ve made a lot of money on their work, and decided it was enough (in itself, a wonderful and wild decision when we think of the rapacious billionaires running our country). Now, they are working to make the world a better place. Through the Good Store, you can support maternal health in Sierra Leone, fight to end tuberculosis, and to save coral reefs.* 100% of the profits from Sun Basin Soap and the Awesome Socks Club go to Partners In Health—specifically to support the construction of the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone.* 100% of the profits from Keats & Co go to Partners In Health to support their Tuberculosis Project in Lesotho. Tuberculosis is the world’s deadliest infectious disease—yet it is entirely preventable.* 100% of profits from EcoGeek purchases go to the Coral Reef Alliance—specifically the Maui Watershed Restoration project.I have been drinking the Keats & Co. teas (after John Keats, English Romantic era poet who died of TB), especially the Earl Grey. They are so good! Great quality, yummy. For the holidays, I added the purchase of teas, coffee, and wacky socks for friends and family.Also—If you have friends who haven’t read Everything is Tuberculosis, that would also be a nice gift. I discussed it here:More BooksFor all book lovers, here’s a reality check my friend Laura shared with me. If book titles were honest. Enjoy! Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Indie PressesI’ve often mentioned that it’s lovely to buy small press books. Here’s a list from LitHub that you might use to select gift books that you might not otherwise be aware of: 100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025.And—a quick self-promo here—my books are from very small presses. Keep Sweet is for people fourteen years and up. (Topics are for mature readers.) Teens work to escape from a patriarchal cult. Timely.Elizabeth, the protagonist in “Keep Sweet,” Victoria Waddle’s latest release, is fourteen years old and living in a rural “Community” with her parents, three sister wives, and 16 siblings under the thumb of a “prophet” who controls everything, from their pets and candy consumption, to who they will marry and have children with. When he decides Elizabeth will marry her cousin, Elizabeth’s future seems doomed. But when she turns to the “helper” inside her and recognizes the power of her own intuition, she starts asking questions and finds her own voice. — Cati PorterBook ExchangeSomething I think is fun is to add a book I’ve read to the gifts I am giving family and friends. This is especially true if what they want is a donation to a worthy cause. I make the donation, but it’s fun to open something, right? I take books from my shelf that I believe they will like and wrap them up. Right now, I’m looking at some of my family book club books. I have more than one copy of some of those, basically new. I want to give two of my friends the same title so we can all talk about it later.If you are horrified that I give away lots of books, let me justify it through my library training. At work, I had to remove thousands of books—yes thousands. They became too worn or out-of-date; as science advanced, the material became misleading (‘We’ll go to the moon someday!’ ‘AIDS is a 100% death sentence’); people lost interest in the topic (a pop star, etc.). There are so many reasons to remove books and make way for new ones. So—I try to do that in my own life as well.Sacrament by Susan StraightI mentioned last week that I was reading this. It’s an especially good choice for Southern California readers and nurses anywhere, but the family love and friendships will appeal to just about any reader.The American RevolutionIf you or loved ones have been watching The American Revolution on PBS, you might want to get the companion book. ( I have it on my wishlist for Santa.) The series includes information that isn’t in many sources on the Revolutionary War, particularly the role of American Indians on both sides.I’m thinking there are other good books on the topic, which should be of peak interest right now with the coming of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Here is an article excerpted from a new book, so you can see if you like it, and two books I enjoyed when they were published. There will be renewed interest in them now. They, too, include information about the war that I had never learned before.Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters by Edward J. LarsonGive Me Independence: On 1776, the Pivotal Year For What Would Become America from LitHubEDWARD J. LARSON CONSIDERS THE IMPACT AND LEGACY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY CAUSEFrom Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters by Edward J. Larson1776 by David McCulloughAs a book about a momentous period of history, 1776 is short—under 300 pages excluding the endnotes. Its brevity is part of its success—it’s a tightly woven story of the trials and triumphs of George Washington and the Continental Army. The reader meets many players in the American Revolution from both sides of ‘the pond.’ David McCullough has won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; his writing skills shine here.Previously, I had only read of King George III as a madman, and was surprised to find him pretty reasonable in this account. I learned why the leaders of the British Army and Navy made some costly decisions that, on the surface, appear blundering and foolish, but on closer examination, had merit. I understood why Washington ‘crossing the Delaware’ is so famous an event. I even learned about William Lee, the enslaved man who served with Washington, always by his side and in the thick of things.Though the success of the American Revolution depended on many people—and they are given credit here—George Washington is the star of the book. He takes the most ragtag, miserable group of diseased, undisciplined men, who several times flee from battle (you won’t read that in your history book!), and wins a war for independence. Success didn’t follow a straight line, and many important battles were lost along the way, causing Washington to despair and his second in command (Charles Lee) to privately question Washington’s ability to lead.1776 began so badly for Washington that he wrote to Joseph Reed (an adjunct general):“I have often thought how much happier I should have been if, instead of accepting of a command under such circumstances, I had taken my musket upon my shoulders and entered the ranks, or, if I could have justified the measure to posterity, and my own conscience, had retired to the back country, and lived in a wigwam.”Reed, along with Charles Lee, came to criticize Washington for indecision—which was, as 1776 shows, a valid criticism. But Lee is the worst sort of backstabber. In an encounter that seems like it should have come from a fictional tale of intrigue, Lee wrote a letter to Reed about Washington:“[I] lament with you that fatal indecision of mind which in war is a much greater disqualification than stupidity or even want of personal courage. Accident may put a decisive blunder in the right, but eternal defeat and miscarriage must attend the men of the best parts if cursed with indecision.”This letter was accidentally delivered to Washington, who opened and read it. You’ll be surprised to find out what he does in response. (And don’t worry, fate will eventually deal with Lee.) Persevering through these kinds of trials points to Washington’s leadership abilities. As I read, this story was one of the most memorable in the book because my mind jumped to the stories of some politicians today who whine about being criticized and then throw temper tantrums.Another scene that struck me was the story of Henry Knox and the movement of cannons from Fort Ticonderoga (upstate New York) to Boston. That’s 300 miles in the dead of winter—horrific conditions—with 120,000 pounds of artillery. This was both brilliant and almost impossible. It’s the kind of thing that inspires true admiration. A worthy read.Revolutionary Summer by Joseph J. EllisThe summer of 1776 is the revolutionary summer that Ellis discusses in his book, one in which the fate of the war for independence looked pretty bleak.Ellis says of Washington’s ragtag army, ‘They were not the kind of men you wanted living in your neighborhood.’ They spit tobacco every few feet, mocked their officers, and were undisciplined and unable to hold their ground in a fight. Ironically, the fact that so many of them turned and ran in the first battles in New York that summer gave Washington the chance to reorganize without the massive losses he would otherwise have had.New York was strategically significant in 1776, in part because of the Hudson River. So it was an obvious place for an early clash between the British and the states. And it proved particularly difficult for Washington and his rebel army. New York was full of loyalists who didn’t want to be defended against the British. As the British landed, many New Yorkers hailed them as saviors. Washington was in a no-win situation; his retreat from it was nearly miraculous.How did these newly United States ever pull off a win in the Revolutionary War? As Ellis tells it, they learned that they just had to keep from losing and the British would succumb because they were fighting from too far away with too little direction. He also details the story of the Howe brothers—Admiral Lord Richard Howe and the younger General William Howe, who commanded the British due to his proven military brilliance as a regimental commander and his notable courage. These men, while well-positioned to win this war, saw themselves as peacemakers and diplomats. This is not so odd as it seems—you’ll understand why as you read—but this view deeply hurt their strategy in the end. They really weren’t winning hearts and minds. (Hum . . .)Still—things did have to change for the Continental Army if they were going to win battles. The new country had to invent and standardize the rules of the army, and admit that having ‘turnstile’ soldiers, who left after a year of service, couldn’t work. Just as the men were finally learning what it meant to fight a battle, they were heading back home. And yet to have a standing army was something that the colonies had always objected to—it smacked of the imperial government they were trying to throw off.While the action around New York was coming to a head, the United States not only had to standardize their army. They had to declare their independence. The story of how Thomas Jefferson was chosen to write the document is genuine fun. (Ben Franklin, the rock star of the period, couldn’t stand writing by committee and didn’t want to create a document that would be edited by others later.) At the time, Jefferson’s first two paragraphs were regarded as a “rhetorical overture, the flamboyant windup before the real pitch.” As we know now, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” etc. are some of history’s most famous and most important words.Because of Ellis’s fluid writing style, the summer of 1776 comes alive for the reader. In addition to Washington’s early lack of resolve (later eliminated), the unimaginable success of the Continental Army’s retreat from New York, and the burning of that city, we see: Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence; John Adams coming to realize the significance of what he is involved in; John Adams’s relationship to his wife Abigail and the significance of their letters to each other; the importance of Benjamin Franklin and how his opinion of American independence evolved.Some reviewers note that the topic of Revolutionary Summer has been written about ad nauseum. And yet, for those of us who know little about the details of this historic moment, Ellis is the perfect choice. It’s brief—not including the endnotes and index, it’s well under 200 pages. There are also some helpful color illustrations and black and white maps. Perfect for celebrating a 250th anniversary.Thanks for reading! Let me know what books you are giving as gifts this holiday season! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I hope you’ve had a long weekend full of gratitude and blessings. My husband and I did a lot of cooking and housecleaning. Holidays make me feel my age. For years, I would never leave dirty dishes from holiday cooking on the counters/in the sink overnight. I couldn’t stand the idea of waking up and having to deal with the mess. Now I can’t stand dealing with the mess on the day of the cooking and company. It has to wait for the following morning.To deal with holiday stress, I think it’s fun to read advice columns in the newspaper. People have wacky issues, and that provides a little laugh and helps put things in perspective. My favorite this year was a man whose adult child has a father-in-law who refuses to trim his nose hairs even though the hairy-nose-man’s wife and child asked him to. The writer finds this so gross that it’s hard to be at the holiday table with the hairy-nose-man and wants to check out for that reason. You know, you read things like that and think ‘Really? That’s your holiday issue?’ But also, ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t want to deal with that.’ It could make your own family feel pretty normal.My Personal CurriculumI just learned that ‘personal curriculums’ are a thing. I happen to be working through one myself right now. I’m learning about California during the Great Depression and particularly about migrant farmworkers in the state. I want to know more for a novel I’d like to write. I thought I’d get through the books faster—I thought I’d be done by Dec. 1. But I have been caught up in other things and reading very slowly.Here are some library books I have on loan.Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California by Kevin StarrChasing the Harvest: Migrant Workers in California Agriculture, edited by Gabriel Thompson (interviews are more contemporary rather than from the Great Depression)Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California by Carey McWilliamsColossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century by Michael HiltzikPicturing a Nation: The Great Depression’s Finest Photographers Introduce America to Itself by Martin W. SandlerI’m also taking a look at California and public projects at the time. Once I get through these books, I want to read about the building of the Golden Gate Bridge.Factories in the Field was published in 1939 and is a great book for those seeking information on migrant farm work and agribusiness in California from 1900-1939. “This book was the first broad exposé of the social and environmental damage inflicted by the growth of corporate agriculture.”Here’s a poem that serves as the book’s epigraph.“The Nomad Harvesters” by Marie De L. WelchThe nomads had been the followers of the flocks and herds,Or the wilder men, the hunters, the raiders.The harvesters had been the men of homes.But ours is a land of nomad harvesters.They till no ground, take no rest, are hooked nowhere.Travel with the warmth, rest in the warmth never;Pick lettuce in the green season in the flats by the sea.Lean, follow the ripening, homeless, send the harvest home;Pick cherries in the amber valleys in the tenderest summer.Rest nowhere, share in no harvest;Pick grapes in the red vineyards in the low blue hills.Camp in the ditches at the edge of beauty.They are a great band, they move in thousands;Move and pause and move on.They turn to the ripening, follow the peaks of seasons,Gather the fruit and leave it and move on.Ours is a land of nomad harvesters,Men of no root, no ground, no house, no rest;They follow the ripening, gather the ripeness,Rest never, ripen never,Move and pause and move on.Are you working on a personal curriculum? What is it? Why are you interested in the subject?Sacrament by Susan StraightRecently I mentioned four books I’d bought at Warwick’s Bookstore in San Diego. Since I’m working on reading the California books, those others mostly have to wait. However, I did begin Susan Straight’s Sacrament with high hopes of being well into it by November 19. I intended to go out to Riverside that day, have dinner with a friend, and then we were going to attend an Inlandia sponsored event featuring Straight discussing the novel. I’d actually bought the audiobook and began to listen to it. And then I’d bought the hardback at Warwick’s because the event was at a cultural center, and I didn’t know if the book was being sold there.The best laid plans and all that. My sister had an emergency that day. She happened to be in Palm Springs, so my other sister and I drove out there and stayed for a few days to visit her in the hospital.Straight is the star writer of the Inland Empire, narrating the diverse lives and landscapes of inland Southern California. Perhaps I can see her somewhere else soon. Meanwhile, I am enjoying Sacrament. There are some characters whom I met in Straight’s last novel, Mecca. I really like the character Johnny Frias, a motorcycle CHP member who grew up as a cowboy/rancher. However, the novel is centered on new characters, four nurses in San Bernardino, California during the Covid pandemic. They are in the thick of it—removed from their families and living in trailers so that they don’t risk infecting their loved ones. Dealing with dying patients and work that never ends as well as the loneliness of missing their families. So far, very good stuff.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Best Books of the Year—the Lists are Coming Out!One of the reasons I like checking end-of-the-year book lists is to see how many favorites I happen to have read. Have you read some of these ‘bests’? Did you love them as much as the critics did?* The New York Public Library has 50 best adult books, 50 best teen books, and 125 best children’s book at this link.* Here’s a gift link to the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025.* Here’s NPR’s “Books We Love” for 2025 (384!). Click on the individual book covers for more information.* Publishers Weekly lists and briefly comments on the National Book Award winners here.For writers, Brecht De Poortere now has his 2025 list of top ranked literary magazines here. You can start your submission wish list. His process: “I use major awards and anthologies to rank more than 750 magazines publishing literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry. I also include information on: reading periods, cost of submission, restrictions, word counts, pay, location and journal website.”If you are writing and also submitting, then you will be receiving rejections. More and more, literary journals seem to be trying to soften the blow. Which is an admirable effort. And while saying things like, “This isn’t a reflection of the story’s worth” is okay—the story might not be worthy, but the reason for rejection is often that it doesn’t match the editors’ tastes—here’s A Thing Lit Mag Rejections Shouldn’t Say:“We encourage you to keep writing and creating. The world needs it, and you.”I got this message this week. Please. Just. Stop.As to keeping the arts alive in the U.S., I thought Ron Charles’ comments in his Book Club newsletter were spot on. It’s a mistake to depend on wealthy patrons, who will (and do, and always have) expect[ed] praise of themselves, and a pass on accountability for their behavior.“But now President Trump is dismantling the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. As a consequence, America will slip further back into that clammy system of pleading and patronage.I know…. These reflections sound so naive I should be writing them with a stubby crayon. But it’s possible to imagine a country in which writers, artists, librarians and museum directors don’t have to wheedle for money from wealthy pedophiles, tobacco executives, OxyContin pushers or reality TV stars moonlighting as tyrants.It’s possible, really. As someone might have told Jeffrey Epstein, ‘The Brain — is wider than the Sky.’”You may recognize that as Emily Dickinson—and you’re right!The Brain—is wider than the Sky—For—put them side by side—The one the other will containWith ease—and you—beside—The Brain is deeper than the sea—For—hold them—Blue to Blue—The one the other will absorb—As sponges—Buckets—do—The Brain is just the weight of God—For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—And they will differ—if they do—As Syllable from Sound—Thanks for reading! Next week I hope to share titles of books I’ve been reading lately.I want to end by saying that I know we are entering a difficult time of the year for many people. Grief pops over the holidays when loved ones are missing. While my family and I have lost many loved ones over the last five years, some of the losses are directly connected to the holiday season. Yesterday was the second anniversary of my brother’s death. I dream about him sometimes, in the most ordinary way. Just chit chat. My mom died on Dec. 8 five years ago. The whole Covid nightmare makes it seem more recent. The anniversary of my sister-in-law’s birthday is Dec. 7. She died of leukemia. My mother-in-law died on January 6, the Epiphany.The holiday season is so much different for me than it was for most of my life. It’s now emotionally complicated. and I’m sure I’m not the only one for whom this is true.Take care.Bookshop.org has free shipping today! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

To be the instrument of God’s peace is not to confine oneself to the field of personal relationships, but to concern oneself also with the problems of human society, hunger, poverty, injustice, cruelty, exploitation, war. - Alan PatonThere can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children. - Nelson MandelaHello Friends,I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving. Like most people, I’m thankful for my family, my good luck, and more. But I’m also thinking about “the problems of human society.” This week I’ve been thinking a lot about kids because of the Epstein files and all the news surrounding them.Here’s a great takedown of Megyn Kelly’s argument that 15 year olds aren’t kids.Did you have a chance to see the video released by Epstein’s victims? A powerful reminder that they were children.Since it’s a good week to look at some people who spend a great part of their lives caring about all kids, I thought I’d look at Why Fascists Fear Teachers by Randi Weingarten.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Why Fascists Fear Teachers by Randi Weingarten.Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy is a compact little book, about 5 x 7 inches, a sort of photograph frame for a snapshot of public education and its role in a democracy (hint: cornerstone). Of the 244 pages, the introduction is 30 pages and the endnotes, with links to back all of the book’s assertions, is 59 pages. Being short, this text focuses on four foundational things that are important to the future of our students and the well-being of our nation—but are antithetical to the fascist anti-government, anti-pluralism, anti-opportunity agenda:* teachers teach critical thinking;* teachers foster safe and welcoming communities;* teachers create opportunity;* and teachers build strong unions.Fascism here has a broad definition and includes the oligarchies and authoritarianism we are currently witnessing. Weingarten quotes Jason Stanley‘s definition of fascism: “ultranationalism of some variety, ethnic, religion, cultural, with a nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf.” She also quotes Timothy Snyder explaining that it’s hard to create an academic definition of fascism because its point is to reject reason in favor of will.I wish the title of Why Fascists Fear Teachers had been “Why Fascists Hate Teachers” because the word ‘fear’ implies that educators have power over fascism. That remains to be seen. What we do know is that the far-right culture wars cost public schools nationwide more than $3 billion in the 2023-2024 school year alone.I picked up Why Fascists thinking it was a book for teachers (that’s me), but it’s not. Generally speaking, teachers already know what the book asserts. However, they might want to read the section on unions, which reminds us of how their existence is beneficial for all but the elite classes.Since this is a short book, both positive and didactic, a general primer, I’ll give you a quick look at its ideas. I thought it’d also be fun to share some quotes.Critical thinking“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.” —John AdamsA free society depends on free minds. FDR: “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” (35)Weingarten discusses how authoritarian regimes co-opt or circumvent norms and institutions that are meant to support basic liberties including the opportunities to think and choose for oneself. I don’t think it was hard for her to find examples, some of them outrageous enough that we couldn’t have imagined them even a decade ago. Think of Oklahoma’s state superintendent trying to force all OK schools to teach the Bible—the Trump Bible, which he intended to buy with taxpayer money. Of course, historical and current-day examples of book banning fit nicely into this chapter. She then moves on to what is actually taught in public schools and defends that against the ‘woke agenda’ charge.Safe and welcoming communities“The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness, both of private Families, and of Commonwealths.” —Benjamin FranklinThere’s an interesting story here about President LB Johnson teaching in a segregated Mexican school when he was a young man earning his college tuition. It likely influenced his later support of civil rights and voting rights.It goes without saying that fascists don’t want a safe and welcoming community for all. Examples of how schools provide services for all kids abound; dental support including teeth cleaning for students in an impoverished community is a good example of how educators reach out to support the whole student (the community schools model). Weingarten also discusses the more obvious safety issues that educators are worried about in all schools, particularly: guns and school shootings, and the harms of social media and other new technologies, including loneliness.She points out that oligarchs who make money on algorithms that harm young people are not friends of public education. We should not be handing over government leadership roles to them (Elon Musk and DOGE) or even giving them the best seats in the house for a presidential inauguration.“To be clear, fascists and autocrats and far right extremists don’t want to help all students, nor do they want to strengthen public schools. They don’t want to teach students about the painful parts of American history, and they don’t want to level the playing field for children living in abject poverty. Because their goal is to exploit problems, not solve them. They want to divide Americans, otherizing those who are different while attacking pluralism and diversity, inclusion, and equity as the problem. These extremists try to pit us against each other and distract us so they can rig the system for themselves. When the far right gets enough people to believe that diversity is a threat and opportunity is a zero-sum game, they use the anger and resentment they foment to defund and destabilize public education.” (7-8)Creating Opportunities“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. … They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” —Thomas JeffersonThis chapter dives into the connection between attacks on public education and the history of segregation in the U.S. School vouchers began as a way to continue segregating schools and have been proven to do little more than deliver taxpayer money to families who already had their kids in private schools and, thus, could afford to do so without that transference of funds away from public schools. Meanwhile, public schools are depleted of funds. “Oligarchs and extremists do not believe in education for all. In fact, … many fight against the fundamental idea of education for all, privatizing public resources, while questioning whether we should even have public schools.” (106) Examples of this include the conservative economist Milton Friedman, who, in the year after Brown v. the Board of Education, wrote a manifesto proposing school vouchers as a strategy for privatizing education. Friedman later supported fascists such as Chile’s authoritarian military dictator Augusto Pinochet. He helped Pinochet institute universal school vouchers in Chile, which research showed were largely found “‘to have exacerbated inequality, reduced public school enrollment, and [had] minimal to no impact on student achievement.’” (108) The Heritage Foundation (which produced the Project 2025 playbook) calls for enacting universal school vouchers nationwide.Rather than support vouchers, public schools have moved toward the inclusion of charter schools. While Weingarten isn’t opposed to charter schools as a concept, she objects to the lack of oversight and the waste of public funds such a lack creates.“I don’t remotely think the idea of charter schools is inherently bad. But what I do believe is that the private market model is not inherently better when it comes to education. We’ve known for years that when you control for differences in social economic status, private schools aren’t any better at educating children than public schools. And a 2016 internal audit by the federal Department of Education at the end of the Obama administration—which aggressively pushed an expansion of charter schools in the neoliberal model—found that the lack of accountability posed a serious ‘risk of waste, fraud, and abuse.’” (127)The state of Pennsylvania provides a good example for showing the disaster created from charter schools having no oversight. They’ve taken $1 billion a year from the public schools, but their public schools are severely underfunded. Charter schools are running a surplus, which is tantamount to profit. In the case of cyber charter schools, the budgets have grown by 92,000%. What do they spend it on? “Well, according to one investigative report, Pennsylvania cyber charter schools spent $21 million in one school year alone on advertising and gift cards. Once cyber school’s company accumulated $88 million in real estate purchased with taxpayer money, including several parking lots and an old Macy’s that doesn’t seem remotely related to the business of trying to teach children online.” (127-8)What does all this teach us? “We can’t put millionaires and billionaires in charge of designing an education system that works for all. They’ll only keep systems that work for themselves, and then, as soon as they can, replace us all with as much artificial intelligence as they can get away with.” (129)As my favorite educator, Diane Ravitch states:“Like police and fire protection, public parks, public highways, and clean air and water, public schools are public goods, funded by and belonging to the public.” (105)UnionsThis chapter is a discussion of how unions and collective bargaining work, along with a brief history which includes attacks on labor unions as a hallmark of fascism. Details include Mussolini, Hitler, and Pinochet dissolving trade unions and imprisoning their leaders. Necessary to democracy is ‘regular people having agency.’ Fascists remove agency and install a single authoritarian leader. While unions work to make life better for all working people, fascists rely on “mobilizing resentment.” If people are not feeling resentment, that’s hard to do. What provides a fertile landscape for fascism is extreme economic inequality. Then the fascists can scapegoat immigrants and minorities.“Look, no institution is perfect.… But while schools and unions face almost constant scrutiny, wealthy, powerful special interests are often let completely off the hook. For instance, when some of the largest private banks in America made massive mistakes, leading to the 2008 financial crisis, they weren’t held accountable. They were bailed out and propped up. So bear in mind that when friends of these bankers and other billionaire special interests attack unions, they don’t really believe in ‘accountability’ in any real sense. They just want to destroy the ability of unions to be a check on their unfettered power.” (144)Side note: In the first paragraph of Why Fascists Fear Teachers, Weingarten tells the story of teachers and students in Norway wearing paper clips as a secret signal/reminder to remain united against the Nazis during WWII, “bound together like a stack of paper.” E. Jean Carroll has promoted the idea of wearing paper clips now as a signal of opposition to the authoritarianism rising in the U.S. This reminded me: I have some wacky paper clips that were gifted to me, each with an image pertaining to writing. I thought it would be fun to alternate wearing them (they are fairly large for and heavy for paper clips), but it’s hard to tell they are paper clips, so it probably wouldn’t announce that ‘secret signal.’American HistorySpeaking of history, are you watching The American Revolution, directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt? It began last Sunday on PBS. “This six-part documentary explores America’s founding through the lives of men and women from all walks of life, the famous and the forgotten. … [H]istorian Geoffrey C. Ward and Burns released a large, lavishly illustrated companion book that expands on the series.” I’ve enjoyed the first 4 episodes.And here’s something of interest from writers and poets:Poets are now cybersecurity threats: Researchers used ‘adversarial poetry’ to trick AI into ignoring its safety guard rails and it worked 62% of the time. Thanks for reading! I hope you have much to be thankful for! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. - Ursula K. Le GuinHello Friends,Is there any way to have a conversation without talking about the events of the past week or so? (Hint: No.)Recently, I had a very kind friend reach out about a Substack post I wrote a few weeks ago, worried that I shouldn’t have told the story of my dreams about Trump and his sycophants. But I figure Trump fans are not going to want to read anything on Be a Cactus, so no harm. (Unless they are members of my extended family—then they put up with me. 😁) The narrative that most upset her was my dream about Trump delivering his poo goo to the American people. Well, well—two weeks later and here we are! It was a premonition! 😉At first, I couldn’t believe what I was reading about Trump posting images of himself as a king—defecating on Americans—but also of Vice President J.D. Vance in a royal crown, suggesting that American democracy has been supplanted by tyranny that will last past Trump into the future. I imagine you’ve seen these, but in case you think I am making this up:Trump and Vance as KingsTrump reposting a JD Vance post of Trump in a crownTrump pilot video (Trump crapping on the American people) If the psychological/mental illness aspect of all this interests you, have a look here:As Ron Charles said: “This week, Trump’s tireless spectacle has moved from dumping virtual excrement on Americans to literally tearing down parts of the White House, reifying in fractured stone and shattered timbers what many once dismissed as mere hyperbole about the destruction of democracy.”So—Since Trump ‘rules’ through social media posts, I’ve been interested in the pull of social media. Why is it so compelling, why do we pay attention? From my local library, I checked out:Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes“The problem with the main thrust of the current critiques of the attention economy and the scourge of social media is that (with some notable exceptions) they don’t actually go far enough.” (11)Before you inform, insult, seduce, or anything else, you must make sure that your voice doesn’t end up in the muted background static that is 99.9 percent of speech directed our way. Public discourse is now a war of all against all for attention. Commerce is a war for attention. Social life is a war for attention. Parenting is a war for attention. And we are all feeling battle weary.” (25)“The more diversion we have access to, the more diversion we crave. The more diversion we need, the more quickly we become bored.” (73)Here are my thoughts:The Sirens’ Call begins slowly with background on various technological developments throughout history. Each, in its own time, created worry over the human ability to focus. We might laugh at our forebears’ anxiety that the written word would be the end of human attention, but it makes sense in its time. Since then humankind has worried over the invention of the radio, television, video games, and more. If none of those things caused the end of civilization, how is our current reliance on the smart phone and its tech cousins different?Religious ritual was an early form of paying-attention-together. Concerts and plays do the same. Even TV and video once had that quality—chatting during commercials or everyone deciding on what to bring home from Blockbuster to watch together. “With each new technology, and with each new development, the experience of shared spectacle is replaced with isolated attention. What once was collective experience becomes solitary.” (147) Or at least asynchronous.In looking at how groups and corporations have tried to catch people’s attention over the centuries, Hayes begins with a review of Odysseus’ adventure in hearing the sirens’ song. He then defines a siren’s call as one that “compel[s] our attention against our will” as police, ambulances, and fire trucks must do. (3) While he quotes William James’ The Principles of Psychology (1890) as defining ‘experience’ as what we agree to attend to, we now feel that we don’t agree to much of our experience. Our phone in our pocket is a “little attention box” that “pulses there like Gollum’s ring.” (4)Too many of today’s sirens announce information that has nothing to do with emergencies.Information is unlimited. Attention is finite. And unlike resources that exist outside ourselves (oil, coal, land), attention is embedded in our psyches. “Extracting it requires cracking into our minds.” (12)How, then, does someone ‘crack into our minds?’ It’s not particularly difficult. We involuntarily pay attention to some things because, through evolution, we have become wired to do so, just as we are wired to enjoy junk food.“That system of compulsory, preconscious attention provides the lowest common denominator for those seeking to extract our attention from us. It’s the attentional equivalent of fast food, and you can find it anywhere from a casino floor to Times Square to your iPhone. The world’s largest corporations, brightest minds, and most powerful entities expend staggering resources seeking to compel us to look at and listen to what they want us to. The junk food isn’t just what we put in our bodies; it’s increasingly what we feed our minds. We end up snacking until our very souls feel over full and queasy.” (46)The second answer to ‘what will we pay attention to?’ is ‘anything.’ As examples Hayes gives the subjects of YouTube videos with millions of views: door ringer repair and unboxing videos. Add to this the fact that social media corporations track our habits and give us what we want without our asking. “Over time this process, thanks to machine learning, and the efficiencies of genuinely competitive markets, will get better and better, finding what grabs your attention at a given moment and giving you nothing but that.” (53-4)Hayes has read widely and, throughout the book, quotes from or discusses literature both ancient and contemporary to highlight the fact that attention, distraction, and boredom have always been human issues.“‘When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men,’ philosopher Blaise Pascal observes in his collection of essays, Pensées, published in 1670, ‘I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.’” (60)Nearly two centuries later, Soren Kierkegaard wrote that boredom is the root of all evil. Hayes notes that boredom in the post-industrial age is compounded by tedious jobs in which many workers don’t produce an entire anything on their own, but rather perform the same task repeatedly. Since we cannot attend to our work, we attend to other people. Attending to loved ones is positive, of course. The trap is in attending to everyone in our field of attention, including online influencers. “[U]nlike the aspects of relationships that give life meaning, social attention is not inherently reciprocal” (91) and loneliness may be the outcome. Add to that, when social attention is paid to us online, it can be quite negative and emotionally damaging. Caring too much about what others think of him is Willy Loman’s flaw in The Death of a Salesman, and it is becoming the fate we all have. While the fault may lie in ourselves, scrolling technology makes it a lot worse. Attention, no longer a means to an end, becomes the end itself. Without it, we feel alienated.Yet it wasn’t so very long ago when the general public could attend to a serious subject—slavery—in multiple three-hour debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. It was also the era when things began to shift, beginning with The Sun ‘newspaper’ in 1859, which used the technique we now think of as clickbait (crazy headlines, often gruesome details).By the 1970s, students of the digital revolution were warning us about what was to come. In Future Shock, one of things Alvin Toffler got right was that information overload creates a kind of PTSD. Nobel Prize economist Herbert Simon’s 1971 lecture “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World” warns that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” Unfortunately, information providers did not heed his call to help people filter and manage that information.From Pascal onward, the need to allocate our attention wisely has been on the minds of great thinkers. Even George Saunders (one of my favorite writers) has a moment in Hayes’ discussion of “The Braindead Megaphone.”A contemporary source Hayes discusses is David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest—which I am guilty of starting and never finishing. He notes that what in 1996 was the basis for a novel—entertainment that colonizes a person’s attention so thoroughly that they watch it until they die—is now our reality. And here is the crux of Hayes’ argument: “[I]nfinite entertainment is now what we confront: A film ends. A TV show ends. A board game, even a long one, ultimately ends. But the scroll on the phone has no finite limit. You could, theoretically, scroll TikTok until the end of your days. It’s the source of infinite jest.” (71) Add to this that the source of the endless scroll is portable.“Designed by Silicon Valley engineer Aza Raskin, the infinite scroll changed the way the web worked. Once upon a time, you would arrive at the end of the webpage. If you wanted to read more, you had to click somewhere, akin to turning a page. But Raskin got rid of this tiny little bit of intentional friction. Now, on X or Facebook, you can just gently edge your thumb down on your phone and keep going.” (71)Since politics has become an endless social media festival, Hayes includes the “signature aspect of the Trump years”: “people watching coverage and complaining that the coverage is excessive … a particular kind of alienating experience in which audiences rebelled against outlets that were giving them what, according to the numbers, they were demanding.” (140) In a later chapter (“Public Attention”), he more thoroughly covers how Trump is “repellent but transfixing” and receives ‘value neutral’ attention. (212) Trump’s success with this is highly unusual, as most people who come off as constantly nasty (Kari Lake, Hershel Walker, etc.) do not get the most votes.One frightening and necessary reminder of how powerful attention is: quite early, Fox News called the 2020 presidential election results in Arizona, which resulted in fallout with their base. To recover viewers who had pivoted to Newsmax and One America News, Fox turned to lying about the election results (and later had to pay Dominion, the maker of voting machines, $787 million because of those lies).Sadly, just as labor has been commodified, so too has our attention, leading to ‘surveillance capitalism’—which is how the back-end business of the internet makes money by using “ever more information about its users to target ads” (172)—and spam. Public discourse is often reduced to trolling, whataboutism, and conspiracism.“‘We used to colonize land, that was the thing you could expand into. And that’s where money was to be made … They are now trying to colonize every minute of your life they’re coming for every second of your life.’” (Quoting Bo Burnham, 144)in the chapter “Reclaiming Our Minds,” Hayes has some advice for doing just that, which include leaning in on some older technology: vinyl records for a complete listening experience, print newspapers for an organized and hierarchical reading experience, DVDs for a single viewing experience that ends when the movie does, dumb phones, apps that reject ‘growth hacking’ and more. This also means paying attention to who is trying to get your attention and noting whether they are actually in a relationship with you.You may think, “Oh I already know social media is a cesspool.” But Sirens’ Call is well worth reading for the depth and for the consideration of how attention and experience have been examined over the centuries.In the index, you can look up lots of attention-grabbing people and look back at how they ‘leverage attention into cash’—Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, even Volodymyr Zelenskyy (who has converted attention to himself into money for his country’s war against Russia). There is also one of the very few people who has been able to spend money (billions of dollars—cash into attention, a reversal) to garner attention to himself—Elon Musk.“The age we’re living through is akin to life in a failed state, a society that had some governing regime that has disintegrated and fallen into a kind of attentional warlordism.” (217) … “[W]e must keep people’s attention and tell them things that are important for self governance in a democratic society.” (221)Thanks for reading! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I had what I think of as a ‘short week.’ I was catching up after last weekend’s screw up with having my car locked in a parking garage. Thursday and Friday, I spent out in the IE again. I took my husband and his aunt to the Ontario Airport for their trip to see relatives in Portland. (Maybe they will catch some great inflatable costumes.) I was able to go to the California Botanic Garden briefly, take a walk with my old walking partner, and take in the Dodger game with some of my fan friends. All a lot of fun!I hope you had a good ‘No Kings’ experience. Everyone I know did. Peaceful protest. Each protest I go to is bigger than the last. This time people spilled onto nearby streets. Lots of cars with signs, lots of honking, lots of good will. There were some great signs, but it was so crowded, I couldn’t really take a lot of photos. I did get photos of some of the people in inflatable costumes. The funniest sign I saw was one held by a man who had on shorts and a beige and brown sweater, was carrying a drink and “Shut the **** up Donny. The Dude does not abide tyranny.” (He really did look like the Dude). One other funny one: “If Kamala had been elected, we’d be at brunch right now.”I saved this article from The Contrarian a few weeks back because I had never heard of the ‘3.5% rule.’ I thought you might not have heard of it either and would be interested.Even if protests don’t hit 3.5%, the resistance can topple TrumpYou might have heard of the so-called 3.5% rule. Developed by Erica Chenoweth and colleagues at Harvard, it postulates that “no government has withstood a challenge of 3.5% of their population mobilized against it during a peak event.” However, this is a rule of thumb, not an inviolate law of politics. Chenoweth acknowledges that Brunei and Bahrain, where more than 3.5% turned out but the governments were not overthrown, are exceptions to the rule.Moreover, and critical for our current purposes, “most mass nonviolent movements that have succeeded have done so even without achieving 3.5% popular participation.” Certainly, turning out 3.5%—or 11.9 million Americans—would be a tremendous achievement in the effort to overcome MAGA authoritarian rule, but over 60% of movements that turned out 1% to 3.5% succeeded.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Reading and WritingTypos in Your Manuscript? Your E-mail?If you’ve had embarrassing typos in your manuscript—or even in your emails—you might feel better after reading this. History Facts has a feature on typos that cost companies millions of dollars. But this error was the funniest one to me:One notorious typographical error was found within the so-called Wicked Bible, a 1631 edition of the King James Bible in which pious readers were advised, “Thou shalt commit adultery.”Good BooksA Truce that is Not PeaceI read Miriam Toews’ new nonfiction A Truce that is Not Peace because I am thinking that truce and not peace is what life often offers, not just on the national and world stage, but in the personal arena. You may know that Toews’ sister (and only sibling) Marjorie died by suicide. What I did not know is that her father also did.A Truce is organized around an invitation to a literary conference in Mexico City where Toews, along with other authors, would read something she’d written in response to the question “Why do I write?”While Toews never is able to answer the question to the satisfaction of the conference committee (her response is “not appropriate”), it is the question that drives this memoir.Toews writes to speak of the trauma of having both her father and her sister lose their lives by suicide; the struggle with Marjorie’s death is the more difficult one. Marjorie asked Toews to write her letters, and some of these are included in the memoir, highlighting their relationship as well as the young adult life and the mindset of Toews. While she cannot save her sister, she writes to hold on to her.The book has two other interesting elements. Toews discusses a “Wind Museum” that she’d like to create, which would give visitors experiences of all sorts of wind, from gentle breezes to tornadoes. Interspersed throughout the story of her family, Toews includes brief discussions of famous people who died by suicide.This is a strange and beautiful book, a thing that can be said of everything I’ve read by Toews.Sometimes We Tell the TruthI saw Sometimes We Tell the Truth by Kim Zarins in a bookstore and bought it on a lark, knowing nothing about it. It’s a rift on the Canterbury Tales, which I realized when the second story began and I thought “This is the Miller’s Tale!” It’s a YA novel about teens on a trip to Washington, D.C. I’m not sure YA fiction interests readers of Be a Cactus, but I did write up a review and posted it on School Library Lady if you do happen to enjoy YA lit. (TL;DR—it’s an interesting idea, but, as a teacher myself, the completely useless teacher chaperone disturbed me.)Writing on EmptyI’ve been looking for writing inspiration. From the library, I checked out Writing on Empty by Natalie Goldberg. However, the book isn’t really on how to kickstart writing, even though the subtitle suggests it is. It’s about Goldberg’s trials and tribulations during the Covid pandemic, which were mild in comparison to many people’s. (They are mild compared, even, to mine.) There are some writing prompts tacked on the end, perhaps so it could be sold as a writing advice book. But for those looking for that advice, Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones is still the far better choice.PastoraliaI listened to George Saunders’ Pastoralia for a second time just because I love his work so much. Two of my favorite stories are in that collection: “Sea Oak” and “The Falls.” In “Sea Oak” the narrator is a male stripper who lives with his sister, his cousin, their children, and an aunt. They live a pretty miserable, impoverished life. While the sister and cousin are unemployed and too lazy to change their lives, Aunt Bernie works and is both sweet and grateful for the little she has. That is, until she dies of fright during a burglary and comes back from the dead with a new personality. Wacky, sad, and full of contemplation on why some very good people have very crappy lives. “The Falls” is about two men and their very different reactions to seeing a pair of girls in a canoe that is heading toward ‘the falls.’ A devastating story about moral choices.My Sister the Serial KillerWith so much driving, I was also able to listen to My Sister the Serial Killer by Nigerian writer Oyinkan Braithwaite. I knew it was a popular book a few years back, but had never read it and didn’t know if it was a thriller, a mystery, or ??? I loved it—definitely not anything I expected and hard to describe. It doesn’t have any in-scene violence. It’s darkly comedic and explores the question of how far someone will go to protect/shield a loved one. It ends on a pretty open note, but is still satisfying. If you want something quirky, I highly recommend it.Thanks for reading! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,Life is becoming something, isn’t it? I know we aren’t supposed to allow others to live rent-free in our heads, but the Trump administrators are certainly in mine. I have been having weird dreams about them because I can’t stop seeing what they are doing in the world and the racist, hate-filled posts they are throwing up endlessly. This was just so weird (and racist and hateful):Trump, 79, Posts Bizarre Grim Reaper-Themed AI Music VideoAs was all of it. I guess we’ve forgotten what the office of the presidency once meant.Three bizarre dreams of mine, related to it all:* Trump walking through a public square with cracker-filled plastic bags hanging out his ass, held by their ends in his anal sphincter. When he came across anyone, he would pull one bag out of his ass and hand it to them. The openings of the bags had a sort of gelatinous poo-goo on them. People were saying, “Should I open it? Is it worth it to get what’s inside?” And I was yelling, “Don’t touch that! You’re going to get sick! And that’s just crackers—it’s not worth anything!”* JD Vance walking down the street as a giant animatronic dildo (with eyeliner), trying to prove his manhood. I think I dreamed this because of the meme of Vance with a bloated, bald head.* Kristi Noem’s octopus tentacle hair reaching out through her mouth as she becomes the monster Cthulhu from H. P. Lovecraft’s horror stories.The question is, Can I endure the apprenticeship of failure long enough to witness whatever comes next? From Jeannine Ouellette, Writing in the DarkI try to get away from these thoughts by always checking in with positive things. Here’s one I think you will love:We’re Living in a Mushroom Kingdom from Reasons to be CheerfulFrom Hermès to Cadillac, manufacturers are replacing plastics and leathers with mycelium, a material so sustainable it can actually make the environment healthier.I also spent four days actually relaxing in Catalina. It was great—chaparral wilderness against a perfect cerulean ocean. Much needed.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Sexism & SensibilityBack when I was working to find a community on Instagram, I had the opportunity to find out about a lot of books that other authors were about to have published. When Jo-Ann Finkelstein published Sexism & Sensibility, I was very curious because of my career as a high school librarian. Could this be a book for the library? Since I’m perpetually behind on my TBR list, I bought the audiobook and listened. Both the book and the narration were great. I felt that it could serve in the high school library as a companion book to Girls and Sex, published a decade earlier and which I reviewed here.After listening, I thought I’d check out a copy from my local library. But the library didn’t have a copy. So—I requested that they buy it. A few weeks ago, I got to wondering if they had. Although some libraries notify the requester, this one doesn’t. They bought it! So I checked it out.[Digression: even if you have absolutely no money for buying books, if you want to support an author, a great way to do so is to request that your library buy their titles! That’s a copy purchased and the possibility that it will bring the author several readers! Do this consistently! It’s one of the easiest forms of literary citizenship.]Sexism and Sensibility: Raising Empowered, Resilient Girls in the Modern Worldby Jo-Ann Finkelstein, PhD“In a paper for my developmental psychology class, I mentioned how I was often accused in my family of being too sensitive and dramatic, rather than being acknowledged, as I see it now, as highly attuned to my environment. The professor scribbled in the margin, ‘That’s what people say to talk girls out of their feelings!’” (x-xi)There’s so much of value in Sexism and Sensibility that I want to bring it to your attention. As Finkelstein says, we are in a period when equal pay protections are being hollowed out; legislatures in many states working to outlaw contraception; states are proposing ‘don’t say gay’ bills that ban teachers and administrators from supporting those students’ needs in the schools, and so more more.We want to raise boys who treat girls with dignity and are intolerant of sexism, so helpful ideas about raising boys are included.“This book isn’t about casting girls and women as victims or boys and men as villains. It’s about preventing girls from internalizing the limiting and distorting messages of our culture, and from privileging others’ feelings, perceptions, and comfort over their own. My aim is also to help us figure out what part we play as adults in both clarifying and muddying the waters for our daughters as to what’s fair and how they should expect to be treated.” (xv)Part One: Adults Colluding with the Larger CultureThe book is broken into four parts. Part One shows how adults set the stage for gender bias, and sexism to flourish in girls’ lives by colluding with the larger culture. We have implicit biases. We learned a narrow script when we were young and we’re still on it.For as long as I can remember, I was told girls can be anything boys can be. I’ve never heard, however, the phrase ‘boys can be anything girls can be.’ Entire books aren’t devoted to fostering positive female qualities in boys. We must help boys see that sexism imposes limits on how they think and feel and on what they can be when they grow up. For these things to register as loss, however, we have to actually believe relational qualities like caring, connection, and cooperation are worth having, that they’re aspirational for boys, not emasculating. But that requires doing something we don’t as a culture do: value the behaviors and norms of girls and women. We can help by reading books to boys that feature girls or emotionally complex boys and be careful to avoid attaching gender to interest and abilities when we speak.” (24-25)Even for couples who largely divide along traditional gender lines, if you’re modeling genuine respect for each other’s contributions, you can model equality. It’s essential to value each parent’s work, regardless of what that work is and what it pays (or doesn’t pay).” (17)Part Two: Cultural Forces and the Beauty CulturePart Two looks at major cultural forces that create and intensify sexism, and those include the beauty culture in the media.“Perhaps the greatest resource exploited by a beauty obsessed culture is our mind. Girls who self-objectify have more difficulty with cognitive tasks. Research shows self-objectification usurps our cognitive resources, making it difficult to get into the flow states necessary for performance and achievement.” (87)Part Three: PotentialPart Three examines common experiences in girls’ lives that teach them that they’re less deserving, that they’re less intelligent, and they’re less powerful than boys, and this, of course, keeps them from fulfilling their potential.“Virtually every girl and woman I see in therapy feels as if they got away with something when they experience success. They bring up the term ‘imposter syndrome’ and say, ‘that’s me exactly.’” (100)Part Four: Body Autonomy and Sexual AgencyPart Four focuses on sex and sexuality and discusses how to set girls up for body autonomy and sexual agency. I think this is the part that might disturb the censors who don’t like high school students to talk about adult topics. Please remember: teens this age—14 to 18 years old—are thinking exactly of this sort of thing and entering this sphere in their life. Forewarned is forearmed. It’s good to have an idea of how to conduct that next phase.“We tread a difficult line between preparing our daughters for the world and instilling fear. We don’t want to unfairly color the way they see the world, but not knowing what to expect could be worse. It’s vital they trust their instincts, whether that curdled feeling in their stomach comes from a teacher‘s snide comment in class or from being approached by a carful of teenage boys. They need to know what to do when they feel their heart racing, but their feet are glued to the pavement. It’s our job to teach them to navigate bodily autonomy in a world where their bodies often don’t feel like their own and aren’t safe, to stand their ground when they need to, and to move on with grace and without guilt when they can’t.” (xi-xii)Sexism and Sensibility has personal elements: both stories from the author‘s early life and stories as she navigates raising both a girl and a boy, trying to make sure that they have a healthy attitude towards sexuality. The book shows how difficult this is because sometimes we don’t know what to do when we know what’s healthiest for our kids, but we also know that they might be slammed in the outside culture at school and work if they don’t meet a certain cultural stereotype. Should your 10-year-old be shaving her legs? No? What if the kids at school are calling her “gorilla” because she has lots of black hair on her legs and she is being ostracized? Should your 12-year-old be wearing make up? In the dating app age, should older teens be allowed to post ‘bombshell’ photos of themselves—skinny, long hair, false eyelashes, revealing clothing? How much more are girls today pressured to look homogenous? How much of their self-esteem relies on ‘likes’? Tweens and teens who are still trying to form their identities are being scooped up by the beauty industry, which advertises to them at a younger and younger age, to see themselves as consumers and sex objects. The industry may no longer directly say that girls are flawed. However, when it uses a language of wellness and self empowerment, that’s actually what it’s doing.A patriarchal system doesn’t have girls’ and women’s best interest in mind. Navigating such a system has always been hard. In an online world, it’s even harder. Finkelstein gives lots of good examples for action. And that’s what I love about this book. Actionable items are what we all need right now.As usual, another thing I love about a good non-fiction book is a solid index. Here I was able to look back at things I was interested in like “agency,” “consent,” and “media” to remind me of what most affects girls’ images of themselves. There’s also a solid notes section with links to many studies.Recommended for all parents and for teachers and high school libraries.Banned Books Week is Here!As I think about the moment we are in, an old YA book—Burning Up (1999) by Caroline B. Cooney—comes to mind because of its theme on a town’s prejudice and the ineffectiveness of covering up the past. (Banning books about the less than stellar moments in our history places us in the same sort of moment.) If the author’s name rings a bell, you might have read The Face on the Milk Carton books when you were a kid.Burning Up is old enough not to be widely available although the audio version is on HOOPLA and can be checked out at the library. I need to see if there is a newer book where a teen learns about her grandparents’ and parents’ prejudice through researching her town’s past. Here’s what Publishers Weekly said about Burning Up 26 years ago:What does a 1959 barn fire in Macey’s affluent Connecticut town have to do with an arsonist’s attack on an inner-city church where she and classmates volunteer one day? Nothing, as far as the 15-year-old’s friends and family are concerned. But Macey, who narrowly escaped the church fire, senses that there is a connection between the two when she researches local history for a school project. Cooney (The Face on the Milk Carton) has produced another tantalizingly dark secret for her protagonist and readers to unravel together. Macey’s rising awareness of hate crimes sharply escalates after Venita, whom Macey met at the church, is murdered when she tries to interrupt a gang fight. Macey is appalled by her parents’ and grandparents’ apparent callousness and their refusal to let her attend the girl’s funeral (”“Try not to think about Venita,”“ her mother says. “”It’s so sad, darling, but there is nothing you can do”“). Were her grandparents’ hearts as cold 40 years ago when the barn apartment of the town’s only black resident went up in smoke? Were they responsible for his near death? By interviewing community members and tracking down Mr. Sibley, the tenant of the barn apartment, Macey finds the ugly answers to her questions. Even though Macey’s introduction to prejudice and her unshakable nobility are slightly overdrawn, she remains a sympathetic figure, just stubborn and vulnerable enough to be real. Ages 12-up. Here’s a list of 43 Banned Books That Are Still Powerful Today if you’d like to look at the last 50 or so years. Most of these are adult books, and you’ve probably read some of them (The Color Purple, Of Mice and Men, Huck Finn, Maus, Fahrenheit 451, etc.) However, some are children’s and YA books. A few on the list that I used to booktalk: The Giver (My son’s favorite book when he was a child). M.E. Kerr’s Night Kites and Deliver Us from Evie.M.E. Kerr was challenged and removed a lot because she dealt with real teen issues. In fact, her novel Gentlehands has something of the same idea that Burning Up has. Here the protagonist Buddy Boyle learns that his grandfather may be a notorious Nazi war criminal. Censors said they wanted it removed for antisemitism, which is a ploy—the protagonist is learning about antisemitism in people whom he loves and rejects it.I have posted discussions of many banned books on Be a Cactus. Here are some:And in light of the fact that, according to PEN, Stephen King is now the most banned author in schools (this happens because other authors were banned in the previous few years, so they are no longer in the censors’ libraries to ban again).Thanks for reading! See you next week. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

You might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking. - Lucille CliftonHello Friends,I saw that a lot of you enjoy quotes—I love them, too, and have so many saved—so I’ll include them regularly. Here’s one for those of you who are writers, from Narratively:Ultimately, the masterful words of Baldwin from a 1979 interview withThe New York Times, sums up the essentiality of grappling with social issues to the work of writers:“If there is no moral question, there is no reason to write.” … “I’m an old-fashioned writer and, despite the odds, I want to change the world.”I’m setting this post up early as I have plans for the week—a jazz festival, a birthday celebration, and a trip to Catalina Island for a few days. For today, I’d like to look at nonfiction—Bad Company by Megan Greenwell. In the next few weeks, I’ll be looking at fiction, including banned books since Banned Books Week is next week.As Bad Company is about how private equity has changed life in the U.S., I’ll also note that I saw this news a few days ago:Private Equity Firm Acquires Two Leading Hybrid Publishers from Publishers WeeklyGreenleaf Book Group and Amplify Publishing Group, two of the country’s oldest and best-known hybrid publishing companies, have been acquired by Civica Media, a new publishing company formed by the private equity firm BlackBern Partners.Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell“HCA’s rise was a tiny early sign of what would become a drastic change in the American economy in the late twentieth century, a complete transformation in how revenue was generated. Sociologist Greta R. Krippner calls this shift ‘financialization’: companies began making their profits primarily through financial channels—interest, dividends, capital gains, and the like—rather than through the production of actual goods and services.” (32)“Until it cost me my dream job, I had never given private equity much thought.”— first sentence of the introduction to Bad CompanyAs author Megan Greenwell admits, the end of her job at Deadspin, a digital sports magazine, where she was the editor and chief, was not the end of the world. However, its takeover by private equity firm Great Hill Partners prompted her to think about what private equity does when it takes over very important businesses and enterprises. (In 2024 Great Hill sold Deadspin to a “Maltese gambling company, which now uses the site to drive traffic to online casinos.” (xi)The beginning of learning about private equity is to understand that it doesn’t function like other businesses, which make money when the companies they own make money and lose money when the companies they own lose money. This, of course, is difficult to understand. So how do you buy a company, completely destroy it, and make bank? In Bad Company, Greenwell has answers. Those of us who have never really paid attention to private business and finance don’t feel too bad about our ignorance: ‘private’ in private equity means that they don’t have to be very transparent. They report far less about their structure and operations than other types of companies. One result is that communities and individuals harmed by them don’t know who they’re dealing with or how to reach them when there’s a problem.Bankruptcy doesn’t prevent private equity firms from making money for themselves. Private equity deals typically follow a structure known as 2-and-20: when outside investors commit their money to a private equity fund. They promise 2 percent of their total investment as an annual fee to the firm in charge. The firm also takes 20 percent of all profits from a deal beyond a certain threshold. Additional fees apply for ‘monitoring’ the portfolio company, as well as for transactions like mergers or refinancing. While earning the 20 percent requires the company to turn a profit, the fees are not dependent on performance.The 2-and-20 set up guarantees a steady source of income to a private equity firm no matter how its portfolio companies fare. The high amounts of leverage and the firm’s insulation from a company’s debt combined with tax breaks and other legal protections, mean it wagers very little on any given deal. Taken together, it is very, very difficult for private equity firms to lose money. The only real risk is to the companies, their employees, and the communities they serve.” (xx)In Bad Company, Greenwell looks at four people who lose something important to private equity firms. We follow Liz, Roger, Natalia, and Loren as they negotiate the before, during, and after of private equity takeovers. Liz was an employee of Toys R Us. Roger was a doctor in a very small community in Wyoming whose hospital was taken over by a private equity firm. Natalia was a journalist. Loren was moving from a government housing project into an apartment that was taken over by a private equity firm, which then became a nightmare. “Taken together, their individual experiences … pull back the curtain on a much larger project: how private equity reshaped the American economy to serve its own interest, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their healthcare, their homes, and their sense of security. At heart, this is a story about the hollowing out of the American Dream, and the people trying to do something about it.” (xxii)The need for hospitals and journalists and safe housing are probably pretty obvious. The need for Toys R Us may be less obvious, but when you read the book, you see that a business like this really matters to small communities and for people who are trying to make a living without the benefit of a higher education. The end of these sorts of businesses within communities alters the entire area and, in consequence, opportunities for residents. Consider as well that 12 million people work for companies owned by private equity firms, “about 8% of the employed population, collectively generating $1.7 trillion of the nation’s gross domestic product.” (xii)Private equity is run on Milton Friedman‘s understanding of shareholder theory wherein the only social responsibility of a business is to increase its profits. In other words, they’re only responsible to the shareholders. Friedman says that no other factors matter, and that anybody who takes into account things like providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution, etc. are just socialists and have no place in American capitalism. So a private equity firm can extend this philosophy: a business doesn’t need to exist if selling off its real estate or collecting management fees is going to make more money for the firm and its shareholders than producing goods does. If liquidation is the best option for the shareholders, this is what private equity firms do, community and employees be damned. The reason the equity firm itself doesn’t fail while driving a company into the ground is that it borrows money in the company‘s name and not in its own name. So even though the private equity firm is the company’s owner and the executives are the ones taking out the loans and making the decisions, it’s not legally responsible for paying the money back.If you’re in a hurry, that is a short answer to how private equity firms succeed and make money. Why it’s allowed of course is a completely different question.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Private Equity and Toys R UsBefore being sold to private equity firms including KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.), Bain Capital, and Vornado Realty Trust, a great mistake Toys R Us made was not to understand the value of online sales and immediately set up an online presence for selling toys. As Greenwell says, it “let Amazon eat its lunch.” (16) Walmart and others didn’t and their ‘loss leader’ strategy for selling toys worked. (In fairness to Toys R Us, they couldn’t use toys as a loss leader because there weren’t many other products to sell.)Bain Capital has a real estate arm; Vornado is a real estate investment trust. Along with other new owners of Toys R Us, they sold the land Toys R Us owned, which made them money. Then they made Toys R Us rent the land back—a sure way to drive the company into the ground, especially when combined with the fact that Toys R Us was the principal holder of the debt from the buyout by KKR, Bain, and Vornado, who together borrowed $5 billion to finance the acquisition. The losers were the 33,000 Toys R Us low-wage employees.The Toys R Us employees eventually manage to get their story out in the public forum. The pressure they put on their owners mostly came through educating pension fund holders, who took another look at investing with the kinds of companies that hurt workers and employees, something that may help other working class people in the future. To ease some of the pressure, KKR and Bain decided to give employees a small portion of the severance pay they were promised in their contracts. And some public employees pension boards paused new investments in KKR because of the way they treated Toys R Us workers.The takeovers of hospitals is a more direct hit to a larger number of Americans.Private Equity and HospitalsEight percent of private hospitals are private equity-owned. These firms consolidate services among hospitals they own to save money. Then, although patients have to travel farther for many services, their costs are, ironically, much higher because of the lack of competition. In addition, a landmark study from a team of scholars from Harvard and the University of Chicago showed that three years after private equity acquisition, the rate of preventable medical complications increased significantly at hospitals. In rural communities, the number of air ambulance flights can skyrocket.“If a private equity-owned hospital can make more money by eliminating all but the most lucrative services, patients whose care won’t increase revenue will be turned away. The profit is the only point.“ (xxi)In the case of the hospital discussed in Bad Company (located in the small town of Riverton, Wyoming), the county didn’t have a high enough tax rate to build something new without outside help. Rural residents don’t have a lot of money, so hospitals that serve them are seen as inviable. A further issue is the existence of the idea that hospitals have an obligation to make money, wherever they are located and whoever they serve. So rural communities like Riverton turn to private equity. When Riverton did, all the results mentioned in the study ensued—few services, long travel for services, higher costs, and preventable medical complications.Fortunately, the ‘after’ phase of Riverton’s story is remarkable, a real feel-good ending. The story of how the community takes back their medical care could be a book of its own. The community has some savvy spokespeople. When the town can’t buy their hospital back, they decide to build a competing hospital. This seems impossible—I was incredulous as I read, but damnit, that’s just what they did. It required an ‘all-in’ attitude. Before investors would even think about lending money, the community had to fundraise lots of donations and pay for a $150K study that showed the hospital could function as a nonprofit. This is many years in the making with much free labor. And a particular special circumstance is that the area hospital was contracted to serve two local Native American/American Indian tribes. They, too, were receiving terrible service—they were ready to make a change, and they have the private insurance that hospitals need from their patients to stay solvent. The new hospital will serve the community much better, bringing back typical, necessary services such as maternity, labor and delivery care as well as minor surgery options. They won. In a big way.The last two stories, of Natalia and Loren, are far less optimistic, but not without hope.Private Equity and Newspapers“Alden was destroying newspapers because it didn’t care about newspapers, and because it could make money off their ashes.” (x)In the newspaper business, publishers failed to anticipate huge changes in their arena, particularly the downturn in the print ad market, They didn’t understand how they could monetize online subscriptions. When they were sold to private equity firms, those firms were able to continue or increase profits in the newspaper divisions by cutting the workforce. They also bought up local papers and consolidated them, pushing local news out of the media.“During the past five years, we have reduced our workforce from 4100 employees to approximately 2300.” —Scripps 2013 annual report to the SEC.In Natalia’s case, the best thing for both her and the newspapers she worked for was to go nonprofit. “Media is almost singular among public goods for how it must grapple with competing notions of value: worth to the community versus worth to profit-minded executives.” (45) “The only hope many people saw started with divorcing journalism from shareholder value entirely.” (210) Ideas for change include “tax credits for newsrooms to hire reporters and for small businesses to advertise in community publications, vouchers for residents to spend on local news outlets of their choice … . (213) Nevertheless, It seems that philanthropic dollars are necessary for the future of local news.Private Equity and Residential PropertyPrivate equity firms became heavily involved in residential properties during the economic meltdown of 2008. “ All private equity functions essentially like house flipping: a firm buys a property, spruces it up, and sells it for profit. In most industries, though, there’s at least a small amount of gambling involved – while there’s little financial risk to the firm itself, it’s never clear that the bet will result in a huge payout. But when private equity firms get involved in actual house flipping there’s far less danger: because the value of real estate generally appreciates over time, even small investments can result in outsize returns. And whereas the exceptions to that generally can bankrupt individual families, firms worth billions of dollars can easily stomach the occasional loss, knowing that bigger wins are just down the road.” (68)if the firm owns a large swath of properties in the area, it can jack up rents. Add to this that private equity is the lucky recipient of a large number of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac low-interest loans. (Why??? 😩)“U.S. tax law helps private equity in several key ways. Like many types of corporations, private equity firms are based offshore, which allows their returns to compound tax-free. Interest payments on borrowed money, meanwhile, are tax-deductible. But most importantly, private equity profits are treated, not like those of every other imaginable type of business, but as ‘carried interest,’ a structure unique to the finance industry. … carried interest has been treated, not as regular income, but as capital gains, which comes with preferential track tax rates. Corporate and individual income taxes top out at 37 percent; capital gains are taxed at 20 percent.” (37-8)Loren, who moved from a government housing project to the Southern Towers apartments in Alexandria, VA, in hopes of providing safety for her family, had a nightmare experience with mold, water seeping between the tiles of the laminate floorboards which later became flooding inside her apartment (with no emergency number to call and no one at the desk with any idea who to contact), roaches and mice. The private equity firm that owned the building, the CIM Group, did not respond to work orders or complaints. Instead, they evicted her family and ordered them not to speak to the building manager.A local group, African Communities Together, fought back by bringing local politicians on tours of the apartments, and showing them “mold, leaks, damage caused by rodents, a flooded elevator, holes in the walls, bugs, broken appliances, and more.” (143) However, city leaders have no authority over a distant company, one which is a heavy contributor to national politicians on both sides of the aisle. “According to data provided by the city government in response to the Freedom of Information Act request, in the four years before CMI bought the complex, the building department found two violations there. In the three and one half years afterwards, it found 185.” (145)While the ‘annoy them until they go away’ method has worked for some properties—including CIM properties—that were then sold to residents or other businesses, this didn’t work against CIM in the case of the Southern Towers. One takeaway: “As long as the Federal Housing Finance Agency continues to provide them an always flowing spigot of cheap money, low income renters will continue to suffer under private equity’s thumb.” (226)Greenwell concludes with some outside examples of people having success in fights against private equity firms. One was about mobile home owners. Earlier in the book Greenwell wrote: “Most infamously, Frank Rolfe, the co-owner of a large chain of mobile home parks, once compared the business to a ‘Waffle House where everyone is chained to the booth.’” (71) In the conclusion, she discusses mobile home owners who are now buying their parks and thus beating being ‘chained’ to the outsize rent increases of other owners. However, things don’t look great. Senator Elizabeth Warren tried to get the “Stop Wall Street Looting Act” passed. It would have ended leveraged buyouts, but according to Greenwell, it didn’t stand a chance. A more ‘center’ proposal is to close the carried-interest loophole and its dramatically lower tax rate. We’ll have to see if that ever happens.Bad Company includes references in hundreds of endnotes. The index is handy, especially for looking back at the names and actions of various private equity firms or for the relationships of individuals to private equity (say, for example, Mitt Romney and Bain Capital). There are many subheadings helping to make these connections. Yet the structure and focus of the book are its most compelling aspects. By focusing on four individuals in a variety of circumstances and telling their stories, Greenwell engages readers’ empathy as they learn a bit about how the world around them works (or doesn’t). Well worth a read! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,What a strange and horrible week. Shootings so close together that one at a school in Colorado is largely put aside to focus on the killing of Charlie Kirk.There seems to be no way to get away from that as the central story of our country. And while it seems that everyone, people of all ideologies, are condemning it—rightfully so—they are also saying things like: “This is not who we are.”It’s exactly who we are, and that is something to mourn.In my social feeds, I have acquaintances I used to be closer to. But having left the workplace, I only see them online. Several are rightwing Christians. They are making Kirk out to be a martyr. I’m very sorry to see that. One even said she hadn’t heard of him/didn’t know who he was before he was shot, but searched the internet for a hot minute, and now she is continuously posting videos of him to show that he is a Christian martyr.Perhaps a more in-depth search is in order, I think, but do not respond. Because pointless. When I think about what Kirk said about other political violence—the beating of Paul Pelosi, nearly to death, comes to mind—I think of him telling the story of Jesus admonishing the crowd “Let he among you who has not sinned cast the first stone.” (John 8)We know this story, right? A woman caught in adultery, the crowd wanting to stone her, Jesus’s response. [Kirk said she was selling herself for sex, but this is the story he means.] The crowd leaves. Jesus tells the woman to ‘go and sin no more.’ Kirk was the kind of guy who would have followed through on picking up a stone and throwing it. Metaphorically, he did that all the time. Worse, he included people who weren’t doing anything wrong, but who disagreed with him, endangering their lives because of their opinions or political views. Here’s One example from Heather Cox Richardson, a historian who daily discusses current events in the historical content of the U.S.:Condemnation of the shooting was widespread. Perhaps eager to distance themselves from accusations that anyone who does not support MAGA endorses political violence, commenters portrayed Kirk as someone embracing the reasoned debate central to democracy, although he became famous by establishing a database designed to dox professors who expressed opinions he disliked so they would be silenced (I am included on this list).It made him a lot of money. Which reminds me of another of Jesus’s admonitions in the gospels. (Hint: It’s about the root of all evil.)Here’s a story you probably haven’t read because it’s from the Christian journal of Sojourners, an evangelical left organization. It spoke to me because it shows that people can change. The following paragraphs are noncontiguous excerpts.I REJECTED CHARLIE KIRK’S POLITICS. THAT’S WHY I GRIEVE HIS DEATH from SojournersBefore I abandoned the conservatism Kirk so effectively promoted, I shared many of the same platforms he exploited, from the massive student assemblies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., to the Christian Broadcasting Network's popular television programming. Like Kirk, I was a young star in the Christian conservative universe, but a generation before him. …Wherever political violence occurs—including recent examples in Utah, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and anywhere else—it is ugly, and it reverberates through whole societies, shocking consciences, instilling fear, giving rise to pervasive pessimism and hopelessness. It is also counterproductive to the ideals that perpetrators ostensibly feel that their ill-advised, misguided actions defend—or even advance. Instead, studies show that assassinations often undermine democracy and social institutions, decrease political participation, correlate with social conflict, contribute to economic decline, and cause harmful psychological impacts across social strata. …Kirk's opinions about others were regularly cruel, dismissive, and exclusionary. Still, he had a constitutional right to express his views and lead his movement—and those who oppose his contemptuous attitudes have an equal right to call out those harmful attitudes and work to defeat the policies and behaviors they produce. But silencing ideological competitors by frightening, brutalizing, or murdering them is contrary to the very foundation of our constitutional republic. …Now is the time to rededicate ourselves to the passionate pursuit of nonviolent social justice fueled by a powerful ethic of love and energized by a generous spirituality that celebrates rather than diminishes humanity. Let's build a safe and accepting future for everyone—and let's do it in honor of all the victims of violence, known and unknown, those who make the headlines and those who don't.LandingI had a lot of other things I wanted to address today concerning books and authors, cakes, quince, and passion fruit. I’ll cut it out and paste it into next week. Mostly, I'm worried about my response to Kirk’s murder. Because when I heard that he had been shot from 200 yards away and killed with a single round and that there was an unmarked plane nearby, I started to think conspiracy theory thoughts. That the rightwing had killed one of their own to move the national conversation from other topics. Ugh. I’m starting to believe we are all just going to choose the cult we belong to.I don’t know. If years down the line, it were proven that MAGA was behind the death of Kirk, I would not be shocked. I would have a response something like, ‘Yeah, that tracks.’ Maybe that says more about the movement of the country into crazy territory than it does about me.I’m trying to give myself some grace. I’m still working out whatever weird autoimmune issue I have. I just finished a round of antibiotics and my fourth prescription for a steroid ointment. Got biopsy results and good news on endless blood labs. I’m now on a 50% higher dose of Prednisone that is taken for three weeks instead of 12 days. It’s disrupting my sleep, making me dizzy, wildly jittery, anxious, and irritated. But—and this is a wow after four months!—the rash, bruising, blistering, lumps, and joint aches are disappearing. I cannot express how great this is for me. But maybe the sleeplessness is affecting my thinking. I hope the immune response issues are resolved and don't return when I finish the meds.Maybe it’s all just stress related. If you are looking for a stress fix, these five steps were in the Wellness newsletter from the NYTs this week. You’ll need to read for the details.Or here’s another idea from Allison Lane's interview with Dr. Partha Nandi, author, physician, and host of the syndicated show Ask Dr. Nandi. He recommends setting a goal in any of these five areas this week (don’t wait!).* Purpose* Community* Spiritually* Nutrition* MovementThanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The Cultishness of NowSince I’m thinking about how cultishness has overtaken us, how about a few more recommendations on cult books? Here are two I haven’t posted about yet:Educated by Tara WestoverTara Westover grew up in view of Buck’s Peak, in Idaho, the youngest of seven children, born into a fundamentalist (though not polygamist) Mormon family. Her father, Gene, is so afraid of the outside world that he has no birth certificates for many of the children. He wants no records the government can use to track them—and, in his mind, the feds are always working to track them down. He doesn’t allow visits to the doctor since those exhibit a lack of faith in God.Most important of all, Westover and her siblings are kept out of public school so that the government will not teach them evil ways. Supposedly, their parents are homeschooling them, but, in reality, almost no teaching is going on. Westover, and a few of her siblings who are interested in being educated, work hard to have the opportunity to learn. Eventually with the help of a brother, Westover teaches herself enough to take the ACT test and get into Brigham Young University. But before she can use education as an escape route, she suffers severely at the hands of one of her brothers, a violent boy who exhibits traits of sociopathy. Her parents shrug it off, insisting that it is not happening, or, when confronted with real evidence, that it was accidental or horseplay that had gone too far.That Westover and her siblings survive their upbringing is, quite honestly, astonishing. They do not, however, come through it unscathed. Not only were they psychologically abused, but they were physically harmed in completely unnecessary accidents through the sheer stupidity of their parents. They work in very dangerous conditions (free of government constraints!) resulting in many falls, concussions, third-degree burns, open wounds, and, yes, near deaths.Each time the parents risk the lives of their children, they put it in God’s hands. To them, this is a deep act of faith. To the reader, it is a criminal refusal of responsibility. While it’s hard to leave family behind, it’s the only way for Westover to move forward.Counting the Cost by Jill DuggarDuggar outlines how her parents, particularly her father, lost their way in starring in the reality TV series “Nineteen Kids and Counting.” She is the family’s pleaser—‘Sweet Jilly Muffin’—and also one of the victims of her brother Josh’s sexual abuse. The riptide of her authoritative upbringing repeatedly pulls her into her father’s control despite her having married and become a mother. This lack of self-reliance is at the heart of the teaching of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), a religious group the Duggars belong to, one that Jill finally understands is a cult. Her memoir is her effort to take back her narrative.The IBLP teaches that there is an umbrella of protection in its families. God over all, the father under God, and everyone else in the family under him. Importantly, this hierarchy continues after the children become adults. While the leader of the IBLP—Bill Gothard, who never married and has no children—resigned over accusations of sexual harassment and molestation of female employees, the cult is still active. We learn some of its teaching: God opens and closes the womb, so birth control isn’t allowed; homeschooling is a must; and older children are assigned ‘buddies,’ younger children for whom they act as surrogate parents.Duggar is beyond kind in her final assessment of her parents, as people pleasers who grow up under manipulative control often are. She gives them grace readers don't feel they deserve, particularly when we see the difference between how they treat Jill and their son Josh, now convicted of downloading and possessing child sex abuse images on his work computer.While patriarch Jim Bob Duggar began the reality TV journey with the belief that it was his ministry to shine a light on Christian family values, his continual practice of swindling his kids out of their earnings shows he has succumbed to what Jesus refers to as the root of all evil—the love of money. (And that appears to be one of our themes today.)Past PostsThe following post discusses four books about the FLDS cult:* Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall* Escape by Carolyn Jessop* Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer* Lost Boy by Brent W. JeffsOther cult stories I’ve covered in the past:“Uncultured” by Daniella Mestyanek Young“Rift” By Cait West“A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy” by Tia LevingsPlease take care. ❤️ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,Today I’d like to look at and recommend—or not—some of my recent reading: Flashlight by Susan Choi, The Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola, and for kids, How to Talk to Your Succulent by Zoe Persico.Before I dive in, I thought you might be interested in some news pertinent to readers:* Reading for Pleasure has Plummeted More than 40% [in the last 20 years] from the Los Angeles Times* Why Magic, Dragons and Explicit Sex Are in Bookstores Everywhere from the New York TimesRomantasy is propping up the fiction market. Thanks to a generation that grew up reading about a boy wizard.* I am enjoying The Ordinatio and Monte Mader. I have five one-month gift subscriptions to give away for each. If either of those sound interesting and you want to try one out, let me know. On to this week’s book discussion.Flashlight by Susan ChoiOn Flashlight by Susan Choi, I found only positive reviews in my email newsletter from Bookmarks Reviews, several of which were raves. And I read a very positive review in the New York Times. (Here’s a gift link if you would like to read the whole thing) and one of my absolutely favorite book people, Ron Charles of the Washington Post, liked it, but didn’t love it. Both he and Hamilton Cain of The Los Angeles Times (another paper I subscribe to—the link to the full review is here) point to one of the things that lost my interest early on—the excessive description and the discussion of: Every. Single. Thing that crosses the characters’ paths. Cain describes this as “baggy.” Charles says: “Too often, I was disappointed to finish a page and realize it could have been trimmed to a single crisp sentence.”Here’s the publisher’s back copy:One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old.In chapters that shift from one member to the next, turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Susan Choi's Flashlight chases the shockwaves of one family’s catastrophe. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan, lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to the DPRK. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences.What really happened to Louisa’s father? Why did he take Louisa and her mother to Japan just before he disappeared? And how can we love, or make sense of our lives, when there’s so much we can’t see?In opposition to the critics’ evaluation of characters, I found them wholly unsympathetic and one dimensional for most of the novel. (In the last third, they are more rounded; however, the last third is pretty didactic.) Louisa is a precocious child who also is somehow very dull, lacking understanding of things commonly known by children. While the goal, I think, is to show the characters as alienated and lonely, Serk, Anne, and Louisa are so out of tune with one another and with the world at large that they feel entirely unconnected not just to each other, but to anything (including the reader) and mostly hateful. I did not believe them, did not believe in them, could not imagine the marriage or the parenting taking place.The book was so overlong that I was glad I’d opted for the audio version. The narrator draws out each rounded word, I suppose to exasperate the listener. I switched it 1.25 speed, and finally, becoming so tired of the whole business, to 1.5 speed.All this made me reflect on why I was continuing with a book I didn’t like much at all. I hate to admit it, but it was only because: 1) Choi has a stellar reputation 2) Professional critics praised it so highly that I feel I must be too stupid to ‘get it.’ At any rate, I’m finally done. For someone who feels as I do, here’s Graham Hillard from the Washington Examiner:I read the new Susan Choi novel in five long sittings, each of which produced a storm cloud of indecision. Had Choi penned, as often seemed possible, the worst serious book in recent memory, an overwrought parody of self-conscious “MFA fiction”? Or was Flashlight a flawed but sometimes brilliant international saga, occasionally losing its thread, yes, but asking and answering momentous questions?That I still haven’t decided a week later says much about the state in which Flashlight is likely to leave readers. The follow-up to 2019’s slippery Trust Exercise, Choi’s new release is expansive, cinematic, and badly in need of editing. Whereas its National Book Award-winning predecessor demanded a puzzle-solver’s attention, Flashlight requires nothing so much as the page-turner’s dogged resolve. More than once, as its plot unspooled, I declared its main character, Louisa Kang, to be the least likable literary protagonist since Patrick Bateman, the cannibal-necrophiliac who narrates American Psycho.All of this puts me in mind of the recent argument over Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness with the question of whether it is okay to say negative things about an author’s work. My take on this is that there is no point in saying negative things about most authors. They are grinding away and not making a living. They are bringing their creative work into the world. Like it or don’t. Yours is just an opinion among many. So consider that it isn’t good to shut emerging writers down as they work and strive. In critiquing them, you may make the mistake of misunderstanding their experiments. Looking back at Susan Choi, I think of a part of Trust Exercise where she switches POV from paragraph to paragraph, and then, finally, within paragraphs. This actually works because, in this particular novel, there’s a question of who has the right to tell the story. But I also think that if an unknown writer had done the same thing in a similar book, they wouldn’t even have made it past a literary agent. They would have been considered too much the amateur to even understand POV. There are the anointed, and then there’s everyone else. Our loss.However, when we take someone with the reputation as stellar as that of Ocean Vuong (or Susan Choi), there is a larger question of their being revered as one of the gods of the western canon, as one of the elite group of great American novelists. If that’s the conversation we’re having, then, yes, serious critiques are in order. And, honestly, I think that’s about the only time such critiques matter. If you have missed the Vuong brouhaha, here is the sort of takedown that outraged those readers who find Vuong a sweet person and, therefore, an unfair mark for criticism:How to Talk to Your Succulent by Zoe PersicoA book I read this week and enjoyed was How to Talk to Your Succulent by Zoe Persico. I received it from the publisher because the name of this Substack is Be a Cactus. It’s a graphic novel for kids 8-12 years old. I’m guessing there’s not a lot of interest among Be a Cactus readers, but: if you are looking for a book for a tween, I reviewed it over on School Library Lady. The illustrations are delightful and the story of grief and loneliness concludes happily.The Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos TutuolaPeriodically, I look for a ‘family book club’ title. We often try to read something that we might not otherwise. I saw a review of The Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola in the New York Times. It was originally published in 1952, but Grove published a new edition in June. The review discusses the background for the book and its original reception as much as it does the book itself. (Here’s the gift link if you would like to read it in its entirety.)Originally published under the Evergreen imprint of Grove Press, the books appeared alongside the storied house’s rogues’ gallery of midcentury American and European avant-garde authors like William Burroughs, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet.Inspired in part by folk tales and written in an idiosyncratic vernacular that mixes English with Yoruba syntax, “The Palm-Wine Drinkard” went on to become something of a cult classic in the West. Time magazine named it one of the 100 best fantasy books of all time. It has been hailed as a forerunner of the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez and others, and it had a significant impact on African literature, even if it has been largely overshadowed by Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart.”My family likes folklore and myth, so we decided to try it. Three of us ended up reading it. We all loved it. The Palm Wine Drinkard is interesting and strange, a journey through mythical events, more a picaresque than a novel. There’s a Gulliver’s Travels sort of whimsy in an African mythology and setting. However, unlike Gulliver, this doesn’t appear to be political satire. There’s no characterization—no descriptions at all of the characters. Just wild event after wild event engaging with supernatural creatures, the dead, and more. The language shifts from standard English to local vernacular, sometimes in ways to amuse the reader.The main character refers to himself as “father of gods who could do anything in this world.” Unlike Gulliver, he has a purpose in his travels. His favorite palm wine tapster has died after falling out of a palm tree. The drinkard, who can consume hundreds or thousands of gallons of palm wine a day, decides to venture to “dead’s land” to retrieve him. On the way, he saves a princess from an evil captor and marries her. The two continue the journey, meeting and outwitting all sorts of creatures. They sell their deaths and so will not die, but are unable to sell their fear, which is with them in each circumstance. With the magic and power of his juju, the drinkard gets out of scrape after scrape.Readers familiar with any culture’s mythology know that the living do not belong in ‘deads’ land’. But the journey and its result are the story’s purpose. One of my favorite adventures was among the Red-people of the Red-town in the Red-Bush. The Red-people endure this red punishment because their Red-king failed to listen to two magical red creatures and decided to put them in a fire. Now, not only is everything in his town red, but the community must sacrifice one person each year to the red creatures. The king wants the drinkard to volunteer, and so he does. What ensues is wildly creative and strange.If you want to try an out-of-the-ordinary-read, I highly recommend this one.Thanks for reading!Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,On this holiday weekend as we celebrate workers, we are also mourning children, victims of another senseless school (church/Catholic school) shooting. I’m thinking a lot about children and how we value them (or don’t). So—today’s post revolves around that. Before we get to it:If you’re having a terrible time getting creative work done, this thought from Junot Diaz is good to keep in mind:Monte MaderI just love Monte Mader. She doesn’t suffer fools; she takes NO shit. And Christian nationalists can’t win a religious argument against her—I think she’s memorized the entire Bible—but they keep trying, bless their hearts.She has broad and deep knowledge of the Bible, so she knocks away Christian nationalists like the buzzing flies they are. Like this:Mostly I’ve seen her on reels, but I thought the best way to support her was to get a paid Substack subscription Monte Mader. Here she is discussing the same thing that worries me enough that I got the idea to write Keep Sweet—patriarchy, the loss of women’s right, and eventually child marriage.And this week, cutting through the ‘thoughts and prayers’ bullshit to lay responsibility at the feet of the responsible. Uncultured: Children of God Cult (the ‘Family’)Daniella Mestyanek Young grew up in the Children of God cult (often referred to as ‘the Family’). Her experience there is horrifying. Her childhood traumas (physical abuse, rape, forced ‘sex play’ with adolescent boys, too little to eat, begging on the street and more) are so numerous, it’s hard to understand how the cult even exists. Why don’t its members run the other way?Mestyanek Young seeks the answer through this memoir. She looks back at her mother’s participation as one of the most strict adherents to the Family culture. Mestyanek Young’s mom, Kristy, was only fourteen when she gave birth to Daniella, forced to have sex with older men. Because the group doesn't believe in birth control (common in Christian cults—let God decide on the number of babies), she goes on to have seven more children in rapid succession. She only escapes after Daniella leaves at fifteen, determined to get a college education and then join the Army. At that point, Kristy’s youngest daughter is very ill, in need of medical treatment. The cult doesn’t put much faith in doctors, but they do allow members to go for serious conditions. While they have lived all over the world, particularly in Brazil, Kristy and her daughter are given permission to go to the U.S. for treatment. Kristy decides not to return to the cult.When Mestyanek Young joins the Army, she finds that she is in another cult of sorts with similar mind games, strict rules requiring absolute obedience, and even, for women, the constant threat of rape.For readers who wonder how much description of traumatic events there is in the memoir: for the first third of the book, Mestyanek Young only says things like ‘they did what they came to do.’ But once she is punished for asking a perfectly normal question about the Family’s beliefs. She is locked in a dark room, spanked more than once, raped by the ‘Uncle’ who is in charge of her discipline, and left alone for hours. She's only nine years old, and this is a pretty difficult scene. From this point on there is more ‘in scene’ telling of traumas. I believe this is necessary for the reader to understand just how terrible ‘the Family,’ and later, the Army, is. So this is not a criticism. Just a trigger warning.Mestyanek Young reminds us:None of it is easy to spot, these tactics that cult leaders—and many other kinds of leaders—rely upon to gain loyalty and inspire their followers. None of it happens all at once, and all of it is genuine. People don’t join cults. They join churches, organizations, communities, and groups they think will solve a problem for the world or within themselves. They follow leaders, the more charismatic the better. Maybe they’re driven by hope, or maybe it’s fear. Maybe it is a combination of the two, strengthened by the fuel of righteousness and, often, resentment. And then the logic breaks down, but we’re too tightly enthralled to these cults among us to notice.The first rule of cults is we are never in a cult. It’s always them, not us. There is always someone else to blame: the others, the outsiders, the unchosen. And as belief builds in its followers, the less likely we are to question, the easier it is to hate, harm, even kill because we are the good guys. We are right, no matter how many signs point in a different direction or how that direction shifts with the course of the wind. (334)The reader takes away an important lesson from Uncultured: we must always ask where the trauma, where the evil, comes from. Is it from a few ‘bad apples’ or is the institution poisoned at its very roots? This is something we often aren’t honest about. When I think of my own experience in the Catholic Church, of course there were bad apples molesting kids. But it was the structure and practice of the organization to move them around, allow it to happen again and again, and to look the other way.High school housekeepingI realize that this opinion is one that might send some people over the edge, but I’ll just say it: I’d include this memoir in my high school library (but NOT in a library for anyone younger than that). My reason is that lots of young people experience abuse and blame themselves (as Mestyanek Young did as a child). In Uncultured, they can see a roadmap out of that territory of guilt and shame. And: if a high school girl is planning on a military career or even a few years’ stint in order to get an education, she needs to be aware of the culture and how to deal with it.Similarly themedShe survived abuse and left her faith. Now, she gives religious trauma survivors a voice on YouTube. From Religious News ServiceToday, Sola is the host of Cults to Consciousness, a YouTube channel with 326,000 subscribers she runs with her husband and co-producer, Jonathan Rosales. Since the channel’s launch in 2022, Sola has interviewed hundreds of survivors who escaped what she often described as “high-control” religious and/or spiritual groups, or more plainly, cults. Guests recount harrowing journeys through systems of manipulation, abuse and control by fear and exclusion in long-form interviews. …“We are not anti-religion,” said Sola, who now lives in Austin, Texas, with Rosales and their 16-month-old daughter. “We’re just anti-abuse, manipulation and control.”A 2023 study from the Global Center for Religious Research on religious trauma found about a third of Americans have experienced religious trauma in their lifetimes, defining the experience as trauma “resulting from an event, series of events, relationships or circumstances within or connected to religious beliefs, practices or structures that is experienced by an individual as overwhelming or disruptive and has lasting adverse effects on a person’s physical, mental, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends!I thought that today I’d be discussing some books I’ve read recently. Instead, I find myself in the middle of five different books, all unfinished. I usually read two books at once and listen to an audiobook as well. I’m not sure how I’ve gotten so out of control. But here I am 😊. I did finish In the Philippines and Okinawa : A Memoir, 1945-1948 by Robert H. Ferrell and William S. Triplet. However, I think interest among Be a Cactus readers for this one is probably pretty limited. I read it because I want to write historical fiction based on the life of my FIL, who was in Okinawa at that time. It does a good job of detailing what the U.S. Army was doing while there and the life of the soldiers, both in work and play. If you have an interest in that place and time, then I recommend it!So what I ended up wanting to do this week is:* Point you toward discussions of the ‘end of book reviews’ in legacy media* Point writers toward submitting to Inlandia Journal which recently opened* Show everyone some photos of my quick trip to the Reagan Presidential Library to see an exhibit on the Dead Sea Scrolls.With so many photos, this post will run longer than email allows. To see the entire post and all the photos, click the title above (“The End of the Book Review. Lit Mag Submissions. Dead Sea Scrolls”) to open in your web browser or read in the app.The End of the Legacy Media Book ReviewIn so many book discussions, I’m seeing conversations about the end of the book review in newspapers. Probably because the Associated Press decided they weren’t going to have them anymore. Of course, reviews in legacy media have changed over the past twenty years. I remember how I used to look forward to them in my then local paper, the Los Angeles Times, because they included cultural references. So even if I wasn’t going to buy the book, I learned something. (When was the last time your local paper took a deep dive into anything, much less a book?)Of the conversation, I most connected to Ron Charles’ comments in his 8-15-25 newsletter:Bestseller lists, celebrity book clubs and BookTok videos with 400,000 comments — I don’t disparage any of that powerful publicity. But in this dissolving sea of mass media, we still crave the intimate experience of a special book. And a review can help a wandering reader locate that particular title that changes a mood, or a life. It can encourage a debut novelist to write again — and a publisher to take another chance.At its best, a review written by a thoughtful, articulate reader who brings a breadth of knowledge to the subject can be illuminating, entertaining, even enriching. More than a mere consumer report, the good review gives a book a public arena in which its mettle is tested, its weakness exposed, its contribution to the coral reef of human knowledge celebrated.For more on the death of the legacy book review, see these links, which I found through Kathleen Schmidt’s Publishing Confidential:* Vanity Fair is eliminating reviews.* The Associated Press is ending its regular book coverage.I believe some Substack book reviewers are picking up the slack. Do you have favorite reviewers here? Please suggest them/link them in the comments!Writers Submit to Inlandia JournalI used to be the managing editor of the online journal Inlandia, which is a project of the Inlandia Institute. Some years ago, I needed to pass the torch in order to work on some projects of my own. However, I still volunteer to read/select fiction and nonfiction for the yearly fall issue, which is open to all writers.If you are a writer seeking publication of short work, I hope you will submit. There’s no money involved—it’s an all volunteer staff, and there is no pay for published work (which is generally true of literary journals). However, unlike most journals, there is no submission fee. And the biggest win is that very often, rejected submissions receive feedback. This is highly unusual, a gift, I think!Get all the info at 100 Rejections Club here. Submissions close on September 14.* For an interesting Substack read on crazy lit journal rejections, see Lit Mag News on rejection letter pet peeves.* For an interesting Substack read on manuscript rejection (particularly novels), read:The Dead Sea Scrolls TripA selection of the Dead Sea Scrolls are at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, CA through September 2. In no sense am I a fan of RR and Simi Valley is a bit of a trip, so I waited to see if the exhibit would travel and come closer. When it became clear that the answer was ‘no,’ two of my sons (both writers) and I decided we needed to get out there and see it. I love the sensation of the past coming to life in the present. That people had the presence of mind to hide these manuscripts thousands of years ago electrifies me. I loved seeing the script—in some cases so very tiny!Knowing that the longer we stayed, the worse the traffic through LA would be—we were on the freeway in the city of LA for two hours—we decided to stay after touring the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit and walk through the permanent exhibits about RR. Some of it was very interesting, but it was pretty much hagiography. A tiny, brief gloss-over about the Iran-Contra Affair (impeachable stuff) and nothing about AIDS in the section on the crises during RR’s tenure in office. This, of course, is the choice of the curators. I’ve been to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. They do a much better job at being evenhanded and telling a true story about the Watergate scandal.I’d never been to Simi Valley, but we had to go on Wednesday to be in time for our Thursday morning reservations. We just looked for interesting stuff about the city. Much that we wanted to see was closed, including the museum on the Chumash Indians. (There was a fair portion of the history display from the Strathearn Historical Park & Museum that was dedicated to the Chumash.)Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle VillageThis was closed, so we couldn’t see the bottle buildings, which have a sort of stained-glass-walls feel in the online photos. We did get to see a bit through the fence. Strathearn Historical Park & MuseumI didn’t take a photo, but there was a tiny library that was built in 1930 and used through 1962 (at which point there were other branches as well). I loved that during the Great Depression, this town decided to put time, talent, and treasure into a library! ❤️Junkyard CafeOne of my son’s coworkers recommended we have a meal here. It really is like a junkyard, but fascinating. The Dead Sea Scrolls The actual pieces from the scrolls are at the end of the exhibit. The beginning shows us life in ancient Israel.The text of the information sign under the mosaic floor fragment includes a translation of the words in the mosaic from Psalm 118:6-7: “The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? The Lord is with me; he is my helper. I look in triumph on my enemies.”An ossuary, a small limestone box for storing bones. They are generally as long as the largest bone in the body. This one has a simple design, like two window frames. The Dead Sea Scrolls I know the small print on the signage under each scroll fragments is difficult to read, so I am including it as the caption for each photo. This will also act as the alt text.We also got to go into Air Force One (lots of great work space!) and the presidential helicopter. Here are a few photos from the grounds, which were beautiful and had many moving displays:A few things gave me a chuckle. One was a photo of Reagan—in a tan suit! (Which, as we know, is a thing that destroys civilization if a Black president wears it)—walking with Pope John Paul II. And here is another—too bad it isn’t the final word to the people of Canada:Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Note: If the end of this post cuts off in your email, you can click the title to view on your web browser, view in the Substack App or even listen to the audio.Hello Friends,Another year, another mammogram! I know it’s important. If you are not part of the subset of human beings who needs their mammos grammed, I’ll just note that the ‘flattened like a pancake’ trope isn’t entirely accurate. It’s more like being treated as pizza dough—pulled, flattened, squished, pushed, and kneaded into shapes never meant for a human being.I’m taking the three days between houseguests and a road trip with my sisters to catch up on things and create a few posts early. I want to quickly point out that this past Friday’s post on libraries and banned books was overall very positive; if you didn’t see it (maybe because everything feels bad right now), have a look. Good news! 😁Thanks also to those privately inquiring about my skin rash. The jury’s still out. I finished up Prednisone on Friday. For the first few days I took it, my skin reaction calmed down, and that was nice—but that was the sum total of its usefulness. On the other hand, it made me irritable, which wasn’t great. And now I’m in the same place I was before I took it. As we Catholic children were always told about everything we couldn’t understand: it’s a mystery. But boy, wouldn’t I love to have it solved! Another incomprehensible symptom that started for me in the 2020 pandemic was that I can smell something very strong, very weird—a thing that isn’t there and that no one else smells. It’s like nothing IRL, so it’s hard to describe. Sort of like an alcohol made of fermented, overripe bananas. I got a Hepa filter, did lots to make it go away. Nothing worked. Eventually, it came and went repeatedly. Right now, it’s back and vivid. I’m wondering if there’s a connection between it and the rash. My body is a wonder.* Today’s my wedding anniversary. We were young, once upon a time!* I had fun selling my books at the Book Market in Riverside last week. I loved meeting local authors. Whatever cash I received, I spent on their books. My idea of a perfect day!* Keep Sweet was featured in Books + Scarves on Instagram . I love the match Genia made!* I had an article in the So Cal News Group newspapers. It’s a very short version of something I wrote about here—moving from my first book launch on the day of my mother’s funeral to my wonderful launch this summer for Keep Sweet. The link to the online article is here, but I think it’s behind a paywall. Here’s a photo of one of the newspapers, thanks to my friend David Stone.* I also have a little interview that I want to share because, right now, we’re all susceptible to thinking we are helpless against the tide. But I believe endurance is the most useful characteristic in all situations—the big picture stuff (fighting fascism, etc.) and the personal stuff like working on life goals. I am a turtle, but I persist.CanvasRebel is a forum for interviews of creatives and entrepreneurs. Pretty much anyone can be interviewed there. So the point of this is not that there’s anything exclusive. It’s only that I was very thoughtful about my answers to fairly generic questions. I’m hoping they are useful for you—particularly if you are feeling like nothing you work on comes to fruition, it may be uplift. Here we go:I may not be the example that people are looking for. But if anyone feels like they missed out and it’s too late to start, I am an example to them. I believe it’s never too late. If you feel called to a creative endeavor, try it out.Hi Victoria, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.I discussed in a previous interview with Bold Journey [the same company as CanvasRebel] that I had careers as both a high school English teacher and as a teacher-librarian, so I don’t want to reiterate the details here. Those careers have been the inspiration for about half of my writing. As a young adult, I participated in critique groups and took some creative writing classes, but I didn’t write seriously until I had established my life in other areas—as teacher, mother, caretaker, etc. So, in that sense, I may not be the example that people are looking for. But if anyone feels like they missed out and it’s too late to start, I am an example to them. I believe it’s never too late. If you feel called to a creative endeavor, try it out. If it doesn’t work, you’re no worse off than if you hadn’t tried it. Success just may be taking the journey.Once I started to write more seriously, my stories and essays were published in literary journals. I had the chance to play with character point-of-view, setting, and themes. I could set the stakes for myself. I was very happy when a well-regarded journal accepted a story I’d written in the second person (‘you’ is the main character), present tense because it’s hard to make that work. The publication was a validation of trying unusual angles. I was also very happy when I was included in Best Short Stories from The Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest.In 2021, a collection of my short fiction was published as Acts of Contrition. In 2023, I had an experimental chapbook (keep experimenting, friends!) published, The Mortality of Dogs and Humans, which discusses coming to terms with deep grief. I have a young adult novel, Keep Sweet [which was recently published by Inlandia Books]. It’s about a girl hoping to escape a polygamist cult (so, patriarchy). I’ve completed a novel about book bans/challenges, tentatively titled Promiscuous Reading. I’m hoping to find a publisher.I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?This journey has taken longer than anyone could imagine as reasonable, but here it is. The reason for that is because I’ve always earned a living outside of writing. In that way, this creative journey is much different than that of an entrepreneur who combines their creative expression (say, developing recipes) with their living (running a restaurant).The great majority of writers don’t make a living from their work, but it is essential to cultural conversations. They write because they’re compelled to. Some believe their ideas come from a muse. That is, they come from outside themselves. And if they don’t work on these ideas, then the ideas find an interpreter elsewhere. I feel this is true. I’ve had to let go of a lot of good ideas because I couldn’t bring them to fruition in a timely manner. I worked full time, while raising three sons, and during some of that, I also went to graduate school twice (MA, English: MLS—library science) while my husband was working full time and going to graduate school (PhD, counseling psychology). While it’s true that one must prioritize goals, there are long stretches in life when one works eighteen hours a day. And sleep, rather than creative output, becomes that final priority.I say this because I want people to understand that their own creative journeys will probably be meandering. That some ideas will move on, take another path, and someone else will bring them into the world. But there will be ideas that stay the course, and maybe those are the most important ones for your life. I’m looking for a home right now for a novel I’ve written that is centered on book banning/censorship in a public high school. It’s an idea I’ve had for years. The novel itself has gone through many iterations (yes, writing is rewriting). I believe it’s ready for readers. And I’m the best person to write this story because of my background as an English teacher and a high school librarian.I’d like to take a minute and move a little sideways from the question to make some recommendations because I think people reading this interview may be looking for advice on their journey.If you want to explore the idea that creative people get inspiration from a muse/outside of themselves, a good book to read is Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. I reviewed it here. Another, more recent discussion of this is in Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act.If the idea of an external force/stream of ideas just seems too wacky for you, a well-regarded book is Stephen King’s On Writing. (I wrote a very brief review here). King writes daily. However, while it took time for his work to land, once it did, he was able to make a living from his writing. He wasn’t a working mom, etc. So don’t beat yourself up if you can’t manage what he has. He’s pretty much a unicorn.Someone who consistently and generously answers emerging writers’ questions is George Saunders. Many of these questions are about his journey—which is to say, his readers wonder what they can learn about their own journeys through him. While he, too, is something of a unicorn, a lot of his story and his advice lands. He often discusses how to mold ideas by pushing them into stranger and more extreme circumstances. His Substack is Story Club and while there is an optional paid element to it, he answers writers’ questions every other Thursday for free.And, of course, if you want to be part of the literary community, you should be buying books and journals written and/or published by the people in your community. Get to know them through local gatherings, classes and groups. If you can’t afford as many books by indie and local authors as you’d like, recommend that your local library buy them. When they do, check those books out. Review those you enjoyed so that your voice is part of the conversation.Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?I’m both salty and kind. It’s a combination that works for me. So my work is reality-based and questions authority. Writing is a good creative space for me because all stories must have conflict. No one wants to read a story about Mary going to the store to buy milk unless she is accosted there by her ex-husband, who serves her court documents because he’s trying to take custody of the kids. In that way, I think writing is different from other creative arts.For me, conflict naturally arises in a story when it questions why things are the way they are. Sometimes this requires a great deal of vulnerability. A recent example from my own life is an essay I had published on HuffPost. It’s about the damage of purity culture, but it exposed some of the stranger elements of my childhood and upbringing. It was the most vulnerable thing I’d ever written—and the most widely read with over a million views.I’m not collaborative in the sense of directly working with someone. I’ve never co-written anything, and I think this is true of most authors. But I am collaborative in the sense that I am participating in a dialogue that speaks through time. My work responses to the work of others, perhaps something from long ago. Writing means being a part of a historical conversation. I always build on what I’ve experienced through others’ art and writing. I add their sense of the world to my own experience.Through that dialogue, I came to understand the value of being a good literary citizen. Many people will tell you that a creative person has to have a hand reaching up to someone more successful and a hand reaching down to someone who is just starting. This is true. But I think there are also times when we need to stretch our arms to the side and clasp those who are level with us. Buy their work, support their work, talk up their work to friends and colleagues, post reviews.I very often read the work of authors published by indie presses. Recently, I have been reviewing some of that (young adult) work on School Library Lady. I review the adult novels and memoirs I read elsewhere and plan to interview authors on my Substack, Be a Cactus. For five years, I edited an online literary journal (Inlandia) in order to help emerging authors find their way to publication. I now run a critique workshop through the Inlandia Institute. I periodically contribute to a newspaper column about the writing journey. I read and judge work for literary contests.Believe me when I say I am proud of my essays, stories, and novels. I wouldn’t put them out into the world if I wasn’t. But I’m also proud of my work in literary citizenship. I love being a part of the writing community. Be a Cactus is my way of engaging that community, and I’m happy when people join me there (it’s free).If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?I think I’ve put a lot of the details of being a kid out of my mind. I liked school because it rewarded someone like me. I could deliver answers. I often played alone or with one best friend, and I suppose that’s why I was always imagining scenarios to play out. I loved pretty rocks and was always on the lookout for anything to add to my collection. I still love visiting rock and mineral shops and wearing jewelry made from polished stones.I’ve always enjoyed stories, but I didn’t have a library card until I was about nine years old. My parents didn’t ever take us to the library, and we had few books at home. My elementary school didn’t have a library, but rather a few giant bookcases that folded in half, like a suitcase. These would be opened on rare class visits. (If you’ve ever been to a Scholastic book fair, the book displays are in the same sort of cases.) I used my allowance to order cheap paperback/newsprint books from Scholastic, so I did get to read a bit for pleasure.One day, I was being escorted home from a Girl Scout camping trip by the older sister of a friend. She stopped at the local library, which was just a mobile unit in the shopping center parking lot. The three of us selected books. When I got to the circulation counter, the librarian told me I needed a library card and gave me an application for my parents to sign. I haven’t stopped reading since!Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hey Now Friends,We made it through another week. I’ve been reading about private equity and that made me realize I need to turn to reading something fun for the next few books. Take a break and recharge.As I’ve been collecting the ‘library and banned books news’ for Fridays, I’m seeing a number of stories about Judy Blume’s Forever being newly banned in various school districts. That book is more than fifty years old. Hum. I never read it when I was young because none of the schools I attended had a solid library program or collection. But it has remained very popular, and, because I had it in my collection as a high school librarian, I read it in 2012. It certainly belongs in the high school collection. Below are the thoughts I jotted down thirteen years ago when the book was fresh in my mind. Please note: When I say that teens need to understand certain things before they get into a relationship, I’m talking about the fact that relationships end—that that first one is so very unlikely to be the last one.Forever by Judy BlumeKatherine’s grandmother sees that she is getting serious with her boyfriend Michael and so gives her some information on adolescents and sex. One article asks the teen to consider four questions:* Is sexual intercourse necessary for the relationship?* What should you expect from sexual intercourse?* If you should need help, where will you seek it?* Have you thought about how this relationship will end?I like this list that Blume posed all the way back in the 1970s. This book has remained popular and in print all these years—newer editions begin with a note from Blume about how in the age of AIDS, sexually active people must do more than worry about birth control. She includes a helpline and a website for more information.While it wouldn’t be fair to call Forever an instruction manual (as some critics have suggested—they think that Blume’s purpose is to lure teens into having sexual relationships), it is very honest and pretty graphic.Kathryn and Michael meet at a party and realize that they are attracted to one another. The first three-fourths of the book are their thoughts and conversations on sex, on their sexual relationship. Are they going to do it? When? Where? How? What goes right and what goes wrong as they explore intimacy? What embarrassing details do they have to deal with? They are so much in love that their relationship is the all in all of their lives. As they are seniors in high school, Kath is ready to select a college where she can continue to be near Michael. Michael gives her a necklace with the word “forever” engraved on it. Nothing can stand in the way of their love.That is until Kath’s parents think she is becoming far too serious. For me, as someone much older, someone who knows that just falling for someone doesn’t mean forever, this last quarter of the book is actually a lot more interesting than the question of what sexual thing the couple will explore next. And it’s the question Kath believed she’d never have to think about: Have you thought about how this relationship will end? When Kath is upset with her mom because she won’t see Michael for weeks, she accuses her:“’I thought you’d be on my side.”“‘I am,’ she told me.”Because Kath’s parents have been through all of this, too, they just want to see what will happen when Kath has some breathing room. They are on her side, but that’s very hard for her to see in the moment.While the novel is quite realistic in terms of how teens explore a sexual relationship, and where the author is very careful to add the didactic elements about the necessity of birth control, the very hip attitude of the parents and even the grandparents made life just a bit too easy for the lovers. I don’t see most grandparents giving girls instruction on birth control.Yet, this novel is as edgy and appealing to teens as it was forty [now more than fifty] years ago. But don’t just read it and take away how the couple becomes sexually intimate. Take away the important question “Have you thought about how this relationship will end?” And if you’re not ready to believe in that end to the relationship, you aren’t ready to start it either. Other relationships, other futures await.A recent discussion of ForeverHere’s a recent take on Forever that is very fun to watch or listen to. Now I want to read Jason Reynolds’ Twenty-Four Seconds from Now… . Enjoy!Ali Velshi’s Banned Books ClubVelshi Banned Book Club: Judy Blume and Jason Reynolds and the legacy of ‘Forever…’Judy Blume’s body of work emerged in a time where there was no dedicated young adult genre – no body of work for the teenagers of this nation to parse through. Blume’s ability to craft the nuanced young characters and true-to-life plots that define her literature has cemented her as one of the greatest authors of all time, but nothing proves the transformative and lasting influence of literature more than the work that comes after it. ‘Twenty-Four Seconds from Now…’ by the award-winning author Jason Reynolds is being heralded as ‘Forever…’ for young, Black men in America. It is a tender look at first love and first sex through the eyes of 17-year-old Neon. With Reynold’s trademark direct language, lyrical descriptions, and endearing and complex characters, the novel and its themes resonate with anyone who has ever felt first love and anyone who loved Judy Blume.Velshi Banned Book Club: Judy Blume and Jason Reynolds and the legacy of ‘Forever…’For teachers and librariansDid you see this study and discussion guide by Ashley Hope Pérez illustrated by Debbie Fong (from NEA) on the film Banned Together?Thanks for reading! Have a great week!Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I’m still in the same boat with my skin rash which has kept me from a party and some appointments, including one to give blood. On Friday I got some new medication that also doesn’t work (strike two). As I understand it, the doctor says the next thing to do is to try a strong steroid, like Prednisone. At this point, I’m up for anything that will work.Meanwhile, I’ve been following the news, of course. When I read that Trump had fired the commissioner of labor statistics, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, claiming she had manipulated the jobs report, a scene from Mars Attack! flashed through my mind. I always think of this scene when a public figure tells us to ignore actual evidence and believe what they say. Of course, it’s funny in the movie, the idea of not believing the evidence around you. Not so much in real life.MARS ATTACKS dont run we are your friends sceneI did have some fun this week. My brother and sister-in-law spent a few days with us and on Wednesday, my sisters and my brother-in-law all came over to celebrate my brother's retirement. We had a lot of good food. I made a strawberry cake that I love and was a hit. I didn’t take a photo of it, but if you like to bake, here’s the gift link to the recipe. (I don’t add the red food coloring.)It was a pretty lazy week in many ways. A few months ago, before my skin started going crazy, I had made some totes for the women and was able to give them those. I’m trying to use the fabric in my closet. Of course, to use it on projects, I have to buy more fabric that matches. 🙃 My brother took this blurry photo and I cropped out my sisters because I didn’t ask if I could post their images. The flowered fabric was what I was using up; the gold with dots and the webbing is what I had to buy.Today, I want to discuss the book Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels. I know many people whose religious trauma has turned them away from any interest in the subject. I get this and I respect that decision. It’s logical. But I have a deep fascination with the radical nature of Jesus Christ. So, I continue my search. I think at some point I will write about my experiences, but they’re a bit strange.Thinking of people discussing their beliefs, I’m pretty worried about the idea of using the government workplace to proselytize. I’m wondering if people can put a sign on their office door or cubicle that says, “I’m not here for your missionary work.”A New Threat For Federal Workers: Being 'Persuaded' About Their Religion from HuffPostThis week, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the agency that manages the federal workforce, released a memo titled “Protecting Religious Expression In the Federal Workplace.” In it, the Trump administration details federal workplace behaviors that are now acceptable under the guidelines.One of them? Telling your co-worker that they should rethink their religious beliefs because yours are correct.“During a break, an employee may engage another in polite discussion of why his faith is correct and why the non-adherent should re-think his religious beliefs,” the guidelines read.Seriously, who wants to be harassed like this at work? It’s bad enough that people come to your door at home.Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of JesusAs I’ve mentioned in past posts: as I think about the change for the worse in the U.S. over the last several years, I want to include books on Christianity in my reading. After all, some of the people driving the most hateful policy changes in our country call themselves Christian nationalists, which, I am coming to believe, simply means fascist-lite. In Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels, I was happy to see that among the many, many interpretations of the gospels (both New Testament and the apocryphal ones) there exists nothing akin to Christian nationalism. In fact, quite the opposite on all counts.The first three gospel accounts of Jesus’s life and mission begin with his birth. Pagels points to differences in these stories and imagines why each of the writers selects their details.In the Gospel of Matthew, we have the story of the magi following the bright Christmas star. Matthew’s “likely intention is not to deceive his audience into believing something that didn’t happen. Instead, convinced that Jesus was, indeed, God’s promised Messiah, Matthew may have assumed that events coinciding with his birth would have fulfilled ancient prophecies.” (16)The various nativity stories lack historical evidence. There's no historical record of Jews having to travel to register for taxes at this time, though there are some later. So the story of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, and Jesus being born there instead of in Nazareth, aren’t credible. Also untold in any historical record is King Herod ordering a massacre of baby boys in the period of Jesus’s birth, although Herod was “famous for his cruelty,” having had two of his own sons executed. Why, then, do the gospel writers include these events?“They were not writing primarily to report history, or even biography. … Instead, they were writing, some 40 to 70 years after Jesus’s death, primarily to publicize his message. Simply put, Jesus’s devoted believers wrote these narratives to persuade others to ‘believe in the gospel’ – the Greek term euangelion translates as ‘good news’ – and join their new movement.” (17-18)It’s good to remember, too, that the writers were part of a persecuted group and were staking their lives on getting this good news out. They weren’t like modern-day preacher charlatans raking in money. In Luke’s version of Jesus’s birth, he has angels announcing the good news “to people of good will”—“not to kings, but to herdsmen working outdoors at night. He directs his story, so to speak, to the 99 percent.” (49)This effort to reach the ‘99 percent’ may explain why gospel stories vary or are even in conflict with one another. (An example of stories in conflict are Jesus’s genealogy stories—they can’t each be true.) While the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are patterned after the Gospel of Mark, the stories alter depending on the desired audience—Jews or gentiles.There’s much to upset traditional believers in Miracles and Wonder and even a bit to give literalists a fit. The questioning of Jesus’s birth story is likely at the top of the list. As I mentioned above, Jesus’s genealogy story varies depending on the gospel, but Pagels suggests that the virgin birth story is told in Matthew and Luke because there were rumors that Jesus was a b*****d, an illegitimate child. (Perhaps Mark, the gospel written ten years earlier, doesn’t include a virgin birth or address this because those rumors hadn’t made the rounds yet. In fact, Mark includes more troubling stories including that Jesus’ family was worried about his sanity and that Jesus rejected his own family while encouraging his followers to do the same.) Pagels doesn’t make a claim for or against Jesus’s divine paternity, but rather reports which elements of the stories argue different cases. She also summarizes the arguments of various Biblical scholars. These include the fact of Roman soldiers seizing Sepphoris and frequently sexually assaulting many young people, including girls who became pregnant. Perhaps Mary, Jesus’s mother.The Gospel of John directly speaks of Jesus as the Son of God, “manifesting divine light in human form”—skipping over family and genealogy—and so stands apart from the others (and was written some years later). (50)Jesus most certainty existed based on Roman records of the period. Anyone with an open mind and an interest in his life can follow Pagels as she continues digging into its meaning. Miracles and Wonder moves forward from the Christmas story to discuss Jesus’s miracles and his mission; his role in bringing the good news and whether he meant that the Kingdom of God was coming immediately or whether he was telling people that it already exists in them rather than on a celestial plane; the Last Supper and what it meant; and Jesus’s death and resurrection. Again, each of these events is interpreted by gospel writers with different audiences, but with the same goal. To further examine them, Pagels also includes discussion of the apocryphal gospels such as the Gospels of Thomas, of Mary Madeline, and of Judas, all read widely in antiquity, but buried away when they were excised by the church as blasphemous. They were found nearly two thousand years later.I enjoyed Miracles and Wonder, but was sorry to have the interpretations of Jesus’s life and of his meaning end with a discussion of films that have had very little influence over the view of Jesus today and probably no influence over believers. But these films do show that people are still working to understand the meaning of Jesus’s life.“What amazes me is that so much energy shines through these stories of Jesus that his movement, instead of trailing off into a dead end, has forged unexpected new paths.” (107)Perhaps this is a digression, but I was sad to learn one bit of information because I wish it had been otherwise. According to Pagels, the Trinity was originally conceived as a holy family—Father, Mother, and Son—but when Christians in later centuries translated Aramaic and Hebrew sources into Greek and Latin, the “gendered connotation of the word ‘spirit’ [ruah] was lost” (51), so the divine Mother was erased quite early on.While I had previously read some of the arguments Pagels summarizes, the entire book was interesting to me. But then, I’m not a literalist. I believe that stories can be important ways of getting at deeper truths. And this is what Pagels also suggests. Jesus ‘lights a fire in followers’ souls.’ His words are ‘bursting with power’ and transform believers’ lives. (90)As I reflect on this project, what fascinates me is not only the historical mysteries my book seeks to unravel, but the spiritual power that shines through these stories. This passionate, charismatic first-century rabbi interpreted the Genesis creation story that “God created humankind in his image” to mean that every member of the human race has sacred value. Other moral teachers, like Plato, had recommended helping people in need, but only people of one’s own status – certainly not indigents, the poor, or people enslaved. And other rabbis of Jesus’s time preached, as he did, the Scriptural injunction to “love your neighbor as yourself.“ But instead of focusing such charity, primarily on other Jews in his community, he shocked his listeners by urging them to lend compassion and practical help to anyone who is sick, in prison, or hungry, to a disgraced and ungrateful son, or even to an enemy. Is this what extended his reach so far beyond his own community, and even to ours today? His radical, unprecedented reading of Genesis still resonates through our social and political life as indictment – and inspiration. (246-7)What has kept the story of Jesus alive for over two thousand years? “As I see it, [the gospels] give us what we often need most: an outburst of hope.” (248)Note: Miracles and Wonder has a solid bibliography, a handy index, and a selection of many colored plates representing Jesus in various artistic renderings. And happily, no Christian nationalists in sight.Jesus said, “if you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” — from the Gospel of Thomas (109)Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hi Friends,I had a dental appointment this week and found the appointment card in my purse pocket. The substitution of “Victory” for “Victoria” made me laugh. I hadn’t noticed it six months ago when the receptionist gave it to me. I just tucked it in my purse without looking.I didn’t have any particular victories this week, but the dental assistant told me my teeth were strong and healthy, so I’ll take that as my win. Other than that, my body is going sort of crazy. I have mosquito bites on my toes, ankles and shins; a rash of unknown origin covering my torso, back of my neck and part of my right arm and my legs; and burned skin on my chest in the process of healing from a Fluorouracil treatment for basal cell carcinomas. None of this is serious, but my entire body has been itchy and driving me pretty crazy for quite a while now. I’m quickly going through a four-pack of cortisone cream from Costco and also have rediscovered calamine lotion. I tried eliminating pineapple from my diet, quit a doctor-approved nutritional supplement, started using Gold Bond eczema lotion, changed my laundry detergent, etc. So far, nothing has helped. If you have any advice, please comment! I’m trying to see the dermatologist, but can't get an appointment. I can see the primary care doc in a week. Maybe she can schedule some allergy tests and prescribe an anti-itch cream that actually works.Actual SufferingThe whole mess reminded me of something I hadn’t thought of in decades. When I was young, the seven of us lived in a little house in Hacienda Heights, CA. Our nextdoor neighbors were also a Catholic family of seven. One of the boys had a skin disease that made all of his skin peel off all the time. His top layer of skin over his entire body was always peeling. He was covered in triangles and squares of clear and white skin that had lifted off and hadn’t quite finished separating. The flesh under it was angry pink and red. He was small for his age, and I was given to understand this was because a great deal of his efforts to grow were concentrated on skin regeneration.This boy’s mother had the smoothest hands I’d ever seen. My mother told me it was because she was applying Vaseline several times a day to Dickey’s skin in an effort to relieve the dryness. That family moved out before we did—not far away—to a bigger, much cooler house with a sunken living room. (Remember those?) Not long after, I heard that Dickey had died. I was told that his body just couldn’t keep up with the energy it took to constantly generate new skin.As a kid I never thought about whether he was in pain, suffering. He was just a kid playing on the street with the neighborhood gang. I didn’t want to eat any food at their house because flakes of skin were easy to see, and I was afraid there would be bits of it in the food. And now I’m thinking about him, placing that thought in the ‘Kids and Suffering’ section of my brain.I have Doctors without Borders and The UNHCR (UN Refugee agency) on automatic monthly donations, but I change up other donations monthly based on who seems to be able to provide services to those suffering as the result of war and hunger (READ: as the result of political decisions. Did you see Ann Telnaes’s cartoon this week?). I pick Oxfam a lot not just because they work around the world, but because they’re suing the Trump administration over the decimation of USAID. Save the Children because—children. I keep returning to World Central Kitchen because they seem to be ready to serve at a moment’s notice. I know they’re serving meals in Texas. They’ve run out of food supplies in Gaza twice this month (politics, not a lack of supplies), but even when they didn’t have food, they were providing purified water.Every day I see articles on Gaza and Ukraine, but also on Syria, Sudan, and now Thailand and Cambodia. Sometimes it feels like the history of the world is a sort of whack-a-mole challenge with evil being the mole.Actual GoodIf you need something to remind you this week that good also exists in the world (all those Doctors Without Borders! All those people working in those World Central kitchens!), you’ll like this story of the development of off-road wheelchairs, making trails accessible to wheelchair users. From the LA Times via their The Wild newsletter.Inspired by organizations across the U.S. that are advocating for public access to trails for those with disabilities, Nicassio launched the nonprofit Accessible Off-Road in October. His plan is to expand free access to off-road wheelchairs for Los Angeles County residents with mobility disabilities to use at popular trails across the region. The chair he’s using, he said, is the first of many. …Similar to how a tank moves, the off-road chairs use two rubber tracks to guide the user along. It provides substantial traction over a wheelchair. The controls are similar to that of an electric wheelchair, with settings that allow the user to move their center of gravity as they navigate over rocks and branches and up and down steep hills.What I’m ReadingMy father-in-law was a Mexican immigrant who lived what my generation was schooled in as the American Dream. You know, give me your tired, your poor, etc., and I will give them the chance for an ordinary life—a life that includes joys and successes as well as sorrows.As you might imagine, I think about his life a lot these days because he was such a hardworking, stand-up guy and because I wonder about opportunities like his being available to today’s immigrants who have the same ethics and desires.I’ve been thinking for quite a while that I’d like to write a middle grade or YA book based on his life, but fictionalized. This is one of three ideas for books I have right now, but I’ve been unable to get going on any of them. I think that I might be able to start outlining or writing (it doesn’t matter which—just start!) if I read some books about the world he was immersed in.Just before the end of World War II, he was in the Army and shipped out to Okinawa. The atomic bombs were dropped and the war ended. He then spent time on the island. I wondered what that was like. My library has a ProQuest subscription (research materials—we used ProQuest as one of the databases for our high school libraries when I was a teacher librarian). I found a book about that time and place by an Army colonel.In the Philippines and Okinawa : A Memoir, 1945-1948 by Robert H. Ferrell and William S. Triplet (U of Missouri Press, 2001)I’m about 100 pages into it. It’s very interesting, but so far it’s set in the Philippines. The service people have ingenious ways of getting things done (using a motor from a Japanese Zero to power a hand-rigged washing machine, for example). Their larger mission seems to be to take in Japanese soldiers who would surrender. However, the Japanese soldiers had a hard time getting to them and were dying of starvation, had malaria, etc. In addition, Filipinos were angry over their treatment by the Japanese and would sometimes kill soldiers if they found them. And the, the soldiers in the jungle did not believe that the war was actually over, so some refused to surrender.My Book WhisperersI’m thinking about how I find my ‘next read’ these days. When I was working as a school librarian, I read a lot of book reviews in professional review sources. This was necessary because I needed to know if the titles I was purchasing fit our mission and were appropriate. I read Booklist, Library Journal, and School Library Journal regularly. And I’d find books there for my students, but I also found books that I wanted to read.Now that I’m not in the library, I tend to buy books that are recommended by Ron Charles in his “Book Club” newsletter from the Washington Post. I just bought the audiobook Don’t Talk about Politics: How to Change 21st-century Minds by Sarah Stein Lubrano based on Ron Charles' story of serendipitously meeting her in a bookshop. But other than Charles, I choose from the suggestions of other book-loving “Substackers.”I subscribe to Kathleen Schmidt’s Substack Publishing Confidential, which is about the publishing industry. She often points out that legacy media reviews are far less influential than they used to be. I think my behavior is exemplary of this fact.I know Kelly Turner through a cowriting group and enjoy her book recommendations. I recently read How to Survive a Bear Attack by Claire Cameron on her recommendation. (I talked about it here.) This week, I bought Winter Thunder by Mari Sandoz based on Peter C. Meilaender’s discussion of it in his Substack From My Bookshelf. It hasn’t arrived yet.A Marriage at Sea by Sophie ElmhirstI enjoy Jan Harayda’s Jansplaining. She reviews honestly, which means she will also includes what she doesn’t like about widely popular books. I like that because I feel seen when my take on a widely popular book doesn’t match the general response. Recently, she wholeheartedly recommended A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst, so I listened to it while I was avoiding any sort of work as I was recovering from a migraine. (It has not been a great week, friends.)It’s been on a lot of lists, so you might be familiar. It’s about a couple who, in 1972, quit their jobs to sail from England to New Zealand with stops along the way. They spend years planning and preparing. They sold their house in order to afford a 31-foot yacht. They decided not to have a radio because the husband, Maurice, wanted to rely on his nautical skills for navigation. Things go well for almost a year. And then a (possibly breaching) whale knocks a hole in their boat. They end up in a rubber raft and pulling a dingy with provisions. They fish using safety pins repurposed as hooks. They also kill a few birds and several sea turtles. But the stars seem to be stacked against them—starting with those missing fishing hooks and moving into flares that were ‘duds’ so that they couldn’t signal passing ships.When they are finally rescued (not a spoiler—we know it’s coming) after 118 days in the raft, they are emaciated and near to starving. That they lived is attributed to the wife’s, Maralyn's, unbreakable optimism, ingenuity, and leadership. So, the publisher’s back cover summary tells us this is the great test of a marriage (true) and a “gutting love story.”I was hooked by the survival story. It’s hard to imagine surviving as they did and each new setback seems like something that would have been the end of a lesser spirit. But “gutting love story?” Maurice is a loner. He’s very awkward and most people don’t get along with him. I found his personality repellent. That Maralyn loves him as she does is more a story of grace, a thing unmerited. It’s a story of Maurice’s incredible fortune in Maralyn having chosen him.Ecstasy by Ivy PochodaI listened to Ecstasy by Ivy Pochoda because I loved her novel Wonder Valley. Ecstasy is about a wealthy widow, her son and daughter-in-law, and her old, wilder friend (who is losing her eyesight) as they visit their soon-to-open hotel, the Agape Villas, on the Greek island of Naxos.The son is a privileged SOB with no redeeming qualities, a flat character. I can’t say this entirely bothered me as I am seeing the antics of such characters daily IRL. The widow is trying to shake off his control after having been controlled all her life by her now dead husband. She's a little flat as well, the human embodiment of a list of wrongs against women. However, neither seems to be the central character in this story. The pull of the ancient ecstatic cult of Dionysus (and its current iteration in drug use) is at the center. Does it offer freedom or another form of control? Ecstasy leaves you to decide for yourself, but it takes you on a pretty wild ride in the meantime. Short, and outside of character development, highly original. Fun summer read.Wonder Valley by Ivy PochodaIt’s been about seven years since I read Wonder Valley. I looked back to see if I had made any notes on it. I happened to have read it as my old wolfish dog, Fletcher, was dying. So the only notes I have from that month are about him. But I remember the feeling that the novel was a wonder in itself. All the characters are in crisis. It opens with a naked man running through rush-hour traffic on an LA freeway. (110? Not sure.) In disconnected vignettes, we met the characters. There’s a weird cult in the Mojave Desert and a teen, Ren, who is on the run from it and from its leader, his father. He lands on Skid Row and his life intersects with characters who, at first, seem unrelated. The language is beautiful, rich in imagery. The characters are full and realistic as is their dialogue. It’s Southern California under a baking sun, in all its grime, blood, and glory. Highly recommended. If you live in So. Cal, don’t miss it, particularly if you like experimental elements. Coming UpI’m still working on the religion titles. I’m reading a little bit of Lower Than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity each night before sleep. I think next week, I’d like to discuss Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels.Thanks for being here!Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hi Friends,I’m late—life has overtaken my best intentions, but in California, it’s still (late) morning, so I’m finishing up and recording. There will probably be some noises like barking dogs and people coming in the house because we’re gathering to go to an organ concert later. I’ve been hiding out a bit for a few weeks. I finished up a two-week course of Fluorouracil, a sort of chemotherapy cream, for pre-cancers/basal cell carcinoma on my chest. Fluorouracil has an interesting quality: if there are no cancers or pre-cancers, it will not affect the skin. If there are, it will burn the skin into hot, stinging, itching red spots. I knew a had a patch of trouble that would light up, but was quite surprised to have my chest and lower neck turn into a solid boiled lobster.My theory for why my dermatologist is now regularly prescribing Fluorouracil to me is that I burned the hell out of my face, neck, arms and chest while on the numerous backpacking trips I took as a teen. I loved being in nature with only a few friends. It’s an experience of the numinous, the stars, the evergreens, the I-Thou in near solitude. In inland Southern California, such trips mostly meant boulder hopping on black-flecked white granite, the summer sun reflecting off them, reaching under our hats and burning our skin in the days before sunscreen was available.So, I’ve spent most of my time inside in the last two weeks. Since I’m in a semi-permanent writer’s block situation, I worked on a sewing/quilt project that includes some embroidery. I’m quite the novice embroiderer, but I just need to do simple stitches—back stitch, stem stitch, satin and lazy daisy stitches. But in starting, I realized that I will be at this for many months. I decided to catch up on some podcasts and audiobooks while I was working. I caught up on some episodes of TSNOTYAWThe S**t About Writing Team (how to query agents) and listened to Allison Lane’s Author Edge, which is full of hints on pitching your book to agents and publishers as well as creating a platform/reader connections. A lot of it is for nonfiction book authors (generally not me), but there is crossover to fiction. Lastly, I listened to all of E. Jean Carroll’s Not My Type (discussion below in “What I’m Reading”).I Venture OutI bought a few very high-neck shirts to hide my chest and went out to Riverside, CA last weekend to man a table (Woman a table? Hang out at a table and answer questions.) for the Inlandia Institute at the Riverside County Office of Education’s Arts Conference. I had fun chatting with visual and performing arts teachers. I bought a picture book from a delightful young man, Ezra Edmond, who, as a child, had met LeVar Burton and decided to write about it. I sent it to my niece, who teaches elementary students. I figured she either could use it or would know another teacher who could. Here a bit about it:“It’s in a book” — How Levar Burton inspired this children’s book author to write his own story.I even attended a culinary arts session on how to make tortillas and relate the lesson to STEM classes at the same time. My mother-in-law used to make delicious flour tortillas. Those I made in the session were pretty yummy, but not quite as good as hers because she used lard (manteca) and this was a healthier recipe that used avocado oil.The CheechI also had the chance to go to the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Arts and Culture. I got to tag along with Cati Porter, who is a museum member and the Executive Director of Inlandia. The museum is housed in the former main library, so I’d been in the building many times, but this was my first chance to view the art. I loved the sculpture next to the founders wall. It’s in the top photo, above. I wish it could be my Be a Cactus banner! A heart birthing a cactus. Perfect! Here are a few other paintings and pieces I enjoyed. Afterwards, I went to Tio’s Tacos, famous for its metal scrap art (and yummy tacos).Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Tio’s TacosRiverside Public Art—Cesar ChavezDon’t forget positive newsReasons to be Cheerful lost some grant funding and is coming to the end of a fundraiser. I’ve mentioned how I like to receive their emails because there’s always something good happening in the world, even in dark times. I want it to continue, so I made a small donation. This is a recent article I liked:“How Norway Is Proving That Homelessness Is a Solvable Problem”If you need some good news regularly, this is a great place to get it.AII’ve shared some wacky AI results of mine in the past. Humorist Dave Barry had a strange ‘conversation’ with Google’s AI results about himself and his supposed death. Very funny, but also, not.The things I’ve ever curious aboutI recently subscribed to Deirdre Sugiuchi. She has a past as a public school librarian (as have I) and, as a teen, she was sent to a Christian reform school for troubled teens, which overlaps with my interest in spiritual abuse. She has a book about the experience coming out in 2027, and, in this post, links to many articles she’s written on her experience.What I’m ReadingA Public Space is having a free discussion of The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. I read the novel about five years ago when my son recommended it to me. He read it in Spanish, but my Spanish is pretty elementary, so I had to read it in English. I found it very good. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.The narrator is a fugitive who has escaped to a deserted island. And then he realizes he isn’t alone. He spies on the few inhabitants and is intrigued by the repetitions of their behaviors. Eventually, he understands that they can’t see him. He wonders about his own existence, whether he is simply a hallucination, all while he is falling in love with a woman named Faustine. Morel contends with many literary themes (love, reality, loneliness), but of them the most intriguing to me was ‘consciousness.’ At the time I read it, my mother was dying after about a dozen years of increasing dementia. I always puzzle over the disappearance of her consciousness, of her cruel fate. In the foreword to Morel, Jorge Luis Borges says it’s a “perfect” novel. It’s short, intriguing, and as my son says, it has one of the best first lines in all of fiction: “Today, on the island, a miracle happened: summer came ahead of time.”If you have read Morel, you might want to attend the discussion tomorrow, July 21.The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares: A Conversation with Antoine Wilson and A Public SpaceI got The Grace Paley Reader for a birthday gift. It was lost in the mail room at my son’s apartment building for a while, but I have it now! Moves to the top of the TBR pile!Books on ReligionI read Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels and will discuss it soon. I have been reading Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch for a while. It’s 650 dense pages, 500 of which are the text of the book and 150 of which are recommended reading, endnotes and an index. I don’t know if you also do this, but when another one of my library holds comes in, I put aside the tome I’m reading in order to finish the popular book that I won’t be able to renew because others are waiting for it. This is what I’ve been doing with Lower than the Angels. I’m less than half finished.Not My Type by E. Jean CarrollI wanted to hear the story of someone who had a win over Trump. I listened to Not My Type while embroidering. You probably know this is a memoir about the civil trial against Trump for the damage to Carroll's reputation when he called her a liar over her statement that he raped her. And all that play-by-play trial testimony is a pretty rough go. The recounting of the behavior of the various lawyers is worth the price of the book. What is a surprise is Carroll’s wit and good humor. And her understanding of the importance of fashion in getting people to take her seriously. I am a fashion/style dunderhead, so this was educational for me.In winning two trials against Trump, Carroll was awarded a lot of money—$5 million in one, $83 million in the second—which compounds at 9% interest as Trump appeals, so he owes her more than $100 million and counting. Carroll’s plan is to spend the money on good causes that Trump hates and then make those donations public through her Substack E. Jean Carroll. So—I had to subscribe. 😊Although Trump is also a convicted felon, he didn’t have to pay any consequences for that, so Carroll’s win appeared to be the only one that matters. It’s a thing I need right now. I do know that Trump is finally getting blowback from some of his MAGA cult members over Jeffrey Epstein and child trafficking, but that may simply disappear. And I find it extremely weird that this is the thing that is that tipping point for some.As Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg says, “Trump is a uniquely dark figure in American history. A felon, an abuser of women (and perhaps children too), a betrayer of our Constitution, an ally and enabler of Putin, an unprecedentedly corrupt President, a serial criminal who has even this year broken dozens and dozens of law since returning to the White House, and a deeply venal man who has become comfortable with millions of the poorest people in the world dying due to his actions, and who is right now overseeing extraordinary levels of cruelty aimed at people and families living and working here in the US.”I don’t get why those things don’t matter. Writing for the LA Times, Matt K. Lewis has some thoughts on this. Just FYI in case you are, like me, wondering about this.So why has the Epstein scandal — of all things — threatened civil war on the right? I have some thoughts.First: It speaks to where the passions of MAGA really lie. For some percentage of Trump supporters, exposing the satanic, blood-drinking pedophile cabal was supposed to be the deliverable — his raison d’être — the payoff.Instead they got, what, corporate tax cuts?Second: The Epstein narrative is too lurid and concrete to be handwaved away. Epstein really was a sex trafficker. There really are those photographs of him palling around with Trump. He really was on “suicide watch.” Minutes really are missing from the surveillance video near Epstein’s cell. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi really did say on Fox News in February that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now.” You don’t need to be in a tin-foil hat to notice the fishiness here.And third: The incentives have changed for MAGA influencers. Trump finally feels like a lame duck, and the knives are out, not just to inherit the throne, but for the whole spoils system of the MAGA sham.(Link to the full article: Trump’s spell over the MAGA base has been broken. They can see he’s now a lame duck)As the beat goes on, I hope you have opportunities to view and to make art and to read (and listen to) some good books.Take care and thanks for reading. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,As I mentioned in Friday’s post, I’m going out of town for a few days (Riverside County Office of Education’s Arts Lift Conference), so I’m setting this up early. Actually, I’m writing this at the same time as Friday’s post. On Wednesday. I hope Thursday-Saturday is calm.Sorry about the state of the stateSo, another week, and the world’s still on fire. I worried over putting up my flag on July 4: should it be upside down to represent distress? Would my MAGA neighbors have no idea this means distress and egg my house for ‘disrespecting’ the flag? Then the news about the floods in Texas broke and the positioning of my flag didn’t feel important. At night, the MAGA neighbor lit lots of illegal fireworks, scaring my dogs, especially Curiosa, even though they were inside the house. The same neighbor was screaming and banging God-knows-what in the street late on the night of the election. In two houses across the street from him, new families with school-age children had recently moved in. I wondered how they and their parents liked being woken in a fright on a school night.On the Fourth of July, spurred by the neighbor’s actions, I was reminded of that election night. And that brought me, in my usual roundabout way, back to my efforts to write very short work—flash pieces (under 1,000 words) or even micro pieces (under 400 words).I've been in a long writing slump. If there is such a thing as writer’s block, then I must have it. But I think a more accurate term is ‘depression.’ So I have been able to write a few essays that have found an audience and some short fiction, which doesn’t fit neatly into an audience space. The stories poke fun at some religious traditions, but their characters also find spiritual renewal through engagement with those traditions.On the eve of the 2024 presidential election, I jotted a few notes that I thought could become a micro story.You wake me with a reminder that you’re here, in my house,streaming through the transom window.Practical you. “You’ve done what you can do,” you say.“Be a lily of the field, just for me.”“You made the pumpkin bread and the apple cake, too.Have a piece. Have two.”“The fabric store is open. Go touch patterns and color.Feel a warm flannel or a cool silk.Indulge and do both, let the unspooling bolt run through your fingers.Take up the whole nine yards.”But the outcome of the election ended that writing exercise. Not only was I not getting the full nine yards, it felt that the fabric of my life was, once again, being torn away.I’ve written a few drabbles (stories that are exactly 100 words) about my mother, about my grief not only over her death, but over her dementia, which took her a dozen years earlier. I thought the pieces were very good and sent them out to a few journals. The responses I got could be summed up in ‘I think there’s a much bigger story here.’ Well, yes.I keep thinking I will write little stories in response to prompts from mary g. who delivers weekly at what now? (Writers, you should subscribe!) Subscribers post their stories, which can’t be more than 400 words. (Or, at least, the post are no more than 400 words. I suppose the story could go on.) Last week, she had a prompt on ‘numbered stories.’ That gave me an idea: “Things to Do before Going to Home Depot” or “The Home Depot List.” Because I had been thinking about my Mexican American husband going to get some parts for minor repairs, and I was worrying about a brown man in a possible ICE round-up location. But he’s old, right? They don’t take old people. He has his ‘Real ID.’ He’s a citizen, the son of citizens. The son of a WWII veteran. But maybe he should order the repair parts online and wait. If someone knocked him down to handcuff him, it might kill him, his back so bad and all.All this made me angry, and instead of putting these thoughts into a list story, I posted some news stories about what is happening in So Cal on my socials. Like the MacArthur Park fear-mongering in Los Angeles—yes, while central Texas children went missing.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.And yet good things exist in the worldBut it’s still summer, and I can read microfiction even if I’m not ready to write it yet. You might also enjoy the short breaks from the world these stories provide.It seems odd to introduce you to someone I don’t know—our only interaction has been me commenting on her Substack to say I liked her chapbook Kissing the Monster Hunter and her thanking me. But, full disclosure—I know her publisher because he brought out my chapbook, The Mortality of Dogs and Humans. I subscribe to Bamboo Dart Press and receive each chapbook they print. I thought my story of grief and renewal—too short to be a book, too long to be an essay—might work for them. While it’s not like anything else they had published before, they said yes. And that was fun. It was the #1 seller in the ‘pet grief’ category on Amazon for a hot minute.So subscribing to Bamboo Dart chapbooks introduced me to Meg Pokrass. (You can guess what her Substack, Microfiction Workshops & More with Meg Pokrass, is about. 😉 If you’re a writer, you might want to subscribe.)I don’t always read the chapbooks in the order they arrive, but I believe the first by Pokrass that I read was The Dog Seated Next to Me. It’s a collection of flash fiction that invites the reader to consider the ways that the landscape alters when animals enter, a topic I love. I passed it on to another dog-loving friend. Then I read:Kissing the Monster Hunter by Meg PokrassOne of the delights of subscribing to a trusted press is that you don’t know what you’re getting, but you know you’ll enjoy it. Little surprise packages in the mail. When Kissing the Monster Hunter arrived, I immediately enjoyed the title. It made me think of kissing a monster, but that’s not the story title, is it? Isn’t kissing the monster hunter sharing a romance with the person who might bring the monster to heel?And then there is the specific monster of the stories within: the Loch Ness Monster, who has been proven not to exist—but who lives in our imaginations, and so exists still. Whom people want to exist because somehow it has become a lovely dream of a living prehistoric presence, an embodiment of the frightening thing that resides within us all. The thing that we have worked to make into cute gift shop trinkets.So the monster hunter can have a bit of a monster in him after all, as can the woman who kisses him. I read to see how that monster manifests in the characters—scaly creature from the black lagoon or sweet Nessie? Or both? And more? The creature shape shifts from story to story. In “Elopement on the Loch,” the bride worries about her understating of love and of repeating past mistakes. “Usually, you feel and he doesn’t. You’re the one attuned to the submerged shapes that don’t exist: Monsters in anything and everything. … underneath the tourist boat, you imagine, are the bubbles of your mother's failed marriage, a deep loch creature, freshwater sadness in her eyes.”The strange images of love and regret weave through the book. In the eponymous story “Kissing the Monster Hunter,” the first person narrator can feel her “wrinkles reaching towards him like fishing-lines in water.” In “Sound-Clusters Considered,” the female narrator says, “By then I wanted to be eaten by a beautiful, freckled animal. The name no longer mattered. My life had become an overripe peach, my flesh dripping and pecked at by birds.”A wonderful thing about the images is that they often don’t land where you expect them to. Here’s one from “False Neutrality” which I thought would end with defeat:there is a crack in our front porchwhich has been there too long,like something deep insideour history is trying to hatch.But there was that last lovely line “Our history trying to hatch.”Since I loved this chapbook, I got a few more copies and gave them to my son, who had read some of Pokrass’s work in literary journals, and to a few friends. So I was happy that this month, I received another Pokrass chapbook in the mail:Old Girls and Palm TreesThis is a dreamy consideration of all the things an old friendship might bring us to. Again, the title intrigued me—not ‘old women,’ but ‘old girls.’ How is a girl old? Well, the narrator and her childhood friend are going backward to relive girlhood in their old age, old skins. This is a lot of fun, though it might truly be just a dream. And there was a bonus for me: the old life of the friends—the palm trees and long drives on the Pacific Coast Highway—reminds me of my own youth, of my days at UC Santa Barbara (UC Sunny Beach, we said), and the friendships I made there. “In my fluid dreams, the two of us barrel down the highway in a rain-splotched station wagon, moths on the wing.”How can we imagine our old friends now? With “eyeglass frames shining in the living room light.” (“Dandy Indeed”) People we can sit with and snicker at the snobbish neighbors who have “better-quality dog poop from the bottoms of better-quality animals.” (“Snobby”) There’s the nostalgia felt from looking at old photos, thinking of the cookies you were making while hearing Lovely Rita. “You, as a sexy meter maid.” (“Old Photo”)In imitation of the Southern California palm trees, the past seems to lean forward, ready and willing to catch the narrator as she dreams.An anthology of microfictionThe owners of Bamboo Dart Press also publish longer work under the Pelekinesis imprint. Pokrass, along with Gary Finke, is the editor of the Best Microfiction series from Pelekinesis. So I thought, ‘I’m going to read one of those’ and bought:Best Microfiction 2024For the Best Microfiction 2024, the editors read over a thousand previously published submissions from literary magazine editors around the world. Out of these ‘best of’ submissions, just over 80 landed in the anthology. I think guest editor Grant Faulkner says it perfectly in his foreword “The Art of Microfiction or Holding a Story in the Palm of Your Hand”:What I love about these tiny stories is that they hold up a different lens to the world – they allow the rags and detritus of the everyday to turn into gems and jewels. Life isn’t a round, complete circle, after all – it’s shaped by fragments, shards, and pinpricks. It’s a collage of snapshots, a collection of the unspoken, a chest full of situations you can’t quite get rid of. … Sometimes it takes the smallest of things to open up the biggest of spaces.Early in my reading, I found a story that was, in form, like my drabbles about my mother. This made me feel less odd. As I read on, there were a few more. Ah, I’m not so weird after all, I told myself. I enjoyed all the stories, folding back the corners of many pages so I can return to them. I loved the pieces by Myna Chang, which seemed to be processing grief in the same way I have after losing my younger brother. I felt a deep connection reading three stories in a row: “When the Cowbirds Come to Carry Your Sister Away” by Audra Kerr Brown; “The Angel Gabriel Says It’s Not a Booty Call if He Doesn’t Have Genitals” by Frances Klein; and “Genie” by Kip Knott.These and other stories contain grief. In some, there’s a desire for, and sometimes an achievement of, closure. And there’s the work of redemption as well. Those are all things I look for in my reading. Such a pleasure. Check them out. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I worry that I’ll drive people away with so much focus on books that look at the country and tell us who we are and how we got here. But at the same time, I am compelled to read these and try to understand them as a way forward. And despite all that’s happened in the last five months (in the last two weeks!), I do believe in a positive way forward. I’m think you might be in the same head space.Maybe we're prone to think the country is a locomotive without an engineer, racing down a track. And, of course, trains can’t make U-turns. But we are forgetting there’s more than one train, there’s more than one track, there are many stops along the way. We can meet up at the empathy station and move forward from there. (Yes, ‘move forward’ means do the work.)I’ve been interested in the religious, cultural, and political influences driving our current situation. I’ve read several books on those topics (links near the end of this post). I’m ending these book reviews/discussions with looking at twentieth-century fascism in the U.S. After this week, I’d like to dive into a particularly fun thing to read during the summer—chapbooks, novellas, microfiction. Short stuff.Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel MaddowRachel Maddow dives into the rise of authoritarianism/fascism in the United States in the 1930s and how it continued into WWII. She includes the people we often associate with fascism such as Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, and Father Charles Coughlin. But there are also the surprising villains—U.S. Congress members who were working hand-in-hand with fascist organizations and German agents. The country was so focused on communism as a threat that the government ignored senators and representatives who used their offices and their privileges to promote fascism and deliver German propaganda to their constituents, all at the taxpayers’ expense.And finally, there are the ordinary Americans who fought fascism, those who amassed the evidence while the government slept. Unlikely heroes Leon Lewis, John C. Metcalfe, Henry Hoke, Drew Pearson, and Dillard Stokes were unrecognized at the time. Now, finally, they are receiving acknowledgement for their sacrifices.In the 1930s, Leon Lewis realized that the Friends of New Germany were working in Los Angeles to build up an army for the day the Germans would take over America. He was a trusted member of the local chapter of the Disabled American Veterans of America (yeah, ‘America’ twice). Since he had helped many other members, working pro bono, he called in some favors. Some of them agreed and became spies and infiltrated the Friends of the New Germany clubhouse and reported back on what they were doing.They had to work independently and then hand the information over to the military, who then acted to scuttle the plots. The FBI and Herbert Hoover were entirely focused on communism and doing things like creating a 2,000-page dossier on actor Charlie Chaplin. Meanwhile, Lewis and friends gathered evidence of the German government supporting and giving guidance to American fascist groups, illegally smuggling propaganda through the Port of Los Angeles. They foiled a plot by U.S. Marines to sell guns and ammunition to the American fascists. They exposed an inside-job scheme to take control of U.S. military armories in the West Coast. They even foiled a plot to lynch distinguished Jewish men in Los Angeles (you’ll recognize the names).John C. Metcalfe was a journalist involved in undercover investigations. He reported to the Dies Committee, formed in 1938 to keep tabs on communism in the United States (members of the Dies committee were opposed to strikes, strikers, collective bargaining, minimum wage, maximum work hours …). He turned over many photos from his investigations showing Nazi activity in the U.S. including Nazi camps for children and the recruitment of American storm troops. He also reported on Nazi Germany’s activities in German-American communities. He identified more than 130 organizations in his testimony “and noted an interesting similarity in their brand names. ‘There is a common practice of misusing the words “American,” “Patriotic,” “Christian,” “Defenders.” …That is to mislead the public as to the true principles of those organizations.’” ( 118-9)The Warner Brothers also worked to placate the film Production Code Administration (PCA)—which would not allow them to use the terms ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’—so that they could produce the film Confessions of a Nazi Spy in 1939. It’s quite a story. “Confessions of a Nazi Spy rang loud—even melodramatic—alarms about Hitler and his machinations inside the United States, but it was all a true story. The former G-man who led the real-life investigation of the spy ring said as much in the publicity tour that kicked off the movie’s release.” (147)The most intriguing of the story’s heroes is an ad man named Henry Hoke. He became interested in German propaganda when his son, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, told him that each morning, he found propaganda slipped under his door. Hoke’s dogged investigation led him to discover that the “German Library of Information was mailing nearly 100,000 copies of its weekly news digest, Facts in Review, to the 1940 version of American “influencers”—ministers, priests, teachers, editors,, elected officials. … ” as well as offering “all-expense-paid speaking tours by pro-fascist, isolationist Americans.” (207)One concerned German American sent Hoke 25 separate pieces of mail he had received, originating in different locations in Germany, in a single month. One thing that struck Hoke about the German propaganda campaign was the technical confidence of Nazi copy writers. Each mailing was a simple, straightforward attack on a single subject: President Roosevelt’s war preparation, or the Jews, or the Catholics, or America’s licentious freedoms, or the British. Sometimes the mailings included messages from the newly formed isolationist group the America First Committee. Sometimes they included reprints of quotations by famous American firsters, like Charles Lindberg, who had just told a rally of 40,000 people at Chicago’s Soldier Field, that it was time to make a deal with a new master of Europe, Adolf Hitler: ‘An agreement between us could maintain civilization and peace throughout the world as far into the future as we can see.’ (210)Eighteen months into investigating, using his own funds and draining the finances of his consulting business, Hoke and his team figured out that Senators Burton K. Wheeler and Gerald P. Nye, two of about a dozen legislators who leaned fascist, were sending the Nazi propaganda of the Steuben Society out of their offices using ‘franked’ envelopes.The ‘frank’ is a congressional privilege: Every member of Congress is given an allowance to cover the costs of sending communications to their constituents over their signature (their ‘frank’), free of postage cost. “It’s another thing altogether for them to give that free-mail privilege away to groups funded by hostile foreign governments, to use Americans’ tax dollars to pump into the United States propaganda authored by that foreign government.” (216)This story gets crazier and crazier, with employees of the Ford Motor Company compiling mailing lists (later used by U.S. Congress members) of appeasers, anti-Semites, pro-Nazis and fascists from fan mail addressed to isolationist members of Congress and to Charles Lindbergh.Honestly, the story of Henry Hoke and the franking scandal is alone worth the price of the book. It comes to involve an investigative journalist, Dillard Stokes, who plays an important role in exposing the involvement of Congress members in the Nazi propaganda operation. This leads to the arrest and eventual imprisonment of one of the story’s arch-villains, known German agent George Sylvester Viereck. “Viereck and other Nazi agents doled out cash to myriad publications in the United States, whose editors and publishers then helped the Germans consolidate a mailing list of friendlies and potential friendlies that may have reached into the millions.” (xxvii) However, this is only one of the traitorous things Viereck did as a German agent.There are so many characters in this drama, and Maddow seems to know that the story will become unwieldy. She begins with a list of the cast of characters in order of appearance. She ends with an epilogue that details what ultimately happened to each of them. The players didn’t all work in coordination with one another, so there are many threads in the fascist weave. I think the best way to read Prequel is to think about how the fascists hoped to take over the government, the techniques they used, and the ways they were able to influence congress members. And to then ask ourselves: How is this relevant today? Do we see a version of this repeating itself in a more contemporary key?* Decapitating Bolsheviks, in Hitler’s calculus, required ridding Germany of the ‘alien in their midst’—the Jews. When Viereck [German immigrant, American citizen, Nazi agent, a major presence throughout Prequel] suggested to the younger man that perhaps his sweeping antisemitism might displace many great artists, scientists, manufacturers, and generally esteemed citizens, Hitler disagreed: ‘The fact that a man is decent is no reason why we should not eliminate him.’ (xxiv)* ‘Propaganda helped us to power,’ Joseph Goebbels announced at the Nazi Party congress in 1936. ‘Propaganda kept us in power. Propaganda will help us conquer the world.’ (xxv)* ‘Democracy is doomed,’ said Coughlin. ‘This is our last election. It is Fascism or Communism. We are at a crossroads …. I take the road to Fascism.’ (59)* Try replacing ‘Germany’ and ‘Nazis’ with ‘Russia’ and ‘Putin’ here: “Germany’s agents were tasked with finding these fissures in American society, and then prying them further apart, exploiting them to make Americans hate and suspect each other, and maybe even wish for a new kind of country altogether. A partisan, bickering, demoralized America, the Nazis believed, would be incapable of mounting a successful war effort in Europe. It might even soften us up for an eventual takeover.” (238)A reader might find the complete lack of governmental action in the face of mountains of evidence depressing. While Germany was paying agents to influence congress members, and congress members were abusing the privileges of their office to disseminate German propaganda, the United States’ entry into WWII ended the fascist hope, at least for a few generations. But as we look at the rise of authoritarianism today, we certainly don't want a world war to come to our rescue. And yet, the book is a reminder that it is the people themselves who are the foundation of a democratic system. At this moment, while legislators are happily tossing their constituents under the bus (well, except Lisa Murkowski, who is ‘agonizing’ while throwing Americans into the road), I find Prequel heartening. In the 1930s and 40s, ordinary Americans never stopped working to secure evidence of wrongdoing; they never stopped working to retain their rights.It’s hard work. We have no choice but to do it. The big question for me is whether the work for democracy (holding legislators accountable, moving through the courts, protesting, canvassing and working to elect better guardians of the Constitution) will hold back authoritarianism for 16+ months, until the midterm elections.Other books about the state of America that I’ve recently discussed:Cults Like Us by Jane BordenCowboy Apocalypse by Rachel WagnerLittle Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America by Bridget ReadWild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking over America by Talia LavinAnd one example of an America doing wonderful things in the world:John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,Another tough week. I want to discuss my reading (more recommendations), but if it’s all too much, enjoy the lemon recipes I’ve tried these last few months. And don’t forget: Jess Craven posts daily about politically actionable things to do in the face of despair (she includes scripts and links to legislators—making it very easy!) as well as a Sunday post on all the good things that have happened during the week. Also, remember Reasons to Be Cheerful. This week they had an article on how bee-keeping enhances the quality of one’s life. One of my sons bee-keeps, so I loved reading that.Recipes!If you have been with me here for a bit, you know that I have a small lemon tree that produced some lemons this spring/summer and it was my goal to use them all. I am a half-dozen away from meeting that goal. I’ve made lemonade when my kids came over and tried recipes new and old (lemon bars!). Two new recipes that stand out as favorites are both from the NYTimes cooking section. Here are gift links:One-Bowl Lemon and Olive Oil CakeThis one also has almond flour and nutmeg, plus five eggs for the single layer (I know!), all of which give it a creamy texture and a fruity, nutty flavor. I made eight of these. Birthdays, visits to friends. Delicious!Baked Lemon Pudding With Blueberry Jam (confession: I used raspberry jam because I like it better)When one of my sons made a chocolate birthday cake for another to celebrate at their workplace, I decided we could go off script at home with lemon pudding. This is tangy and sweet, has a thin crust on top and is full of creamy goodness. It was a hit.Book RecommendationsThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel SparkI often try to squeeze in classic books in audio form, titles I’ve always wanted to read but haven’t found the time to. Recently, that novel has been The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I thought it was about a young teacher’s sexual awakening, but it’s a lot about the awakening of sexuality and insight of her students. (And, she’s a fascist. Different from what I imagined. . .) Since it’s a classic, I don’t need to discuss it here, but will say that I enjoyed it and recommend it. Short and pointed.Cowboy Apocalypse: Religion and the Myth of the Vigilante Messiah by Rachel Wagner: An effort to understand why guns matter so much in the United States.Another thing I’ve been working on is reading books that will help me understand the U.S. today and how we got here. Here’s the latest:While author Rachel Wagner states that there are many reasons for a person to own a gun, our American obsession with them is dangerous to our community. We have spent decades cultivating the idea that violence will save us from harm—harm being whatever it is we fear—and we’ve role-played that violence until it has become endemic across the nation. In a country of vigilantes, the attack on the capitol on January 6, 2021 appears to be a preordained outcome of this belief system.It’s strange that the notion that violence will save us has its roots in a nostalgic view of the past, when everything was better. Like all nostalgia, that better past never existed, but it was one that dismissed issues of racial inequality, genocide, women’s rights, climate degradation, immigration, and just about any other significant global concern. You know, America as white people playing baseball and eating apple pie on a summer’s day. An endless Fourth of July. And how do we get back to that imagined past? ‘Burn it all down’ is the apt phrase, but in the U.S. this means, specifically, shoot ‘em up until all the people living outside that summer’s day disappear and those left have the reward of a “purified post-apocalyptic world” (3).“Nostalgia is longing that neglects lived experience.” (237)The “good guy with a gun” isn’t interested in saving the world. His goal is to save himself and his family. And he will use that gun, just as cowboys did to ‘win’ the American West, wiping out the ‘savages’ and repurposing the story as one of a man conquering a barren frontier. In fact, simply owning a gun is one way of defining oneself as good and as opposing those who are evil. Wagner contrasts this vigilantism against those national military actions of the past that actually did fight threats, say, against the fascists in World War II.The cowboy apocalypse is a complete mythic narrative arc. It crafts a story of America’s frontier beginnings, blending it with the imagination of the world’s imminent ending. As I define it, the cowboy apocalypse is a pervasive story expressed in the idiom of armed white men accustomed to being in charge. In this new version of the frontier story, non-white enemies can again be defeated and the wilderness tamed, but only by employing more gun violence. The gun, as a symbol of violent colonization, reflects the continuing force of frontier ideals in a contemporary environment. (2)“The cowboy apocalypse depends on a self-proclaimed gun-wielding messiah who performs radical salvation with a gun. He doesn’t save the world. He saves his world.” (2)As Elton John and Bernie Taupin sang, “I’ve seen that movie, too.” Wagner notes that it’s not just movies that celebrate this idea, but also television shows, video games, and novels. But how did we get here?The two influences on this view of our future are Christian apocalypticism and American frontier mythology, in which indigenous residents were deemed no more than beasts who were cleared out to make room for settler development by cowboys who had to take matters in their own hands. This leads to the ‘good guy with a gun’ trope, a man who can now repeat the wild west narrative.Ironically, “the cowboy Apocalypse can be viewed as a nationalist retreat, a recursive reference to a violent American past and a dark desire to recreate those conditions. … despite its portrayal of manly force, the cowboy Apocalypse reflects what Robert Alter (1966) has called a ‘failure of nerve, a determination to opt out of the challenges, complexities, and threats of history.’’’ (172)Wagner includes several chapters discussing how various groups and media have contributed to our retreat from the challenges of the modern world. These influences range widely, from the Ku Klux Klan, the NRA, and doomsday preppers to books and films to first-person shooter games and live action role play (LARPing—and isn’t that what the January 6, 2021 vigilantes were doing?)“The hankering for apocalypse is a hunger for retribution. But it is also a need for the world-as-story.” (60)The chapter on apocalyptic religious books interested me because I happen to have read some of them, purely by chance. When I was a pre-teen, a friend bought me The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Linsey, which sold more than 10 million copies in the 1970s. I did not grow up in an evangelical household and neither did she (both Catholics with big issues, but different issues from apocalyptic thinking). I think she happened to see the book on a display in a bookstore and grabbed it since I liked to read. Being young, I bought Linsey’s vision. All these decades later, I can remember his writing that the locusts in the Book of Revelations were military helicopters. I looked for signs, and believed that Henry Kissinger was the Anti-Christ based on some numerology nonsense in which the letters of his name added up to 666. But, like every apocalypse predicted so far, Linsey’s didn’t come to pass.A series of books that I had a brief interaction with was the Left Behind series (1994-2007) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, which Wagner describes as “fundamentalist action thrillers” with potboiler plots (67). By the time these were published, this wasn’t anything I wanted to read; but in 1995, I became a high school librarian and students wanted me to order the first in the series. I did, but then had second thoughts. I believed in including all sorts of books in the collection and didn’t want to keep these from students although I thought their vision was pure nonsense. A library collection is not a personal collection (note to Moms for Liberty, et. al.). But these books were excessively, gratuitously violent, weirdly portraying Jesus as the savior through superior firepower, making violence sacred). I felt they were entirely inappropriate for the collection. (Why aren’t conservative book ban folks getting in front of school boards in outrage and reading passages of these books? Just asking.)I must not have been the only person who found the series inappropriate for teens. In 1998, the author started publishing Left Behind: The Kids, a YA version of a post-apocalyptic world. I bought those and weeded (recycle bin) the others. In Cowboy Apocalypse, the point Wagner makes is that these sorts of books expressed evangelical anxieties of the time, but also expected God to intervene against evil. Today’s ‘dooms-dayers’ seemed to have given up that vision. We are now grounded in a belief that it's every person for themself.Why, Wagner asks, must that be our national creed?If the world runs on belief, why not choose beliefs, grounded, and care? Why not craft a vision that is more inclusive and kinder? Belief is not a knee-jerk acknowledgment of what someone else says. If we value human dignity, we can choose to build a world around values of care.This kind of constructive storytelling isn’t typically performed by governments or political movements. It’s enacted by real impassioned people as they live toward the future they want. (237)She concludes:Nostalgia is longing that neglects lived experience. Instead, it depends on an imagined past. If only we could live the way we used to. If only there were just one story to tell. If only we could be at ease. We are experiencing a white apocalypse, an end to the world as white people in America have known it. The s**t has hit the fan, and those of us who are white cannot continue unchallenged for theft, indifference, greed, and harm. But what follows the-world-as-we-know-it need not be a barren, bullet-ridden wasteland. What would it mean to survive together with those we have heretofore ignored? What besides the imagination of a gun-driven paroxysm is possible? (237)She then lays out several possible futures, all far better than the cowboy apocalypse we are trending toward. And this is heartening. We will succeed in a bright future if we have the will to do so.Cowboy Apocalypse is a worthy read that includes an impressive bibliography and a useful index. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends!A Big WeekendHappy Father’s Day. I know holidays can be full of missing loved ones as well as celebrations of those we have with us. I hope you find something/someone to bring you a moment of joy and that the day includes good company.I also know yesterday was a big day for lots of you. I attended a protest, one I figured would be quite small. It was small relative to protests in major cities. And yet it was a big, beautiful 😉protest—four times the size of the last protest I attended in the same place. We had to park about ¾ mile away as the streets were full. The thing I like about attending protests is the energy of the crowd, which can fuel a lot of follow up action including writing letters and postcards to voters in swing districts as well as emailing and calling legislators.Summer Reading ConsiderationsI’m considering my summer reading, which, unlike the beach read stereotype, can be serious. For me “summer reading” only means extra hours of light for reading good books.While I’m always (slowly) reading a book in print, I also listen to audiobooks when I can. I don’t drive a lot; though I walk my dogs regularly, I mostly do so with my son. So the audiobooks don't always add up. But for this summer, I have high hopes for lots of listening because I plan to work on a major sewing project, one that will take months, and I like to listen while away the hours. So I’m making a list!Generally, I’m tired of seeing the same few books recommended in every newspaper’s book review section and by every literary blog. It seems they don’t reach very far to come up with ideas. Perhaps they have agreements with the big five to promote specific books. Who knows?How to Survive a Bear AttackI started my summer books with a recommendation from Kelly Turner: How to Survive a Bear Attack by Claire Cameron. It’s not what the title might lead you to believe. While Cameron does talk about how to survive a bear attack, she mostly discusses how rare bear attacks really are. Her interest in them is connected to two facts in her life. An extremely unusual bear attack that killed a couple in a place she loves—Algonquin Park, a vast Canadian wilderness area—makes her question the peace she has felt there. How can terror exist in such beauty? And, when she is diagnosed with the same melanoma that killed her father (he died at approximately the same age at which she was diagnosed), she wrestles with the reality of having the same genetic issue, wondering if her sons will also have it. So the ‘bear attack’ that she is really surviving is her rare cancer—a thing that feels as strange and inescapable as a predatory mauling.How to Survive is a worthy read. The only thing I didn’t connect with was getting into the bear’s head and having its motivations assigned to specific causes. I kept thinking of the philosophical problem of “What is It Like to be a Bat?” (It’s impossible to know what it’s like for a bat to be a bat.) But the wrestling with a world of beauty, danger, and cancer was relatable and touching.The Frog in the Throat My next, and most recent, read was The Frog in the Throat by Markus Werner (translated by Michael Hofmann). It’s a NYRB imprint and I’d hoped it would make a good family book club read, so I bought two copies. It didn't land the way I’d hoped. While it is considered a literary work (as are all the NYRB classics), the humor felt juvenile and the connection between the dead father and the living son didn’t hit. But maybe you’ll like it. Here’s a link to a blog post by someone (Jackie Law) who enjoyed it.What we have here then is two generations looking back on their lives and how [they] were moulded by expectation. Subjects drift in and out of their consideration: men, women, desire, love, marriage, parenting, aging, manners, greed, politicians, crime, fame, television. As they postulate why attitudes have changed the reader may ponder the likenesses between their wider thinking.The SafekeepThe Women’s Prize announced two winners for the best works by female authors of any nationality written in English and published in the U.K. Yael van der Wouden won the Fiction Prize for The Safekeep, a novel about collective memory and personal secrets that brings together two women in the post-World War II Netherlands. I mentioned previously that I’d read it. There’s a lot to love about The Safekeep and I’m glad to see it win a major prize. The one problem I had with it—and it was an issue for me—was that the big ‘reveal’ the author is setting up is obvious very early on. I was neither shocked nor surprised by it, but instead responded with ‘well, that took forever.’A Few Books I Plan to ReadOne book that is everywhere in my news feeds, and that I do plan on reading is Melissa Febos' The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year without Sex. The ubiquity of it and all the positive buzz has me interested.In the The Republic of Letters, Isaac Kolding recommended a William Dean Howells novel, A Hazard of New Fortunes. The post discusses how Howells has fallen into obscurity. In grad school, I read one of his novels—The Rise of Silas Lapham—and really liked it. So I think this is a recommendation I’m going to take up.A Hazard of New Fortunes … is a panoramic depiction of Gilded Age New York City—from beer halls and eating houses to the mansions of the nouveau riche—seen through the eyes of a blinkered, bourgeois, morally normalist, but ultimately sympathetic couple, Basil and Isabel March.Books on the FLDS CultAs my novel, Keep Sweet, launches in less than a week, I want to recommend some good books I’ve read about the FLDS polygamist cult that Keep Sweet is partly modeled on.Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon KrakauerKrakauer’s dive into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) was the first to draw me to the topic of highly authoritative Christian patriarchy. FLDS is based on ‘the principle’ that polygamy is a directive from God and is required for members to reach the highest levels of celestial afterlife.To show how the FLDS came to be what it is, Krakauer gives a history of the LDS Church (Mormons) and shows how two of its original ideas play into the brutal 1984 murder of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her baby daughter Erica by her two brothers-in-law, Ron and Dan Lafferty. One of these ideas is that men (and only men) can receive direct revelations from God; another is blood atonement.Krakauer includes life in “Short Creek” (Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT) under the despotic Warren Jeffs, who arranges marriages and prohibits toys, books, TV, and even the color red. While Jeffs raped girls as young as twelve and had audio recording of some of his crimes, his later arrest and conviction—after being placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List—is outside the timeframe of Banner.Because the FLDS doesn’t believe that government authority is legitimate, Short Creek citizens are free to cheat local, state and federal government out of resources, most notably by receiving multi-millions in welfare benefits for women who are plural wives (but not legally married) and their children.Should women attempt to escape their arranged marriages, they can be returned by police and other authorities who are also members of the cult.Though Krakauer labels the concern of (literary critic) Harold Bloom that Mormons will become exceedingly powerful in the near future as ‘far-fetched,’ old-time patriarchy is making a comeback. (”Your body. My choice!”) This alone makes reading Under the Banner of Heaven worthwhile. Short Creek’s Warren Jeffs and the FLDS is a template for what theocratic Christian patriarchy can look like.Escape by Carolyn JessopEscape is the story of a woman’s life in Short Creek under the reign of Warren Jeffs. Jeffs arranges Jessop’s marriage to a family enemy when she is eighteen years old. A man more than thirty years her senior, Jessop’s husband already has three other wives and will go on to have at least two more.Jessop’s husband plays his wives off of one another. All but one can’t stand him, yet they vie for his affection. He alternates sleeping with (and impregnating) them. Jessop has baby after baby—eight in all—and one of her children is severely disabled. At one point pregnancy and childbirth almost kill her, but none of the other ‘sister wives’ will help her because they are envious. They tell her that her child’s disability is God’s judgment on her for being willful and disobedient. An “alpha wife” rules the roost, making the others cook and clean. She beats the children who are not her own. Eventually, Jessop’s health issues require her to have a hysterectomy. According to the religious tenets of the FLDS, the purpose of polygamy is procreation, but Jessop’s husband still demands sex—that is, when he isn’t sending her off to work in a hole-in-the-wall motel. Her escape at age 35 and her successful custody battle for her children will have you cheering.Stolen Innocence by Elissa WallElissa Wall of Stolen Innocence has a slightly different story. While her place as a woman in the FLDS cult is the same–-to submit to her husband in mind, body and soul—she is only fourteen when forced to marry. She tries everything she can to get out of it, but Warren Jeffs won't listen, claiming to have had a vision from God. Elissa’s husband is her first cousin, with whom she has never gotten along. She is his first wife. He rapes her on a regular basis. Before she can escape, she has several miscarriages and a stillbirth.When Warren Jeffs is arrested on charges of child sexual abuse, Elissa is one of the primary witnesses against him in his trial. Her bravery is key to putting him behind bars. Unfortunately, while Short Creek is no longer run by the FLDS and many have left the cult, Jeffs continues to control, from prison, the actions of those still in the fold. These include praying for the death of author Jon Krakauer (Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith).Lost Boy by Brent W. JeffsAn obvious question for the reader of books on the FLDS concerns boys. If each man is supposed to have at least three wives, what happens to the leftover boys? The answer is that they are thrown out on the road to fend for themselves when they are young, keeping the ratio of men to women low. These throwaways are called ‘lost boys.’The author of Lost Boy, Brent Jeffs, is the nephew of Warren Jeffs and the grandson of the earlier FLDS prophet, Rulon Jeffs. Brent was the first to file charges of sexual assault against Warren Jeffs, after recovering memories of being repeatedly raped by Warren when he was five years old. After his family is excommunicated from the FLDS cult, and Brent has a falling out with them, he becomes a lost boy. He shows us what this means: without family support, the boys must fend for themselves in a society where they are entirely unprepared to live. The results are poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, and sometimes suicide. With help and therapy, Brent succeeds in creating a family of his own.Do you have any recommendations for other summer readers? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I’m finishing up some reading I plunged into seeking answers to the question of why we in the U.S. are what we are now. I previously discussed two books I read, Wild Religion and Cults Like Us. I also listened to an audiobook of Cowboy Apocalypse, but I need to get a look at a print copy before I can talk about it. And since I don’t want to buy it twice, I’m getting that copy through an interlibrary loan. (Yay libraries!)I’m ready to move into somewhat lighter summer reading, and I’ll discuss that soon. But one more thing that’s bothering me about the condition we’re in is how everything feels like a pyramid scheme to me—the way the country runs, the publishing industry, etc. So I read a book about such schemes. Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America by Bridget Read.“Here are the new little Machiavellians, practicing their personable crafts for hire and for the profit of others, according to rules laid down by those above them.” C. Wright Mills, White Collar, 1951. (Epigraph for Little Bosses Everywhere)Seventy-five percent of the 6.7 million Americans who participate in MLMs are women. Recognizable names are Mary Kay, Amway, Herbalife, Nu Skin, Avon, Shaklee, Primerica, CUTCO. Yet at any given time there are more than 700 operating in the U.S.Industry turnover runs between 50 and 75%. “An AARP study conducted in 2018 … concluded that 7.7% of American adults had tried multi-level marketing at some point or 17 million people.” (11) People who are overrepresented in MLM‘s are Hispanic Americans (more on how they are targeted from John Oliver, below); white, Christian stay at home mothers; and army wives.“If the story of multilevel marketing sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. The parable of homespun Yankee ingenuity and the power of free enterprise that MLM has been telling for the better part of a century contains inventions and elisions that have gone largely unchecked through 14 U.S. presidential administrations, and may constitute one of the most devastating, long running scams in modern history. …“The $40-plus billion in ‘sales’ with which the industry reports to make up its value are, in reality, purchases made by its own sellers.” (3)In the U.S., MLMs are not required to report the actual income of their sellers. (However, in Canada disclosure is mandatory. There, as an example, 85% of Mary Kay Independent beauty consultants earned zero dollars in commissions in 2022.) Third-party analyses show that 99% of MLM consultants not only do not make money, but rather they lose it.In Little Bosses Everywhere, Bridget Read makes the argument that MLMs are no different from outlawed pyramid schemes, but have been allowed to exist in the United States for more than 100 years through political favor.Pyramid schemes are those where the opportunity is not only to sell the product but to recruit others to do the same, and the product is just a cover for transferring money from people on the lower levels (down line) to people on the higher levels. How MLMs are not considered pyramid schemes has entirely to do with politics and political donations, particularly to the Republican party (although Bill Clinton also seems to have given the nod to MLMs).The most notable MLM ties to the Republican Party are through the heirs of the founders of Amway, Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel. And yes, Betsy DeVos, former education secretary during Trump‘s first administration, is Richard DeVos’s daughter-in-law. (The DeVos family is rightwing Christian and looks to dismantle public education by using public funds to support religious schools.)While Little Bosses has a large section devoted to Herbalife as well, the section on Amway interested me most because of the Calvinist/Puritan religious philosophy of its founders and current leaders. That Puritan thought undergirds our beliefs today is an argument of the last book I discussed on Be a Cactus—Cults Like Us.“Amway‘s variant of multilevel marketing has a particular branch of American religious conservatism at its roots. The DeVos and Van Andel families were part of a sect within a sect of Protestants called Calvinists or Reformed Christians. Known for their thrift and piety, Calvinist inspired nineteenth-century sociologist Max Weber‘s concept of the “Protestant work ethic”: Webster observed that Calvinists, in part because of their belief in predestination, were fanatic about professional success. Working hard and accumulating wealth were ways to prove that they were among those chosen by God to be saved rather than damned. Though Calvinist make up a small fraction of Christians in America today, the Calvinist tradition is part of the country‘s foundations. The Puritans, who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1641 were Calvinist, as were founding fathers like Benjamin Franklin.” (123-4)Through political wrangling many pyramid schemes are able to call themselves MLMs and avoid being shut down by the government. The book has a particular focus on the carnage of the Amway corporate and how it has eluded consequences through multi-million dollar donations to Republican presidents and other rightwing politicians. As luck would have it, Gerald Ford was an ally of Amway, which got very lucky when, just as it was being investigated, their man became president. Later, in 1979, when MLMs were investigated by the FTC, they were given a pass in what is now called the Amway decision. Further investigation led, in 2010, to Amway agreeing to pay a $34 million settlement but admitting no wrongdoing.“Back in 1997, when Republicans and Congress helped get Amway a $238 million tax break after the founders gave the party its largest donation ever, Betsy had declared that she and her family expected things in return for their ‘soft money.’ Now with Donald Trump, they were really going to get them.… Trump helped install new federal judges into the courts who are backed by groups the DeVos and Van Andel families had spent many years funding, like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. Betsy DeVos proved ready to dismantle her own department as a lifelong critic of public education. Some of her majority policy decisions during her four years in office were to expand school choice budgets from public coffers and to severely narrow the scope of Title IX.” (242)The close MLM-political connection (especially Amway-Republican) was also boosted by the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. Being allowed to self-report sales allows for false accounting. The money earned on the ‘down line’ is sent up to the DeVoses and Van Andels of the world. After it lands in the pockets of these wealthy folks, they pass some along to groups like the Heritage Foundation (think Project 2025).Interchapters of Little Bosses follow “Monique,” a Mary Kay Cosmetics Independent Beauty Consultant, through her ten years with the group. Her rewards for being a distributor appear to be like scouting badges—she gets pins and jackets designating her place in the company—except that no skill is acquired in earning them, and earning them costs dearly. Only 6 percent of Mary Kay consultants reach the lowest level of leadership. Monique does work her way up a few levels, but she consistently loses money, finally, she estimates, more than $75,000.The bulk of Little Bosses Everywhere is centered on the history of MLMs in the United States and the way they have laid waste to people’s lives. It’s a well-researched book, and to be honest, a bit horrifying. Those who believe most and work hardest appear to end up in the most debt, their credit and lives destroyed. Only those at the top succeed—and this has nothing to do with hard work, though people on the bottom who don’t succeed (statistically, that’s everyone on the bottom) are told it’s their fault.Little Bosses includes both a solid index and hundreds of endnotes. One thing it lacks is a glossary. This is a minor point, but there are so many acronyms here for government agencies and MLM in-group levels (as Amanda Montell notes, cultish groups have their own vocabulary), that it would be nice to be able to refresh whenever one comes up.Here are a few interesting looks into MLMs. The Alyssa Grenfell YouTube channel can be dangerous—you may find yourself far down in the rabbit hole of her regular episodes on being a faithful Mormon/Mormon missionary and then leaving the church.Multilevel Marketing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)(Lots on Herbalife)Why MLM Really Means *Mormons Losing Money* This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

I had such a wonderful time at my ‘soft’ book launch two weeks ago (actual launch date is June 21). People from all walks of my life were there—family, friends from high school and college, from writing workshops and work. So much fun. However, the road to this launch was pretty crazy. I wrote an essay about that path. And while, after writing the essay, I decided on cupcakes with little book decorations on them (easier to serve and eat than a cake), this is a true story.My Book Launch on the Day of My Mother's FuneralorLet Us Eat CakeMy collection of feminist short fiction was scheduled to launch on the Ides of March 2021. Inauspicious, perhaps, but I wasn’t superstitious—nor was I Julius Caesar. I was an emerging author, happiness humming within.Story collections are a hard sell for an unknown writer, so I was grateful when the micro press Los Nietos selected mine for publication. Many of the stories had landed in literary journals, but gathered as a book, they signaled my transition from writer to author. I’d throw a kick-off party, ordering a cake with the image of the book cover. Among loved ones, I’d realize my dream.What I didn’t anticipate was that just as the manuscript was accepted, the COVID-19 pandemic set in. At the same time, my father began his death journey. My mother, more than a decade into dementia, was also approaching her end. My two sisters and I had been providing care daily. Now we were blocked at the check-in to their assisted living apartments.By registering as self-employed caretakers, we dodged a then common reality: parents dying alone in nursing homes, visitors barred. We took turns being trapped inside with them.My dad, mostly deaf, blasted TV conspiracy theorist Lou Dobbs at top volume for hours. Dobbs’ screeds about the party of hate, which included me, were painful. Dejected over being called a terrible person all day while attending to my parents’ needs, I felt I’d been dropped into an unnamed circle of hell. Pandemic rules didn’t permit me to hang out in the building’s hallways. I used earplugs to drown out the noxious noise and focused on my publisher’s editing suggestions. We discussed the cover design by email. Chaperoning my parents’ dance with death, I was also bringing my dream to life.I briefly entertained the idea of sharing my publication news with my parents. They would be gone before the book arrived, so it was a now-or-never thing. Yet, who was I to my mother now? When a home care nurse asked, my mother guessed, eventually landed on ‘my daughter,’ and was rewarded with our glee. Her victory was short lived. She was then asked my name.No matter. Even if her mind had been sound, she wouldn’t have liked the dark humor of my work, which poked at her sacred cows, including the Catholic Church and pre-marital sexual purity. I hadn’t written it for her.Instead, as she had no short-term memory, I surprised her twice a day, delivering what she wanted—my special recipe chocolate, toffee, and pecan cookies.My father disdained fiction (except, it seemed, on TV). Besides, he had started to hallucinate. He’d point out an imagined dog in the living room and greet dead family members. “Florence?” he’d ask the corner of the room. Our journeys separating, I kept mine to myself.While there was no physical escape, I envisioned the end of the pandemic. An edited copy of my stories, sent for my approval, allowed me to imagine communal celebration.When my father died in April 2020, I briefly sat with his body to say goodbye, recalling, as one does at a death, his better self and his joy in his grandchildren. The following morning, my mother began asking, on a loop, where he had gone.The frenzy of COVID deaths created a cremation backlog at the local mortuary as well as a burial waiting list at the cemetery. In August, masked and limited in number, we interred our father’s ashes. Our Mom continued questioning his whereabouts.As the months of caring for my mother in isolation dragged on, my publisher and I both approved of the new title, the cover, and the final draft of Acts of Contrition. It was a real book, fully formed.When my mother died in December 2020, the pandemic still raged. The earliest openings in the cemetery were for the following March. Only March 15—my book launch date—would work for one of her grandkids, who had to travel.A box of books arrived from the publisher. I’d seen many small press authors make a show of opening their advanced copies and, much like ordering the book-cover bedecked cake, thought it celebratory. I fetched my son to record me ripping away the packing tape. I would post the video on social media.When I came back to the box, it was open, a box cutter alongside. My husband, who sat at the kitchen counter, said, “Your books look great!”I could have resealed the box, but the fakery didn’t suit me. I let go of the fantasy.Weeks before my mother’s funeral, my husband’s younger sister was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. She died—suddenly, unexpectedly—on March 5.Though California was in the throes of an extreme drought, in San Diego on March 15, it poured. Masked, we gathered for the funeral under an outdoor pavilion while blasting wind drove the rain under the roof. The benches held pools of water. We stood, soaking and freezing, through the prayers and eulogy, warmed only by the thought of our mother looking down and chuckling at the mad spectacle. Our aunt later reminded us of the Irish proverb, “Blessed is the corpse that rains falls upon.”After our mother had been blessed in abundance, my siblings offered condolences on the death of my sister-in-law. As if it had been specially ordered for Mom, the rain stopped when we left for lunch. We were still in the outdoor-seating-only phase of the pandemic. With winter jackets on, we were ushered into a large plastic tent, the only people at the restaurant. As we toasted Mom, I snapped a photo, the only thing I would share that day. Between my mom’s funeral and my sister-in-law’s death, who was I to be celebrating the birth of my book? Instead, I worked to reconcile myself to a number of losses.Back in 2020, a few months before my father died, I’d had to euthanize my fifteen-year-old Labrador retriever. She followed my sixteen-year-old wolfish rescue dog in crossing the rainbow bridge. Because I was often away taking care of my parents, I intended to live for a few years without dogs. The daily desolation proved too much. I wanted to break through the miasma of grief surrounding me. Though rescue puppies were hard to come by, in the period between my parents’ deaths, my husband and I found a chestnut-colored hound mix 120 miles from our home. As we chatted with the rescue employees, they mentioned that the people who’d intended to adopt Clove’s sister came over 200 miles the day before, but didn’t feel a connection with her. Since we’d had two dogs for many years, we took her home as well.I later wrote a chapbook about the experience, The Mortality of Dogs and Humans. When it launched in February 2023, the world was still on fire and wasn’t going to change soon. Celebrating a 70-page experiment felt self-indulgent. And yet its purpose was to help others move on from grief to embrace both memories and new experiences. I needed to take my own advice. Enough time had passed that I could.I wrote a hopeful novel with the kind of escape I dreamed of when locked down with my parents.In June 2025, my book about a girl working to escape a patriarchal cult will launch. It has a happy-tears ending. The characters celebrate their freedom with two rituals—one traditional and one made up on the spot.I’ve had time to reflect on how national events entwined with my grief to launch the unexpected journey I’m on. I learned from my novel’s characters that recognizing milestones with ritual engenders emotional and psychological health. I’ll continue to write work that addresses real life. But I’m also looking forward to having my cake at the novel’s launch, frosted with the image of a stunning book cover.Keep Sweet is a book that bucked some trends (“Your protagonist needs a boyfriend,” one agent told me.) Here’s a related article that writers might find helpful: Trust Your Instincts: Why Writing for Yourself Leads to Better Books from Jane Friedman.Summer ReadingI’ve seen a lot of talk about the AI-hallucinated summer reading list of nonexistent books published by the Chicago Sun-Times, mostly discussing the downside of using AI and admonishing the writer who generated the list. You’ve likely seen this, too. But I am interested in this idea: Media—both legacy media like the Sun-Times and others—don’t pay writers enough money to do the work they are asking for. If we want humans to create, we need them to be paid fairly.Here’s a post by Abra McAndrew that hits that note quite nicely:And here’s Ron Charles in the WaPo Book Club newsletter, whose post is really making a plea for teaching critical thinking:But those imaginary titles — and other whoppers — appeared last week on a summer reading list generated by AI and blithely published by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer (cringe).Many Statements of Concern were issued, but the literati haven’t had this much fun since the White House announced that Trump was going to Israel to “promote the possibility of lasting peach.” And honestly, given the ocean of errors, lies and inanities we’re paddling in, a summer reading list of fake books feels no worse than stage-9 cancer.As to how this all fits into a plea for critical thinking:AI’s ever-evolving facility with language integrated with massive stores of our personal data will soon enable a few powerful tech companies to manipulate, persuade and inspire us in ways no dictator has ever dreamed.We have one tool with which to resist that grim possibility: our capacity for critical thinking. And yet the ways we teach critical thinking are melting away faster than the North Pole.What’s on your summer reading list? Do you have any suggestions for me or others? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I had a great time last weekend at my ‘soft launch’ for Keep Sweet, which will officially launch June 21. Beautiful venue, lots of friends and family. A dream come true! I hope to post about that journey—my first book launch was on the day of my mom’s funeral—next week. Meanwhile, I’m back to wondering about America’s cultish behaviors. This is long, a deeper dive, so I’m holding off on “What I’m Reading,” etc. Also, if you’re in a hurry, treat the last section about specific cults like a sidebar. Or go ahead and listen to the audio while you cook, clean, or push the swing. The week’s banned book news is here. Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America by Jane BordenIf you have been a subscriber for a while, you know I have been exploring the question of cults, and, lately, the question of Donald Trump’s popularity in the United States. (Which, granted, may be waning now that he has had a chance to put his ideas into play.) It has always seemed to me that there’s a connection between Trump’s popularity and cults. In seeking an explanation for the connection, I recently read Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America by Talia Lavin and discussed it here.Wild Faith didn’t answer my questions in that it only accounts for the 14% of voters who are evangelical Christians and not the other 36ish % who also picked Trump repeatedly. In Cults Like Us, I found an answer. Not a perfect answer, of course, but one that makes sense when we look at American thought over time. That overview starts with the Puritans.While admitting that the Puritans were not a cult (ask yourself who the charismatic, all powerful leader was—there wasn’t one), Borden argues that their arrival to what is now Massachusetts in 1620 brought the beginning of a still active doomsday culture. This current culture in the U.S. is not limited to religious groups, but has gone secular big time with the help of the media we consume—advertising, movies, and now online influencers.Cults Like Us argues that Americans think in apocalyptic terms because the Puritan/Pilgrim concept of our country as a shining city on a hill—our notions of exceptionalism and, the flipside of that coin, persecution—undergirds all of our thinking.In an author’s note and then in an introduction, Borden discusses Puritan thought. This is pretty much a requirement since most of us only learn that they were involved in the first Thanksgiving and, seventy years later, conducted the infamous witch trials. Those trials ended in the hanging of 19 people and two dogs as well as one man being pressed to death. This witch hunt effectively ended their community, and they were absorbed into the population at large. How did they manage to so thoroughly self-destruct?The Puritan work ethic, one practiced in the United States, is based on the idea that pursuing a calling (i.e., working) is the best way to glorify God. Having a calling is an external sign that a person is among the chosen rather than the damned. In addition, as a doomsday culture, the Puritans awaited the end of the world, and their leaders predicted it frequently. (E.g., Cotton Mather predicted it for 1697, 1716, 1717, 1727, and 1736. He died in 1728, so he stopped making predictions at that point. ;-))Puritans believed it was their duty to destroy sin in others, and they did not allow dissent. It’s no surprise that a high-control group like this ends up accusing one another of practicing witchcraft.The way the group destroyed sin in its members was to control their “behavior, beliefs, and information intake, all via high pressure to conform. Mandatory church attendance. All transgressions made public. Residents forced into informants.” (17) In addition “Puritans were so obsessed with obedience, as most high-control groups are, that rebellious children could even be sentenced to death. Fortunately, no child received this sentence, but the fear it instilled and made commonplace was effective enough.” (18) Parents who were too indulgent of their children risked their own salvation. High levels of affection were reserved for God.Once Borden establishes this as the foundation of her argument, she delineates the characteristics of a cult. For the sake of clarity and compression, I’m going to make lists here, which is not the structure of the book.Psychologist Robert J. Lifton defines cults as having three characteristics:* a charismatic leader who increasingly becomes an object of worship* coercive persuasion or thought reform (i.e., brainwashing)* economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie.To these, Borden adds her own characteristics:* the leader enjoys unchecked power* the leader exploits people, specifically by manipulating their latent beliefs and desires* the leader almost always exhibits some kind of narcissistic personality disorder* groups can be of any sizeSince thought reform (brainwashing) is central to cult success, Borden includes the criteria that define it:* information and communication are controlled* perfection and purity are demanded* sins and faults are openly discussed and excoriated* doctrine and leadership are ultimate truth and beyond criticism* personal experiences are subordinate to ideology* language and thought-terminating clichés are used to force conformity* everyone in the outside world is evil* experiences are orchestrated to appear spontaneously mystical.She also notes that sociologists agree that cult-like thinking surges under specific circumstances—in times of:* technological revolution* social upheaval* crisisThe bulk of Cults Like Us is made up of chapters, each of which covers a single characteristic of a cult and has many examples that fit the bill, some small, some with large followings:* our desire for strong man to fix our problems and punish those who aggrieve us* the temptation to feel chosen, which justifies acting on our base desires* our knee-jerk anti-authoritarianism (in this meaning, an authoritarian is often a coalition of powerful and evil people who conspire against good guys like you and me—a sort of antagonist. I mention this because the the cult will follow an authoritarian that it believes will fix its problems, say, a fascist); anti-intellectualism* our impulse to buy and sell salvation on the open market* the belief that hard work is holy, while idleness is a sin* how quickly and easily we fall into an us-versus-them world view* a need for order which makes us vulnerable to anyone screaming chaos and then offering control.* She also explores what she calls an eighth credo, which is the grace-nature divide, which distinguishes and creates a hierarchy between humans and the rest of the planet.One last important element of cult thinking is that they have an apocalyptic vision of the end of the world. A lot of the religious (particularly Christian) groups have this in common. They get it from the New Testament Book of Revelations, so Borden takes some time to discuss it.“Revelation is not simply the title of this work. It’s the title of a genre. Many works in the genre were produced during the first and second centuries, times of great economic, and martial strife, which were always marked by increases in end time thinking, and the accompanying vision of how it will go down. But of the revelations produced around then, only John’s had stood the test of time. First, its vague and coded language—likely employed to save himself from Roman retribution, via plausible deniability—has allowed groups throughout history to plug their own enemies into its narrative. It’s beloved mostly for its violence. One persecuted group after another has found solace in its visions of its own oppressors squished inside the wine press. We are vengeful creatures, we humans, we grapes of the Earth.” (35)End Times cults in the United States have been so numerous that I don’t want to go over the examples here. (However, I include some in the list at the end of this post.) Suffice it to say that Borden discusses many, that they are very strange, and it makes for interesting reading. What is important is ‘end times’ thinking leads to the Christian Nationalist movement, which, of course, wants the United States declared a Christian nation. The idea of a nation awaiting a savior is called the American Monomyth here. The argument is that people who consume that myth have a sense that they’re just living on the sidelines, waiting for something to come in and change their lives. This releases them—all of us—of individual responsibility for the success or failures of our communities and our nation. The problem with it is that it undermines democracy. Democracy, of course, is not something where somebody else comes and saves us. (It does not allow for “I alone can fix it!”) Instead, it’s messy. It's painstaking. It’s slow. We have to cooperate with each other, and we can’t wait for a superhero.While Borden doesn’t set out to write a political book, she must note that people who believe in the American Monomyth combined with an apocalyptic vision of the end of democracy/the beginning of a theocratic Christian nation are more likely to support someone like Trump. In 2023, GOP caucus goers “determined that Trump‘s most autocratic statements make some voters more likely to support him, including 19 percent in response to his claim that he’d have ‘no choice’ but to jail his opponents if reelected. (And 43 percent said that statement didn’t matter to them one way or the other.) Also 55 percent increased their support in response to his interest in rooting out the ‘radical left thugs that live like vermin.’” (42-3)“When the prophecy fails, when there is no reward, we perceive a grave injustice. We believe someone robbed us. They must be punished. So we empower a strong man, who shows up, promising to cleanse us of the threat and thereby deliver that original reward, whether it’s wealth, safety, power, or superiority.” (44)An important point about the cult leader is that they are not just a strongman, but also a salesman.“What is a cult leader if not a salesman? Pay me with money, labor, adoration, and consent of bodily control, and in exchange I will give you… a bed in the fallout shelter (Church Universal and Triumphant) … perfection and immortality (Oneida) … protection from the hidden rulers (Mankind United) … release from reincarnation (M.S.I.A) … a cure for disease (Christian Science) … the removal from your body of alien detritus (Scientology) … or a seat on the spaceship to escape this doomed world for the Evolutionary Kingdom Level Above Human (Heaven's Gate). It’s a quid pro quo: believe to receive. And when a charlatan cult leader decides he really is God, he’s merely bought his own product. He’s found a customer in himself.” (126)The salesmanship of cultish promise is perpetual. “But you’ll notice salvation is always just out of reach. They assure you it’s around the bend if you pay a little more. How many internet ads offer the secret to [insert stigma here] but then won’t reveal that secret until you’ve watched a ten-minute video/relinquish your data/agree to a trial subscription. This is straight out of the playbook.” (127)This reference to a video segues into one last and very important point of Cults Like Us. While isolation is a technique used by cults, “the reduction of normative dissonance, increase in groupthink, and eventual shift-to-risk can actually happen faster in an online group then in one living together IRL.” (212)“Cult expert Stephen Hassan has argued that social media platforms even engage in love bombing, showering ‘users with positive notifications after joining, while personalized feeds create the perception of a community ‘just like you.’ As we more deeply immerse ourselves in virtual groups and separate further from friends and family, we will be—unlike our counterparts in geographically isolated cults—physically alone. And loneliness makes people even more vulnerable to indoctrination by extreme ideologies.” (212)With Cults Like Us, I have found a better answer to my question of why so many people have taken to Donald Trump. Unlike the supposition of Wild Faith, it isn’t just about being on the conservative religious fringe. “The call to rebel against a group of elite preying on good simple folks has been the rallying cry of demagogues since the dawn of our nation. It’s also how Trump convinced a crowd to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.” (85)Studies suggest that power diminishes empathy and is often related to wealth; people who grow up with wealth, prestige, and education don’t respond as well as average folks to other people‘s problems. Another problem with power is if people can do whatever they want to do, they lose their inhibitions and act impulsively.“Since the powerful are rarely checked, they get away with this behavior, which makes them feel more powerful, a self-perpetuating cycle. This is the science behind the phrase, ‘power corrupts’ and is why some cult leaders develop from annoying if relatively harmless narcissists into megalomaniac financial and sexual predators.” (65)So Trump exploits the same grievances, fear, and anxiety that cult leaders do. “He tells his followers they’ve been screwed by a system of power. They have. Many politicians neglect to acknowledge it. Sure, Trump isn’t totally honest about who does the screwing, since many of them are his fat-cat Wall Street friends. And worse, he was lying when he said he’d help. Instead, he has screwed the average American, even more, to enrich said friends. But he does acknowledge their pain. No one should be surprised by his popularity. He promised to steady their wobbling world. In exchange, they made him sovereign.” (230)The solution to our cultishness is to engender empathy and compassion in our communities and in our political culture. And we shouldn’t discount communing with nature; the effect of experiencing awe brings people together. These, of course, are nonspecific cures. The hard work is in figuring out how to implement them in the place where we live.If you’d like some examples of the cults discussed in Cults Like Us, including those connected to Trumpism, read on. Otherwise, I look forward to next week.Jordan Klepper of the Daily Show about a month agoSide Bar: Some cults discussed in Cults Like UsThe Oneida: technically a free love group, but in actuality, sexually abusive of underage girlsThe Shakers: they believed in equality of the sexesEugenics believersThe current pronatalists (think Elon Musk): today’s version of eugenicists“The desire to replicate the self is also a commonality among cult leaders and other elites. Warren Jeffs, former leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, reportedly has at least 60 children. Malachi York, founder of the Nuwaubian Nation … might have up to 300. Jeffrey Epstein had plans to seed the world with his DNA by impregnating up to 20 women at a time, continually, until, presumably, he ran out of sperm. It’s almost like they have a parasite, pushing them to replicate again and again. The parasite is unchecked power.” (72)Mankind United: the leader claimed to be teleported around the globe to fix the poor’s problems by taking down the coalition of wealthy people who conspired against hard workers. When the U.S. government tried to stop him, he created Christ’s Church of the Golden Rule and freed members “‘from the bondage of ownership’ of their property and resources… and required them to cut off connection with the rest of the world.” (103)The John Birch Society: a right-wing political advocacy group claiming anti-communism (and quite racist)Whatever the group following Alex Jones is: conspiracy theorists, including the typical antisemitism of such groupsSherry Shriner, a YouTuber (now deceased, but still popular on her channel): she argued that “a race of shape-shifting reptiles, most of whom are descended from Satan and comprise the New World Order, are planning to bring the Antichrist to power … and exterminate or enslave us all.” (92)Louis Beam: a KKK member who hoped to bring the U.S. back to a ‘utopian time’ of white male control by battling the U.S. government.Branch Davidians (David Koresh): separatists with underaged ‘wives’, lots of kids, and lots of guns. In 1993 they had a fatal standoff with federal authorities at their Mount Carmel compound near Waco, Texas, resulting in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians and four ATF agents.QAnon: claims that Trump instructed them to leak information to the public “about Trump’s shadow war against pedophile Satan worshipers in government and media.” (98-9) Closely tied to MAGA.Multi Level Marketing groups: these are too numerous to name, but Amway serves as the model. Almost all MLM distributors lose money every year, but they are victim-blamed for not being able to make it. As Borden points out, that's a hallmark of almost every abusive relationship. She also notes that the way things are going in the United States, our entire class system feels like a MLM where the wealthiest one percent of Americans have the same amount of money as about 90% of the population; that’s pretty much a typical MLM payment structure where the top 1% make the same as the bottom 94%.Large Group Awareness Training (LGATs): such as est, which “Basically stole from Scientology.” (129)NXIVM: gift link to timeline from NYTLove Has Won: (The link is to the HBO series) An interesting thing about Love has Won (the cult of the Mother God) is that they sold supplements online, including colloidal silver, the use of which appears to have been a major factor in their leader’s death. It appears many cults sell supplements. This reminded me of Tara Westovers’ memoir Educated, in which her mother had a supplements business on the side.Related article for a deeper lookThe rise of end times fascism from the Guardian This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends!I’m in a bit of a panic while getting ready for my book launch. I’m writing and wrapping this up on Tuesday. The launch is coming up on Saturday. This review will post on Sunday, so the launch will be over by the time you see this. I hope I can share about it next week. Meanwhile, the not-so-great book ban news is in Friday’s post. This post is about hope. (The title may fool you.)John Green’s Everything is TuberculosisIn his introduction, John Green poses a conundrum: “We are powerful enough to light the world at night, to artificially refrigerate food, to leave Earth’s atmosphere and orbit it from outer space. But we cannot save those we love from suffering. This is the story of human history as I understand it—the story of an organism that can do so much, but cannot do what it most wants.” (3-4) Everything is Tuberculosis then works toward the uncomfortable solution to at least one aspect—one global aspect—of the problem of suffering.Green’s interest in tuberculosis began in 2019 when he met a young man named Henry at Lakka Hospital in Sierra Leone. At first Green believes Henry is a child because he’s so small. When he wonders aloud about Henry being so smart and well-spoken, he’s told that Henry is eighteen, but his physical development has been arrested by treatment-resistant tuberculosis. Over time, Green befriends Henry, learns about TB and dedicates himself to eliminating it. Knowing Henry changes Green’s life.In Everything, Green alternates discussion of Henry’s journey to wellness with humanity’s millenniums-long battle against TB.TB appears to have been among us since we’ve been human. “But recent genetic evidence indicates that the story might go back much further—our species is perhaps 300,000 years old, but it seems that other species of hominids were being infected with consumption-like illnesses 3 million years ago. In fact, tuberculosis is listed in Guinness World Records as the oldest contagious disease.” (30)Green makes many connections between cultural changes over the past few centuries and TB. Some are simply interesting: John Stetson went west in the 1850s to cure his TB and came out to invent a useful hat for the environment; New Mexico’s bid for statehood was bolstered by its becoming a destination for ‘consumptive care’; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle debunked a false cure for the disease; and women’s skirts became shorter so as not to drag in the dirt and bring along TB bacteria. Other cultural changes connected to TB are more consequential, including the view of the TB patient as a sensitive and angelic figure. The look of the dying patient—languid, very pale/white, and thin—became the ideal female look, much to the detriment of women of all shapes, sizes and colors ever since.Most importantly, “The infection has long exploited human biases and blind spots, wriggling its way through the paths injustice creates. Of course, tuberculosis doesn’t know what it’s doing, but for centuries, the disease has used social forces and prejudice to thrive wherever power systems devalue human lives.” (19)That social forces and prejudice are at fault for the continued TB epidemic is the primary argument of Everything. It begins with western empires using countries like Sierra Leone for resource extraction. In doing so, the wealth of the country is removed and there isn’t investment in the things a society needs, including railroads, hospitals, and schools. Add to this the slave trade where people could be kidnapped on their way to market their goods (so they lose economic opportunities by not doing that) and you have a society that isn’t set up to battle disease with education or resources.Bad social policy affecting disease continues into the first half of the twentieth century. An egregious example is the forcible removal of Indigenous North American children from their homes to residential schools, which led to the spread of TB among them. “Indigenous people were more than 10 times as likely to die of TB than white Canadians. But in residential schools, the rate was 8,000 per 100,000–meaning that eight percent of all kids confined in the schools died of tuberculosis each year.” (85)Even in the contemporary world, resources in place can be wiped out. For example, in Sierra Leone, the Ebola outbreak of the 2010s killed many healthcare workers. “At least 221 Sierra Leonean healthcare workers died of Ebola between 2014 and 2016, including many of the nation’s most experienced physicians, nurses, and community health workers.” (47) In addition, healthcare grants end and projects end up half-finished. But we don’t think about the consequences of all these factors.“In my college survey course about the history of humans, I learned of wars and empires and trade routes, but I heard precious little of microbes, even though illness is a defining feature of human life.” (29)While we don’t learn about it in school, TB is wildly contagious. “The average untreated case of active tuberculosis will spread the infection to between 10 and 15 people per year. … M. tuberculosis is a near perfect human predator in part because it moves very slowly. The bacteria has an uncommonly slow growth rate. While E. coli can double in number about every 25 minutes in a laboratory environment, M. tuberculosis doubles only about once per day…” (34) This sounds like it would be a good thing, but M. tuberculosis builds an unusually fatty, thick cell wall, which means white blood cells have a tough go penetrating it to find and kill the bacteria from within. And while a small minority of people will recover from TB without treatment, it generally, eventually, kills the infected.Adding to the problem is that poor countries don’t have the money to effectively diagnose TB on a mass scale. In many places, including in Sierra Leone where Henry lives, TB is most often detected by microscopy (sputum on a slide under a microscope). But this misses about half the cases and particularly misses those in children. X-ray detection is much more accurate, but less affordable.In all the heartbreaks of reading about tuberculosis, perhaps none has stayed with me quite like the image of a father, trying to write in his dead daughter‘s handwriting to his living daughter, in the hopes that she wouldn’t be crushed by the truth. In Angie’s father, we see the humanity of people whose lives are torn asunder by TB—a humanity that is too often denied or minimized through stigma or romanticization. He was just a father trying to do right by his kids—and then, when he couldn’t, trying to do right by his kid. (107)The first-line drugs to treat TB are over fifty years old. Little research is done because there’s no large payout for pharmaceutical companies. Wealthy countries used x-rays and isolation to suddenly and significantly decrease infection to the point where people there don’t even think about it. Most people who now become infected live in poor countries and don’t have the money for expensive treatments. In fact, Green points out that early in treatment, as people become better, they get their appetite back (TB diminishes it) and the antibiotics are painful to take on an empty stomach. So—patients are ravenously hungry and in pain from the meds, but don’t have the money for more food. They stop their treatment.All of this adds up to a failing on the part of humanity, on the part of relatively wealthier peoples and nations. Mobile chest x-rays machines can be carried via backpack to serve rural communities if they are purchased. Children will not get bone TB from milk that is pasteurized. The BCG vaccine for TB is over 100 years old and not always effective. We need research into a new vaccine. We need new treatment protocols that don’t isolate patients or force them to take their medicines in the presence of a healthcare provider, a thing which is very difficult for the poor to do (and if stopped, can cause a more resistant form of TB).“Is it a patient’s fault if they are too disabled by depression and isolation to follow through on treatment? Is a patient’s fault if they or their children become so hungry that they feel obliged to sell their medication for food? Is it a patient’s fault if they’re living conditions or concomitant diagnoses, or drug use disorder, or unmanaged side effects, or … stigma result in them abandoning treatment?“Why must we treat what are obviously systemic problems as failures of individual morality?” (124)By interweaving Henry’s story into information on the history and treatment of TB, Green repeatedly reminds us that the answers to the above questions are ‘no.’ We see Henry as “a human individual who wrote lovely paragraphs and poems, who encouraged not just fellow TB survivors, but also his caregivers… as a valuable person interwoven into the one human story.” (126)“The underinvestment in new classes of drugs to fight bacterial illness is the central cause of growing antibiotic resistance. It’s easy to blame patients or providers or pharmaceutical companies, but really all of humanity has collectively chosen not to put more of our shared resources toward new treatments for disease. Some of this can be chalked up to our economic systems—the newest antibiotics will not be prescribed as often, meaning they won’t be as lucrative as, say, developing a drug that hundreds of millions will take to control blood pressure. This is why when new antibacterial drugs do come out, they’re often priced very highly.“But the market may not be the only determinant of human health. Instead, we could invest more public and philanthropic money into research and development of drugs, vaccines, and treatment distribution systems. We could re-imagine the allocation of global healthcare resources to better align them with the burden of global suffering— rewarding treatments that save or improve lives rather than treatments that the rich can afford.” (129-30)High school housekeepingTeen readers have loved John Green for a few decades now. While this nonfiction plea is a departure from his YA fiction, they will love it as well. There are many more interesting and weird connections between culture and TB—Adirondack chairs, Pasadena, CA (yes, home of the Rose Parade was founded by and for people with TB). Ringo Starr survived TB. But teens will primarily enjoy reading Everything because it brings empathy to a human problem. They might also be astonished by the practices of pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson applying to extend their patents when the drugs should have gone generic (and thus become vastly cheaper) by trying to file and enforce secondary patents. Conversely, Green details how a virtuous cycle works and this encourages teens to become a part of one.John Green InterviewI am lucky to have wonderful writing companions, one of whom (Kelly Turner, who discusses character-driven fiction here on Substack) let me know that John Green was a guest on the Daily Show last week, discussing Everything is Tuberculosis. He is funny, self-effacing, and smart. Have a watch.John Green - “Everything Is Tuberculosis” | The Daily ShowAnd more love!I get ads and email updates from the Good Store. In Everything is Tuberculosis, John Green mentions that he started out looking into maternity care in Sierra Leone and then learned about TB. He and his brother Hank started an ‘all profits to charity’ business called the Good Store. Here was this week’s happy update:As you might know, Good Store started out with the Awesome Socks Club in 2019. Hank had the idea to not only bring fun socks into the world but to support the building of the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone.Previously, Sierra Leone had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world—an injustice that the Ministry of Health (MOH) and Partners In Health (PIH) have been working tirelessly to address. A key part of this progress will be the Maternal Center of Excellence (MCOE)—a brand-new clinical facility situated on the same campus as Koidu Government Hospital (KGH) in rural Kono district.To date, Good Store has donated $8,918,078 to help fund this hospital through your purchases from the Awesome Socks Club and Sun Basin Soap. We are so excited to announce that it will be opening its doors soon!Good people exist in the world! Let’s not forget that! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,It’s Mother’s Day in the U.S. I hope people are enjoying it or, if grieving the loss of their mother, are able to enjoy some good memories. On Thursday, I had a sudden sense of panic about having forgotten to buy a Mother’s Day gift. My mom died four years ago; my mother-in-law died six years ago. So—I know these things happen. Dave Barry had a funny post this week about Mother’s Day that you might enjoy. My Sunday plans are to attend a symphony performance and have dinner with my family.I’ve once again changed my mind about this week’s post. The news cycle has me thinking of so many things (An American pope! Who would have thought it!), but since I’m about writing and books here, my primary focus today is: the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction along with a Pulitzer finalist reading suggestion and the loss of NEA funding. If you happen to need a positive take on other news, I’ve added some quick links at the end.The loss of federal support for literatureI’ve gotten lots of emails this week about the termination of NEA funding for all sorts of literary institutes and journals. It’s very painful, and I’m sure you are feeling it. And, yet, all the emails contain a message similar to this from American Short Fiction: “We recognize that the new challenges faced by this magazine are just a small part of a much bigger national, and indeed international, upheaval.”Here’s AGNI:It’s the common refrain right now, unfortunately: We’ve lost our Federal support. It’s true of so many who were working toward a stable new life in this country; it’s true of many who were fighting disease and food insecurity both here and abroad; it’s true of nearly everyone who proved the value of their work in civil rights or climate change to government agencies that once proudly supported them. It’s true of AGNI now as well. …In light of everything else, AGNI should not be your first priority. AGNI is not our very first priority. But we know you hold an important place open for the arts, for the written word especially.I think that sums up what a lot of us feel: something terrible in a larger pool of terrible. I think of funding for literature in the same way I think of libraries: it fills the holes in the collection. As a librarian, I was always looking for titles that would fill those holes. Yes, many of our students read romance or fantasy/sci fi. But the rest of the readers were divided into many areas of interest, and it was our job to serve them, too. To do so sometimes meant getting books from small presses.The big four publishers are businesses. They focus on titles and authors they believe will be sure moneymakers. (I’d like to argue that there are titles, topics, and authors who would make them money if given a chance, but that’s a subject for another time.) Through grants and donations, small presses and literary journals are able to serve that vast array of readers who want what the big four are not offering. They keep a diversity of ideas, themes, and stories in play. They are able to put out experimental work.My book launch for Keep Sweet is coming up next week. My publisher is a literary institute (Inlandia) that has received NEA grants in the past. I wonder whether others will have the same opportunity in the future.The Pulitzer Prize for FictionPercival Everett’s James won the Pulitzer. As I mentioned in a past ‘What I’m Reading,’ I enjoyed the novel, primarily because it corrected the last third of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But its selection for the prize was eye opening for me. I didn’t realize that the judges could just chuck out the finalists (there were three: Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine, The Unicorn Woman by Gayl Jones, and Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel) and pick another book. It makes the award seem sleazy. But then, someone might argue that all three finalists were not worthy. In fact that’s just what Sam Kahn did in The Pulitzer Prizes Are An Embarrassment (Without actually reading any of the three, but by pulling representative lousy sentences from each. Which might not be the best way to judge.)Truth be told, the judges get it wrong often enough.Jan Harayda has published a few Substack posts on the Pulitzer. (Also, she found this year’s winner, James, unreadable.) In “10 Novels Snubbed by the Pulitzer Judges,” she lists some novels she thought should have won over the years. I disagree with a few of her choices. I think Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls hasn’t stood the test of time. And while I enjoyed The Catcher in the Rye, it’s pretty much a well-written YA novel. (That’s why we had our high school juniors reading it in American Literature class. Not because it was great, but because they would.) I agree with all her other assessments. Two novels that I love and feel were robbed: Death Comes for the Archbishop and The Great Gatsby.In 2012, no Pulitzer was awarded, but Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! was a finalist. I mentioned last week that I enjoyed reading her most recent novel, The Antidote, but it felt like a very good YA novel (is this a theme with me?) and didn’t have the atmosphere and emotional punch of Swamplandia!. Here’s my take on Swamplandia!. I hope you’ll pick it up on your next library or bookstore visit.Swamplandia! by Karen RussellFirst the confession: I think if Karen Russell wrote a manual on how to put a bicycle together, I’d read it. Her language is fresh, original.I know that startling language alone doesn’t make a book interesting for most people. But we are all lucky in that Russell’s wild imagination extends to the plot of her story as well as to the language. This is one of the most fascinating and weird novels I’ve read.Much of the narrative is told by Ava although her brother, Kiwi, leaves home and then his story is told in alternating chapters. Ava, Kiwi, and their sister Osceola Bigtree are the children of a couple who own a tourist attraction called Swamplandia! on an island off Florida. They raise and wrestle alligators (which they call Seths). When the mother, Hilola Bigtree, dies at thirty-six from ovarian cancer, the family loses its star and Swamplandia! loses most of its business. The attraction’s doom appears to be sealed when a macabre version of a Disney-style attraction opens on the mainland—The World of Darkness.Family members try to save their business. Kiwi goes off to the World of Darkness to work; Ava raises a red alligator, hoping that its coloring will fascinate new tourists; and the Bigtrees’ dad goes off to seek backers for his Darwinism feature idea. But with their father gone, Osceola’s (Ossie’s) obsession with ghosts appears to become a possession. She has a spectral boyfriend who seems to inhabit her body. When she disappears, Ava, alone on the island, must face the Underworld and its inhabitants to save her.This novel is so fascinating because it doesn’t fit the typical supernatural genre. It’s hard to know when ghosts are real; when adults are friends rather than predators; when the past is inhabiting the present; who is in danger and who is safe. Add to this that throughout the story, there is much irony and humor derived from the siblings’ antics, from their utter unfamiliarity with the mainland and behaviors that are common in ordinary lives.Swamplandia! recalls classic works. The most obvious is Heart of Darkness, but I saw some of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in the way that the characters are losing everything, and even a bit from a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Young Goodman Brown”) when a hair ribbon from a lost girl floats out of the sky and is caught by the seeker.I recommend this weird, wild story broadly. If you’re a creative writer and seek good examples, Swamplandia! is a must.Good news, beautiful things* I have the honor of having an essay about my brother John in the anthology The Loss of a Lifetime: Grieving Siblings Share Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope, which launches on June 17. Editor Lynn Shattuck The Loss of a Lifetime discusses it here:* Here are some beautiful orchids I saw this week at a special event in the San Diego Botanical Garden.* It’s been a few months, so I gave blood again. There’s always something we can do.* While future funding is still at risk, a second judge has ruled that the elimination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services is illegal.Ruling in Federal District Court for the District of Rhode Island in Rhode Island v. Trump (May 6)This Executive Order violates the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”) in the arbitrary and capricious way it was carried out. It also disregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government; specifically, it ignores the unshakable principles that Congress makes the law and appropriates funds, and the Executive implements the law Congress enacted and spends the funds Congress appropriated.* While I wouldn’t go so far as Dan Rather in calling Bill Gates the ‘good billionaire,’ Gates is fast-tracking his philanthropy in light of the decimation of aid to the poor.* The election of an American pope is such a surprise. Lots of people are reading this as a positive sign for a resurgence of humane practices. Here’s a quick paragraph from Jen Rubin in the Contrarian:If we pull back, the elevation of Pope Leo XIV might be seen as the third recent “election” (following Canada and Australia) in which an anti-MAGA figure was selected. For those who harbor aspirations for a more humane, rational, decent, and inclusive world, the new pope offers a ray of hope. We badly need a counterpoint to Trump’s dark, cruel, ignorant, materialist, and bigoted outlook. You do not have to be Catholic to hope Pope Leo XIV provides that.I have a lot ready to go about good books on cults, but I need some glowing things for a bit. Thanks for being here! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,Quite the week (once again!), huh? Big things are going on in the book banning space. On Friday, I posted about the Supreme Court case Mahmoud v. Taylor as well as updates on the Institute of Museum and Library Services and military school book purges.Today I have a review of the book Wild Faith by Talia Lavin, but before we get into that, here are a few things you will enjoy:* In a recent segment of his Banned Book Club, Ali Velshi discussed The Great Gatsby with two writers with Gatsby spinoffs: author Claire Anderson Wheeler (new novel: The Gatsby Gambit) and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok (new musical Gatsby: An American Myth). Since Gatsby has been in schools, it has a history of challenges and bans. As we celebrate its 100th anniversary, it speaks so clearly to where we are today.* Reader Kendall Johnson responded to last week’s post with a link to his Seeing the Shifting Wild: Six Visual Poems in MacQueen’s Quinterly. The wildland close to him that he addresses at the center of these poems is the same one I included in this photo last week:An example of Johnson’s art:The purpose of both the essays and the exhibit has been to explore Johnson’s Pasture with fresh eyes: as wildland facing imminent degradation caused by rapid climate change and political fracture.The visual poems presented here address two issues: the changes in the land, as well as suggestions on how to see the place, and all such wild places, differently. These resulting images help me see that I can choose how I look at the world and, as a result, what I can see.His artistic rendering of the place evokes its spiritual connections. Have a look. Take a breath.* I read How My Book Came To Be #3: Leah Sottile From Sari Botton’s Memoir Land this week and now I had to add Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets and the Fever Dream of the American New Age by Leah Sottile to my TBR list. It’s right in the space I’m delving into now.Sottile, a reporter investigating the origins and belief systems of the New Age movement in America states:Working on my book, I went way, way, way down several rabbit holes so that I might answer those questions, and determine where exactly in the New Age world harm can happen. What I found was that, ironically, while on a respite from my work on political extremism, I was drawn toward a new way extremism manifests in America. At the foundation of New Ageism is a long, long history of hyper-nationalism, antisemitism, and harmful conspiracy theories.Wild Faith by Talia LavinChristendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now.- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Bonhoeffer Quotes to Remember a Pastor Who Resisted Evil Unto Death”The argument of Wild Faith is that the Christian right is trying to make the U.S. a Christian nation by force of law.”It doesn’t matter that you didn’t start this war, or that you might not believe in its basic premises. It’s coming for you …”So the object for the rest of us is to be aware and to counteract/countermarch in this war.Wild Faith opens with the Satanic Panic of the 1980s when daycare workers were accused of being in league with the devil and abusing children. I remember the McMartin case the most from the news, but Lavin also discusses the terrible injustice of the Keller case, where a couple spent two decades behind bars, was declared “Actually innocent” and awarded 3.4 million in compensation for wrongful convictions.Fast forward to 2020 and the Christin Nationalist hysteria. Lavin sees the same sort of behaviors. Paula White-Cain, a religion adviser to Donald Trump (round one), prayed in a sermon, “in the name of Jesus, we command all satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now. We declare that anything that has been conceived in satanic wombs, that it’ll miscarry. It will not be able to carry forth any plan of destruction, any plan of harm.” (23) Another faith leader, Jane Whaley, Founder of the Word of Faith Fellowship, is notable for routinely attempting to cast out demons through “the infliction of physical violence, such as punching, kicking, and slamming congregants into walls, including very young children.” (25)That the US has some very weird and scary believers is one thing. But, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, evangelical Christians make up about 14% of the US population and about half of them are this fiery or fringe. (204) But Lavin makes the argument that they are the core and most active base of the Republican Party. She connects them to QAnon believers and their particular conspiracy theories. “Jesus says…Civil war is coming and it will be bloody…Pray for Donald Trump.:” (39) And again, there is the conspiracy theory that the left is sexually trafficking children. In reality, the vast majority of human trafficking is done by “boyfriends, parents, relatives, older acquaintances.” (51-2)Yes, there is a great deal of money to be made by these religious schemers, and Lavin gives many examples. People who want to believe in conspiracies and who willingly part with their cash trawl the “conspiracy swamps of the internet” to find proof. (50)The question for me is, although these things are true and verifiable, does the Christian right account for the success of Donald Trump? Does it, by itself, have the power to force Project 2025 on the rest of us, eventually eliminate democracy and install an oligarchic theocracy?Lavin admits that we don’t know what people like “human yeast infection and slovenly right-wing ideologue Steve Bannon” (52) and others think about religion and the presence of an active Satan in the world, but she allows that their faith could be the foundation of their behaviors. I have a hard time believing that. Grifters are going to grift. There is sooo much money to be made on people’s fears, and Bannon and his ilk have figured out how to cash in with their fake border wall schemes, cryptocurrency, and so much more. They and Trump have been wildly successful at stoking fear and rage in order to achieve their ends. And people raised in authoritarian Christian religions and cults are primed to believe some pretty crazy things. It’s a small step for them to give the same sort of authority to MAGA. These believers are a means to an end for the Bannons and Trumps of the world. The end is money (and thus control), not a relationship with a God/Jesus.There has to be more that accounts for nearly 50% of the US voters selecting Trump and believing in the conspiracies and schemes of his cohort. I know plenty of people who voted for Trump at least once, and probably three times, though they became less likely to admit that as time went on. (It doesn’t read well in large swaths of California.) None of them believe in much of anything, spiritually. They are not evangelicals by any means, not even church goers. They don’t see Satan lurking around every corner, waiting to inhabit their bodies and the bodies of their children. They are not physically violent toward their kids or anyone else. They don’t think there are microchips in COVID-19 vaccines. They are not single-issue, anti-abortion voters. Premarital sexual purity is not something they value highly (or at all), and they use birth control. They are not worried about an apocalypse, so they do not believe Donald Trump is God’s instrument in bringing one about. They don’t want medical care to be reliant on churches and charities that would refuse services to LGBTQ+ people.But they vote for representatives who are lining up in those religious right causes and ideology. Through their votes, they, too, are working toward a world where those things will be true. I can’t figure out why, and I didn’t find the answers here.That said, there is a lot of interesting information in Wild Faith about the practices of various fringe evangelicals. For that reason alone, it's well worth the read. Some of the things covered are:* Authoritarian Christian parenting (including severe corporal punishment), popularized by James Dobson and Focus on the Family.* The Gothard method of a patriarchal family run by a man as head of household and under the umbrella of God. Most people know this from watching the Duggars on Nineteen Kids and Counting. Families have a ‘quiverful’ of children (no birth control allowed, ever). They use corporal punishment on children as young as six months in order to break their wills. (This makes easy pickings for the politically savvy.)* The Stay at Home Daughter Movement, where fathers select their daughters’ husbands for them in a highly constrained courtship ritual. Girls are always subject to men, so they are under their father’s ‘care’ until they are given away to their husbands.* The Home School Legal Defense Association, which “exercises influence over the lives of millions of children, all without being known to most people.’ (234) While homeschooling can be a wonderful thing, it can also hide abused children from the public eye. HSLDA uses its legal resources to “insulate parents against child abuse charges and weakening state child-welfare agencies.” (239) In 2005, the HSLDA took on the case of Michael and Sharen Gravelle, an Ohio couple who adopted eleven children, some with disabilities, and kept them at home to be schooled. In September 2005, sheriff’s deputies found nine homemade cages of wood and chicken wire that reeked of urine, some with wired-in alarms, in the home. The children told authorities they were made to sleep in the cages at night; they talked about being hit with boards and having their heads held under freezing water as punishment.HSLDA attorney Scott Somerville told the Akron Beacon-Journal, “[Michael Gravelle] told me why they adopted these children and told me the problems they were trying to solve. I think he is a hero.” (239) “In a 2014 study of child abuse so severe that she described it with the term child torture, researcher Barbara L. Knox of the University of Wisconsin found that 47 percent of school-age victims she studied had been removed from school to be homeschooled.” (238)There is an undercurrent of violence in all these practices, violence inflicted upon both the children and their mothers. Everyone except the patriarch needs to be kept in line. For me, this was the most important takeaway of Wild Faith. After interviewing numerous ex-evangelicals, Lavin states she realized she “was watching a gathering storm of societal violence built up in generations of homes that had imprisoned children under the rod and the policy doctrine of parental rights—a storm that threatens to upturn the golden land that was the subject of my ancestors’ dreams.” (254)It’s good to know about these groups because, while only practiced by a minority of the US population—it seems about 7%—they are extremely harmful to thousands of people.I’ve researched the effects of religious cults on the lives of their members because my upcoming novel, Keep Sweet, is about a pair of siblings, hoping to escape a polygamist/high control cult. I have been reading the memoirs of women who have escaped cults. I plan to highlight a few in the future (Children of God cult, the Duggards, etc.). A few of these I have already highlighted in previous posts. You might be interested in these women’s stories:The Stay at Home Daughter Movement:Rift by Cait WestThe Gothard Method (and various Calvinist churches, ‘wife discipline’/‘wife spankings’):A Well-trained Wife by Tia LevingsMeanwhile, I’ll keep looking for a book that makes a more secure connection between the 14% of voters who are evangelicals and see Trump as their God-ordained salvation and the other 36% or so of voters who vote for him. How do these two groups see the world in the same way? Related to that, I read Cults Like Us : Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America by Jane Borden.Thoughts on it coming soon.If you know anything about any of these books, please comment!Thanks for being here!That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading. My novel Keep Sweet is launching June 21. Now available for preorder from all the usual suspects. 😊 I’d be over the moon if you ordered it. 🌝 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,This week’s primary topic is Unheard Witness by Jo Scott-Coe. Scott-Coe started a (recommended!) new Substack last month. She writes about domestic abuse and abuse survivors. Here’s a representative sample:Please note: There is so much library, book challenge, and book ban news every week that I’ve decided to move it to its own post, hopefully each Friday. (Last Friday’s is here.) Sunday posts will continue to be about books (including book reviews) and the writing life.Happy 100th birthday to The Great GatsbyYou probably read the buzz around Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. (Mark Zuckerburg and Meta worked hard to shut it down.) Here’s an excerpt from the publisher’s blurb:Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them. From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.By titling the book Careless People, Wynn-Williams is drawing the connection between the wealthy Daisys and Toms of Fitzgerald’s novel:“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great GatsbyThis Thursday (April 10), the Library of Congress is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Gatsby with a live public reading of the entire novel. Watch on the Library’s YouTube channel.For an interesting look at a century of influence of The Great Gatsby (film, music, books), check out It’s Gatsby’s World, We Just Live in It from the New York Times. (Gift link)Speaking of MetaLast week I shared that one of my short stories is part of the pirated collection on LibGen that Meta is using to train its AI. Here are one author’s thoughts on the pirating.How is Meta Getting Its Hands on Advance Digital Galleys to Train Its AI? From LitHubMaris Kreizman: One of the Richest Companies in the World is Stealing From the Rest of UsOn Thursday, March 20, all of the writers I know were in a bit of a frenzy. That morning Alex Reisner at the Atlantic had published a piece about Llama 3, Meta’s AI model, and the astonishing number of pirated books on which it had been trained. Meta’s leadership, against the advice of their lawyers, had used LibGen, a pirate file-sharing site supposedly intended to make academic papers more accessible worldwide. Along with Reisner’s article came a handy search bar where you could type your name to see if Meta had used any of your writing to train its generative language models.The idea that LibGen has digitized academic papers for the use of individuals who couldn’t otherwise get to them sounds noble as hell. So why does LibGen also have such an enormous book catalog, including access to swaths of not yet published works? …File-sharing as a tool to enrich the already obscenely rich and powerful (Meta’s valuation is currently $1.56 trillion, which seems like it would be more than enough to pay licensing fees) feels like the ultimate violation of copyright and artists’ voices and the power of the written word in general. The Authors Guild has some guidance for what to do if your work was in LibGen’s data set, but it’s difficult not to feel existential despair and a great deal of rage while we wait to see how this all plays out. I fear that once again the work of individual artists is being used and denigrated in order to benefit a class of people who don’t care about the art and fear no consequences.Goodbye Institute of Museum and Library ServicesWhile I moved the book ban news over to Friday, this one news item deserves space here. Ironically, today is the first day of National Library Week. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) staff was fired on Monday following the Trump Administration’s Executive Order.From Every Library:While on leave, the staff are prohibited from continuing their duties. All employees were required to turn in government phones and other property before leaving the building, and their email accounts are now disabled. This means that libraries and museums will no longer be able to contact IMLS for updates about the funding they rely on. Work on processing 2025 grants and 2026 applications has ceased entirely, and the status of previously awarded grants is now unclear.Without staff to administer these programs, it is likely that most grants will be terminated.We need you to send an email to your governors and federal legislators to stop this attack!Then, click to share it on Bluesky, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin!Note/update: by Thursday, yes, all grants were terminated.A lawsuit was filed by 21 State Attorneys General to stop Trump's Executive Order #14238 from dismantling the IMLS and two other agencies. Unheard Witness: The Life and Death of Kathy Leissner Whitman by Jo Scott-CoeFive years after she graduated from high school, Kathy Leissner Whitman was stabbed to death by her husband Charles Whitman after he killed his mother and before he committed a mass shooting from the tower at the University of Texas, Austin. Unheard Witness, which is framed by Hurricane Carla (1961) and the Texas tower shootings (1966) that left 15 dead and 31 injured, is the story of how Kathy became a victim of domestic violence and then murder.From Ideal Childhood to NightmareReading about Kathy’s childhood and teen years, one might envy her. Her mother, a teacher, records her babyhood milestones in minute details, including the outfit she wore for her first outing to a doctor’s appointment. As a teen, Kathy is involved in so many high school clubs and service organizations that it would be easier to list those in which she is not a member. She is voted most “Ideal Girl" by her classmates. She has boyfriends and an active social life. Younger girls look at her example as something to aspire to.Kathy leaves for college and new adventures a single day after Hurricane Carla. Less than a year later, she marries Whitman, also a UT Austin student. While he publicly appears to be a catch (good looking, one-time Eagle Scout and Catholic Church altar boy), privately he has a history of violence and misdeeds for which he is not held accountable. His father is also a domestic abuser. After the wedding, Kathy’s brother, Nelson, stays with Kathy’s in-laws and witnesses constant fighting, dishes hurled across the room at dinner time, and more. He understands that Kathy has made a mistake in marrying Charles.A Life of Abuse and UncertaintyThe marriage quickly turns ugly with Charles constantly trying to exert control over Kathy (he goes so far as to dictate what her fingernails/manicures should look like). He wants to have a baby although Kathy knows their relationship is too unstable for that. He is on a military scholarship at UT Austin, which he loses due to poor grades. This upends Kathy’s life as she leaves school with him. Nevertheless, she is determined to finish college in four years and does so despite being abused and in a constant state of uncertainty.Author Jo Scott Coe has carefully researched Kathy’s story. Kathy’s brother Nelson preserved over 600 letters concerning Kathy (her own letters to her parents, siblings, and Charles; their letters to her; Charles’ letters to Kathy’s parents) and he gave Scott Coe access to them. In her letters, Kathy’s dreams and daily life, her issues with Charles and her efforts to correct them are voiced. In some letters, it appears Charles, who writes addendums, is monitoring what Kathy writes.Particularly poignant is a letter from Kathy’s mother, Frances, to Charlies, where she argues that Kathy doesn’t need psychiatric treatment as he has suggested. That, in fact, Charles should understand that she was a happy, vibrant girl before marrying him. Reading this letter, we can see how careful Frances is in her writing—trying to get Kathy help while not provoking the explosive Charles into more violence. Frances suggests marriage counseling, probably feeling that a third party could show Charles that the cause of his problems was himself.Scott-Coe previously wrote about Charles Whitman in MASS: A Sniper, a father, and a Priest (2018). In her introduction to Unheard Witness, she states: “That sobering work well-prepared me to comprehend the milieu wherein Kathy, like so many women, faced unspeakable cruelty and dysfunction in places where they were supposedly most safe—in their churches, in their families, and in their closest relationships. Kathy's humanity was threatened immediately by a relationship with a man whose notions of ‘love’ had been warped by childhood trauma and profoundly twisted by ideologies of ownership, objectification, and abuse. Unlike most victims, he perpetuated the damage.”High school housekeepingWhile this well-researched nonfiction book is directed at adults, high school students will benefit from reading it. It’s a good book to recommend to students tasked with finding the deeper story behind a historical event. More importantly, it shows how young people are often unprepared to recognize dangerous relationships and how social bias and norms can blind girls to dangerous men. I’ve noted many times that allowing teens to read widely and about difficult subjects is a safe way to introduce them to the unfamiliar. It also helps them to understand the dangers that threaten them without actually exposing them to that danger. Unheard Witness details how ordinary bullies are and how easy it is to be caught in their web. In addition, it brings the story of one individual to life with empathy, correcting the false narrative of the last half century. Its importance to teens lies in helping them to understand the world.My novel launches in JuneMy actual book cover, which I love!Pre-sale is available from the usual suspects. If you buy directly from Inlandia books, you will receive a handmade (by me!) pieced fabric bookmark as a thank you. Thanks for joining me! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I’m finishing up early again this week because I am going to go hang out with a friend whose mother died last week. I think I’m going to skip all that I feel about the world at large (and, boy, is it a lot) and just jump right into thoughts on books.AI and stolen booksWhen I read this week that Meta used the illegal pirate site LibGen to train their AI, I knew my collection of short stories, Acts of Contrition, wouldn’t be among the pirated works because it was never available digitally. But I saw this article and decided, what the heck, I’ll put my name in the search engine:Meta’s Massive AI Training Book Heist: What Authors Need to KnowThe Atlantic published a search tool that allows authors to check if their works are in LibGen, an illegal pirate site AI companies copied for their AI systems. … [T]his new list has more than 7.5 million books that were copied, at least in part if not in full, by Meta and other AI companies for their AI systems. It is not clear whether Meta downloaded and used every book in LibGen.I’d forgotten one thing. I have a short story in an anthology (Best Stories from the Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest) and it was published digitally. It’s on the list. Ugh. What a weird feeling it is when someone scoops up your work.AI book summaryI’m thinking about what Bill Gates said this week about AI taking over lots of human work in the next ten years and that we will have the two-day work week.As AI takes aim at the workplace, Gates admitted there will be professions that see much more change than others. In his conversation with Fallon, he singled out doctors and teachers as two pathways that will experience replacement—but to the benefit of society as a whole.“With AI, over the next decade, (intelligence) will become free, commonplace—great medical advice, great tutoring,” Gates said.That’s a very positive view of the situation. I’m far less sanguine about the advice we get from AI. Here’s an example. One of my sons sent the family this, which is Amazon’s AI-generated book summary.“Customers find the book easy to read and interesting. They appreciate the insightful and intelligent rants. The print looks nice and is plain. Readers describe the book as a true work of art. However, some find the content boring and grim. Opinions vary on the suspenseful content, historical accuracy, and value for money.”Another of my sons guessed Moby-Dick—a good guess, I thought. (Note: if you want to read Moby-Dick because it’s an American classic but haven’t been able to get into it, get the audiobook from Recorded Books narrated by the fabulous Frank Muller. Only that recording!)The correct answer? Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.I’m not so sure that AI is the teacher I want.“That Librarian” Amanda Jones will be in Conversation (Online) with the LA Co. LibraryAmanda Jones is going to be in an online conversation with the LA County Library. Although I have a library card, I didn’t need it to register. It appears to be open to all.April 10, 2025 6-7 PM (PT)https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/13216324 to register.Note : I wrote a post about Amanda Jones’s That Librarian. Crank by Ellen HopkinsI promised to discuss Crank this week. Here we go.Crank is #6 on the top banned books list. I’m going to go ahead with lots of spoilers because you are probably an adult who has already read Crank or are into other kinds of books at this point.Back in the day, I didn’t write anything down about Crank because it was immediately popular in the library where I worked. In other words, I didn’t need to ‘hand sell’ it. I concentrated on other good books that the students might not have heard of yet.I think Crank was immediately popular for several reasons. The biggest is that it’s about a well-behaved high-school junior, Kristina, who becomes addicted to “the monster” very quickly after visiting her addicted (and incapable/zero parenting skills) father. Kristina’s mother doesn’t want her to visit her father because she fears what will happen when she is living in a drug-fueled environment. Her fears become a reality. Left without adult supervision, Kristina crushes on a neighborhood boy who introduces her to drugs.While the relationship doesn’t work out, Kristina quickly finds the high school drug dealers when she gets home. She blames a lot on her mom and successfully hides her addiction for a while even as her grades slide and her behavior changes. She takes on an alter ego that she names “Bree.” Bree is bolder than Kristina. She flirts with boys and takes chances with new cliques.Much of the book focuses on the unraveling of Kristina’s relationship with her mom and her stepfather. Her stepfather knows that Kristina is using, but her mom is unwilling to believe it until it is impossible to ignore. Her mom tries to take control with UFN—Until Further Notice—grounding. But Kristina is no longer obedient and steals away from the house whenever she thinks she can get away with it.Eventually, Kristina is date-raped by a popular boy named Brendan (who knows her only as Bree). It’s a brief scene on the page (not ‘off camera,’ so to speak). Here’s the beginning of it.While there are many things about this novel that the censors object to, including the drug use and the way Kristina talks about and treats her mom, this scene is also one that censors argue doesn’t belong in a teen book. Later, Kristina has consensual sex with a nicer (less popular/less cute) guy.If you’re older and didn’t read Crank in high school, you might be thinking about Go Ask Alice as you read this now. The author of Alice claimed that it was a real teen’s diary, but this is a lie. It’s one of many fake diaries the author wrote. If you remember reading Go Ask Alice and didn’t know it was a fake, check out more info in this footnote.However, Alice has been in libraries for decades and many adults see it as a warning against drugs and hanging out with people who are involved with drugs. Crank also feels like this sort of book although the writing is much better. Whatever reading Go Ask Alice did to your life (drugs, rape, runaway, prostitution all in that book), that’s kind of what Crank does for newer generations.Wait—Go Ask Alice didn’t turn you into a drug-fueled prostitute living on the streets? Huh.I want to make a few more arguments for Crank beyond the one I have made for many books, including Crank: reading about difficult life experiences and trauma is the best way to be introduced to those things.Crank is also a book that can cultivate a habit of reading. A study of adolescents grade 6-12 showed that large print books increased their engagement in learning and enjoyment in reading. Now, I know Crank isn’t a large print book, but it has the same advantage: lots of white space on the page. Readers turn pages quickly and the reward of accomplishment comes quickly. That the books are heftier (Crank is well over 500 pages) gives readers a sense of achievement. They go on to read other books (often other Ellen Hopkins books, which are also challenged and banned at a high levels).In addition, Crank is well written. The plot certainly engages the reader, but the poetic language also drives that reader forward.In an afterword, author Ellen Hopkins discusses in what ways Crank is based on her family’s real life experiences. Her daughter became addicted after visiting her addicted father. The family descended into a sort of hell: a drug dealer comes calling for money owed him. Her daughter breaks into the house, steals from her family and forges checks in Hopkins’s name.When her daughter lands in prison, Hopkins is glad she will finally get the help she needs.“Six years, watching my daughter go from the talented, beautiful girl with big dreams to a meth-wasted, twice-convicted felon. Six years, expecting the phone call that would let us know self-destruction was total. Thank God, that call never came, and that eventually, we got the chance to try to rebuild our relationship. Largely, we have. But it has taken many, many years. Years that could have been better spent, had none of this ever happened.”To round off the defense of Crank, I’ll add the author’s own words in response to the mass banning of her books:So why my books? Some of the characters are queer, of color, and/or spiritually seeking, but the favored excuse is “sexual explicitness.” I have four novels for adult readers that could be termed steamy. My YA novels never approach that level, though they do have sexual situations, including assault and abuse, as well as young love. I write where my readers live, and teens experience those things every day. I write truthfully because I respect their intellect, curiosity, and sophistication. My goals, always, have been to bring broader perspective to their relatively narrow view. To show possible outcomes to choices they’ll likely face and help them make more informed decisions. And, for those who’ve already taken wrong turns, or had all choice stolen from them, to bring hope and give them a voice.I’ve largely been successful. Over the years, I’ve received literally thousands of emails and messages from readers. A sampling:“Crank saved my life, opened my eyes to the world I was exposing myself to and rapidly getting drowned in. And then, two years later it did the very same for my little brother . . . Thank you Ellen, you've touched our lives forever.”…When asked if books like mine should be readily available for teens, Travis Akers, who’s running for school board in Duval County, FL, commented that if we expect teens to drive safely, show up for work, and even have children, they are certainly capable of choosing what books to read.As for parental rights, parents have always had the ability to counsel their own children’s reading. But no one has the right to decide for my kids or yours what they can or can’t read. For local governments to decide otherwise is a travesty.What I’m ReadingIn print:Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking over America by Talia LavinAudiobook:The Andidote by Karen RussellPart 2: Library news and book challenge/ban newsUtah and South Carolina Amp Up State-Sanctioned Book Bans From Book RiotSouth Carolina has also been busy banning books across the state. Where Utah requires that books have been banned in 3 school districts to be banned statewide, South Carolina allows anyone who wishes to submit book complaints directly to the State Department of Education. This means that folks like Elizabeth Szalai, who didn’t get her way when books were challenged and retained in Beaufort County, can get the state to step in and make a decision (the “local control” argument book banners have been making for years has always been a lie). Four books have been banned in every school library in South Carolina this year, with 10 more on deck for the same fate as early as April 1.Note: According to PEN, South Carolina has already banned 12 books statewide, so if they follow through with these ten they will have the dubious distinction of the most books banned in schools statewide.St. Francis schools [Minnesota] sued over controversial book ban policy as students stage walkout from the Minnesota Star TribuneTwo lawsuits, one filed by parents and another by the American Civil Liberties Union, seek to end a ban on books that the suits say were based on the viewpoints or stories they conveyed.Last fall, the northwestern Anoka County school district voted to update its library materials policy to primarily use ratings from the anonymous reviewer website BookLooks.org, which sought to warn parents of “objectionable content” in books.BookLooks is associated with a former member of the influential conservative parental rights group Moms for Liberty.As of Sunday, BookLooks said it was ceasing operation, according to a message posted on the site. All book reports have been removed from the site. …“The St. Francis School Board fails its students by abandoning its duty to oversee the education of young people in service of a partisan, political orthodoxy,” said ACLU-MN Staff Attorney Catherine Ahlin-Halverson, in a statement.Alabama board defunds local library in first action under new book ban law from the GuardianThe Alabama public library service board of trustees recently voted to withhold state funding from the Fairhope public library after complaints from conservative parents about books in the teen section. In the same meeting, the board voted to immediately dismiss the executive director of the state library agency, who had been planning to resign.The board chairperson, John Wahl, who is also the chair of the Alabama Republican party, said board members believe the Fairhope library is in violation of state policies to protect children from inappropriate materials. The books that have been cited by the upset parents include Sold, a National Book Award finalist about a girl who is sold into sexual slavery in India. …The Fairhope library’s defunding is the first measure taken under a new Alabama law and 2024 administrative code changes that say to receive state funding, local libraries must have policies to safeguard youth from “sexually explicit or other material deemed inappropriate for children or youth”.Vic’s Note: I made an argument for Sold in a previous post—it’s a quick read. I encourage you to check it out. It will give you a good idea of what is happening in these book ban wars.Texas Bill Threatens Jail Time for Teaching Books Like “The Catcher in the Rye” from Mother JonesIdentical bills in the Texas Senate and House would make it a crime for librarians and teachers to provide books or learning materials that contain sexually explicit content, punishable by up to 10 years behind bars—whether or not a book has educational or literary merit. …[B]ooks that include sexual content have long been a valuable component of secondary education. Many classic works of literature, including “The Odyssey,” “Catcher in the Rye,” “Brave New World,” and “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” have sexually explicit scenes.Under SB 412, which the Texas Senate voted to advance last week and now awaits approval by the House, teachers and librarians would no longer be able to argue that sexually explicit content can serve an educational purpose.In the last few years, Texas teachers and librarians have faced an onslaught of criticism from conservative activists and lawmakers for offering well-regarded works of literature to students. Books that have come under fire in Texas include Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, and “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker.Elizabeth [Colorado] School District defies federal order on book ban from 9 NewsThe order followed a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), arguing the district's book ban violated First Amendment protections.Iowa law banning school library books that depict sex acts on hold again after a new federal ruling From KCCI Des MoinesIowa cannot, for now, continue to enforce part of its book ban law, a federal judge said Tuesday, giving major publishers that sued the state the second temporary reprieve they requested. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

I Wrote a Book! Here’s a Cake!Hello Friends,I know we’re still in a crazy place, but I’m working on celebrating this week. First I’m going to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with family. I’m making soda bread and this Chocolate Irish Cream Cake that I found in the NYTimes cooking section. Here’s a gift link to the recipe in case you, too, want to celebrate with a boozy cake.May your blessings outnumber☘️The shamrocks that grow,☘️And may trouble avoid you☘️Wherever you go.☘️The bigger thing I’m celebrating: My novel Keep SweetMy novel Keep Sweet is now available for preorder. It officially launches on June 21. However, if you order it from the publisher, you’ll get it in May. And I’m making beautiful fabric bookmarks as thank yous for anyone who orders Keep Sweet directly from the publisher. You can order it from all the usual suspects—Amazon, B&N, Bookshop.org. However, I receive nothing (literally) from books ordered in those places. Those places get 55% discount and since small publishers don’t have the scale to absorb that discount, there is nothing left for me. Friends, I am more worthy than Jeff Bezos. Truly. 😊Here’s the back cover description:Fourteen-year old Elizabeth Warren lives in the “Community” with her father, four mothers, and sixteen siblings. Their prophet heads the cult, controlling all aspects of the community members’ lives. When he announces that Elizabeth must marry her older cousin, she joins forces with her twin brother, her older sister, and two good friends to alter her fate. With the prophet always two steps ahead of their plans, Elizabeth realizes she must confide the dark secret of her life.Here’s the link for preordering. I would be so grateful for your support!What I’m readingIn the craziness of the past several weeks, I’ve been wasting time doomscrolling when I would have been better off reading. I had put Lazarus Man by Richard Price on hold at the library. I waited a long time to get it, and when it came, I’d forgotten where I’d seen the recommendation. I read 80 pages and found that the writing didn’t connect me to the characters. I moved on to another book. However, the idea of a group of neighbors in a building that collapses is interesting to me. Here’s the description from the dust jacket:East Harlem, 2008. In an instant, a five-story tenement collapses into a fuming hill of rubble ... As the city's rescue services and media outlets respond, the surrounding neighborhood descends into chaos. By day's end, six bodies have been recovered but many of the other tenants are missing. In Lazarus Man, Richard Price ... creates intertwining portraits of a group of compelling and singular characters whose lives are permanently affected by the disaster.That reminded me of a book I loved, Night of Fire by Colin Thubron. Night of Fire takes place in a single night when an old Victorian mansion burns due to an electrical fire. It was the first book I discussed on Substack before I had subscribers, so you likely haven’t seen that post. It’s here.I also waited for Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, which I had on hold. I’m always interested in books on religion (the good, bad, and the ugly) and on cults. I’m about 100 pages in. Here’s a bit of the publisher’s summary:In Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, author Talia Lavin goes deep into the beliefs that motivate the Christian right, from its segregationist past to a future riddled with apocalyptic visions. Along the way, she explores what motivates anti-abortion terrorists; the Christian Patriarchy movement, with its desire to place all women under absolute male control; the twisted theology that leads to rampant child abuse; and the ways conspiracy theorists and extremist Christians influence each other to mutual political benefit.For Lent, I’m reading Henri J.M. Nouwen’s With Burning Hearts. As it happens, Jeannine Ouellette, who writes the beautiful writers’ resource Writing in the Dark, quoted Nouwen this week on forgiveness:“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.”Part 2: Library and banned book newsThis is on education and on. Free speech—but not specifically about books. I just found it so jaw dropping that I wanted to share.West Ada teacher stands firm after she’s told to remove ‘Everyone is welcome here’ signs from the Idaho StatesmanSarah Inama, a 35-year-old world civilization teacher at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Meridian, said the signs have been hanging in her class since she started working there four years ago. One of them reads, “Everyone is welcome here,” above hands of different skin tones. The other reads, “In this room, everyone is welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued,” with each word highlighted in a different color.In emails shared by the district with the Idaho Statesman, Marcus Myers, the district’s chief academic officer, told Inama to remove the signs because they violated Idaho’s Dignity and Nondiscrimination in Public Education Act, as well as school policy, which requires signs to be “content neutral and conducive to a positive learning environment.”Draw Me a Controversy: On the Banning of Beloved Children’s Book Author Eric Carle From LitHubLisa Tolin Explores How “Draw Me a Star” Was Swept Into a Dangerous Culture WarThe couple is indeed handsome, drawn in Carle’s trademark, flat collage style. Alas for children in school districts in Florida, Iowa, and Texas, the couple is also naked. The book has been banned in at least four school districts since 2021, and other schools have covered the handsome couple in paper clothes.Rockingham County [VA] School Board permanently bans 6 more books from classrooms, libraries From WHSV 3The 57 books listed for temporary removal in January 2024 were flagged for “sexually explicit content, explicit language and violence,” said board member Matt Cross, who was chairman at the time.In an interview in 2024, Cross said the list of titles came from parent complaints, and not from interest group Moms For Liberty. However, when cross-referencing the school board’s list with a book review database from a Tennessee chapter of Moms For Liberty, WHSV found that the majority of the books on the list were also on the Moms For Liberty database.Many of the books on the database contained LGBTQ+ themes.The six permanently removed:* “Red, White & Royal Blue” by Casey McQuiston* “The DUFF” by Kody Keplinger* “Felix Ever After” by Kacen Callender* “Fade” by Lisa McMann* “Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins* “Tilt,” by Ellen HopkinsOf the seven titles proposed to be banned Monday, “Stars in Their Eyes” by Jessica Walton was the only one to be retained.Several other popular titles, including the “The Art Racing in the Rain,” “Thirteen Reasons Why” and “Sold” were previously permanently banned. (Note: I’ve discussed both Thirteen Reasons and Sold in previous posts, linked here.)Fearing federal DEI policies, Waterloo schools [IA] withdrew from African American reading event From the Des Moines RegisterNearly 3,500 first graders from 73 schools across Iowa virtually joined the University of Northern Iowa's 19th annual African American Read-In, seeing a magic show, participating in a reading of a New York Times bestselling book and a draw-along with the book's illustrator.But the first graders in the Waterloo Community School District weren't among them. The district withdrew from the event, citing federal directives that condemn diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.Missouri Secretary of State pauses funding for OverDrive, used at K-12 libraries from KSHB 41In his announcement Monday, Hoskins took aim at a program called OverDrive, which provides K-12 students access to ebooks, audiobooks and magazines through their school library.Hoskins based his decision on “allegations regarding inappropriate materials accessible to minors.”Hoskins release did not provide any additional information regarding the allegations in the news release. …The MLA [Missouri Library Association] says at issue is a platform on OverDrive called Sora, which provides eBooks and electronic materials for school libraries. The MLA says materials accessible within Sora are “individually selected by Missouri librarians for K-12 students.”The association goes on to point out that because the materials are electronic, librarians are able to categorize access based on a student’s age, such as an elementary school student being unable to access electronic content meant for older students.SD Senate replaces ‘locking up librarians’ bill with appeal process for obscenity determinations From South Dakota SearchlightThe South Dakota Senate gutted a bill Monday at the Capitol that would have subjected librarians to criminal prosecution for disseminating obscene material to children, and replaced that language with a requirement that school and public libraries allow for appeals of their determinations on obscene material. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I have been doom scrolling off and on all week and am very late in writing this. I thought about skipping it, but I had said last week that I wanted to discuss the #5 top banned book Thirteen Reasons Why. Maybe it’s something from my childhood, I don't know, but I feel better when I follow through. So, here I am.As things fall apart, I see many people are working to either make us understand what’s happening or to provide help. So I’m going to include some links to those things further on in this post.Helping kidsI had a dream last night that I was back working in the high school library. I was recalled because the good people there needed all hands on deck. A greater force (the government?) had altered all the online research databases so that finding facts through them had become extremely hard. We library folks were trying to teach the teens how to find reliable information, but had little to work with. We were trying to show them how to take notes and check historical facts through reference works and primary source books. The students didn’t understand the concept of organization—how to use a table of contents or an index, etc., how to find any information that wasn’t spit directly at them. It was hellishly slow work. I saw that the librarian’s lunch had only been partially eaten. That the library technician was smart and helpful and had joined the research lessons, while the textbook technician tried to take over everything else that was happening in the library. But when the class was over, we had only dealt with one student each because there was so much to cover, so little that they understood. There were 32 kids that we didn’t help.I knew this was a dream representing my larger concerns with the country right now. But I was so rattled when I awoke. I basically wasted the day, checking the news and book reviews—which did nothing to make me feel better. I imagine you all are having the same sort of dreams in a different context.Maybe the idea of helping kids to be informed is in the air. When I checked my email, I found this (following Matthew 21:15-16) in the daily quotes from Sojourners (left-leaning Christian nonprofit):Voice of the dayPlaces of faith should not only be speaking out prophetically against discrimination and abuse of children; they should also be empowering children to speak out for themselves. - R.L. StollarAnd I read this in Ron Charles’s Book Club newsletter:High schools need to teach journalism, districts need to fund student newspapers, and principals need to keep their controversy-averse paws off these practice presses.But it’s never too early to start helping children discern the difference between truth and lies, information and propaganda. Here are a few books to check out:* “Facts vs. Opinions vs. Robots,” a picture book by Michael Rex, teaches children the difference between statements that are true, statements that are false, and statements that are opinions (ages 5-8).* “Killer Underwear Invasion!: How to Spot Fake News, Disinformation & Conspiracy Theories,” by Elise Gravel, is an irresistible graphic novel for kids (ages 7-11).* “Can You Believe It?,” written by Joyce Grant and illustrated by Kathleen Marcotte, helps children understand how readers should approach what they see online (ages 9-12).* “True or False?: The Science of Perception, Misinformation, and Disinformation,” by retired clinical psychologist Jacqueline Toner, presents engaging, real-world explanations of the way our minds interpret information and cling to suggestions (ages 10-14).* “True or False,” by former CIA analyst Cindy Otis, offers teens a “guide to spotting fake news.” Writing in The Washington Post, Christina Hillsberg said, “Though billed for young adults, this is a book that every adult should read.”Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay AsherIf you’ve been with me for a while, you know I like to include my earlier writing about now banned books so I can show what I thought about the book long before this 2020’s wave of book banning started. I know that Thirteen Reasons was also made into a movie, but I haven’t seen it, and it and its topics are not pertinent to book bans. I know that about seven years after the book was published, Jay Asher was accused by several women of luring them into sexual affairs at writers’ conferences. This is also not about whether Asher is a philandering asshole. (Apparently so.)I wrote this about Thirteen Reasons in 2012. It hadn’t yet become a hit at my two high schools, so I was book-talking it. In fact, I had been in a Crown Bookstore and saw it on sale very cheap and bought more copies because I knew it would hit after I talked it up. So—2012 thoughts. If I were writing it today, I would say “died by suicide,” rather than “committed,” but I want to present as is:I read this novel not long ago and have been thinking of it over the past several days—since it was reported in the news that a gay teen had killed himself after his roommate posted a sexually explicit video of him on YouTube.This is the story of a teen suicide, though the girl who kills herself isn’t gay. However, her private life is the gossip of her schoolmates and she is bullied by some. She has a bad reputation that she didn’t earn. Before killing herself, she wants to set the record straight and so makes audiotapes of the ‘thirteen reasons why’ she is going to kill herself—and these thirteen reasons involve her classmates and a teacher.The story opens with Clay Jenson coming home from school to find a package on the porch. It’s addressed to him but has no return address. When he opens it, he finds seven audiotapes that have been recorded by Hannah Baker—a girl he’d had feelings for, but who had committed suicide two weeks earlier. Each side of a tape gives details about one of the reasons Hannah decided to take her life. She says that the tapes are only going to the people who are on them—and if someone doesn’t send them on to the next person, there is a second set of tapes that will be released to the whole school, blowing everyone’s cover.Clay is riveted as he listens to Hannah’s story—he cared for her and wants to know what he could possibly have done that he should be included in the tapes.The thing that grabbed me, as the reader, was Hannah’s description of the ‘snowball’ effect—it seems that none of the things that happened to her would have caused a girl to commit suicide. Yet altogether, I could see the pattern of behaviors that was making her so desperate. I could also understand how some of the students who caused much of the problem wouldn’t have understood their part in her suicide—not in isolation.This is a cautionary tale that is a perfect read during October, which is ‘Bullying Prevention Month.’ It reminds us of advice from Plato that is thousands of years old—because we all fail in this regard and need to be reminded—“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”I also accidentally came across this video this week. I was going through my photos, deleting some because my iCloud storage was full. (Too many photos of my dogs and nature.) I had forgotten about this. Jenny was doing hours for her teacher librarian credential, and I was supervising those hours. We were covering a lot of areas. This was a video that was shown on the school video bulletin advertising the teen book fest. Asher was one of the guest authors. I thought it would be fun to wear that “Don’t make me use my librarian voice” t-shirt, but was unhappy later because it looked sloppy. However—here we are discussing Jay Asher’s books, Thirteen Reasons Why and The Future of Us. (And yeah, teens did have Facebook accounts back then. Really.)So—once again—although the subject is difficult, I had this book in the library because it encourages empathy. And it encourages us to understand that our small or individual actions are part of a much larger environment that can culminate into great harm.Hopeful thingsThe season of Lent began this week, and I think times of reflection are always good. On Ash Wednesday, I went to an Episcopalian service. The priest mentioned something I thought was a good idea. If people are doing any fasting (chocolate, meals, whatever), they could donate the money they would have spent on that food to a food bank.Since the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump where Biden appeared to have dementia, I have been unable to write anything new because I felt despondent about the future. I’ve done a lot of work, but it was mostly revision. I finally wrote a short story. I got some good feedback from a critique group today. I think the secret to being open to creative work is to do it first thing in the morning before reading any news updates. I know ‘first thing in the morning’ isn’t an option for lots of people. Maybe just don’t look at the news until after you’ve had your creativity session. However, if you—like me—are moving at a snail’s pace because of depression, here are wise words from Junot’s Díaz.* Abbott Elementary had an episode on book bans. Although very unrealistic (everyone gets along at the end and the books stay in the library), it was fun. Dream it?* I read this article, which was linked in Reasons to be Cheerful. Great minds are still working to better the world. This idea to use abandoned mines to generate clean energy is brilliant.* Informative and touching:* Here’s a great emergency resource list you or loved ones might need:* I’m writing postcards for Field Team 6 and decided to use cards with a sunflower that watercolor artist (and my lifelong friend) Laura DeKloe painted. Because everyone needs a little beauty right now.Part 2: Library and banned books newsUtah banned a 17th book from all public schools. Here’s what it’s about. From the Salt Lake Tribune“Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins joins 16 other titles banned from Utah’s public schools.“Tricks” was officially banned March 6 after the Davis, Tooele County and Washington County school districts removed the title.The law requires a book be removed from all public schools in the state if at least three school districts (or at least two school districts and five charter schools) determine it amounts to “objective sensitive material” — pornographic or otherwise indecent content, as defined by Utah code.CT legislators consider proposals about what books would be allowed in public, school libraries New Haven RegisterBills introduced this session by Democratic legislators — which call for removal policies that prohibit the exclusion of books for several reasons including political views expressed; the race, gender or sexuality of an author or characters in a book; or the personal discomfort it causes a member of a school or library board — have received public hearings.There are also Republican-led bills, including one calling for a state task force to determine what materials belong in school libraries and a bill calling for the prohibition of "sexually explicit conduct" in school libraries.A fight over school books gets the green light in Florida WMNF FM radioTALLAHASSEE — With major publishing companies and authors arguing a 2023 state law violates First Amendment rights, a federal judge Friday refused to dismiss a lawsuit against members of the State Board of Education over the removal of school library books.U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza rejected a state motion to dismiss the case, which also names as defendants members of the Orange County and Volusia County school boards.The state’s attorneys raised a series of arguments in seeking dismissal, including that the selection of library books is “government speech” and not subject to the First Amendment. Also, the motion to dismiss the case said the “government does not generally violate the First Amendment when it withdraws a benefit that merely facilitates the exercise of a constitutional right.”But in turning down such arguments, Mendoza wrote that the state fails “to grapple with the fact that discretion is what this statute removes.” Books can be removed if parents object to their content.“What the court is faced with today is a regime built around not a librarian’s sound judgment but rather any parent’s objection, however capricious,” Mendoza wrote. “What plaintiffs appear to allege is that school librarians have been stripped of their broad discretion because they must remove objected to books that do not contain obscene material and may not undertake a ‘holistic evaluation or consideration of their literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.’”Texas may change how schools select library books. Critics say it could lead to more bans. From KRGV NewsThe bill would build on House Bill 900, a law passed in 2023 to keep sexually explicit content off of bookshelves. Last year, a federal appeals court blocked Texas from enforcing that law, which required book vendors to assign ratings to books based on the presence of or depictions of sex, saying it was unconstitutionally broad. Since then, Texas conservatives have increased their push for new legislation. This session, SB 13 is one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s legislative priorities.But the proposal has also drawn harsh criticism from school librarians and anti-censorship advocates, who say it would make it easier for school districts to target and remove books about people of color and involving LGBTQ+ characters.The measure comes as book bans have increased in Texas and nationwide in recent years. Texas banned around 540 books during the 2023-24 school year, according to PEN America, an organization tracking bans throughout the country. …Some of the book titles banned in Texas school districts in 2023 included “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” “The Kite Runner,” “The Color Purple” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” among other acclaimed books, according to PEN America data.“Our communities are diverse and that’s the power and beauty of the communities to have so many different experiences available for our students to learn from,” Lucy Podmore, a public school librarian and former chair of the Texas Association of School Librarians, told The Texas Tribune last month. “It’s imperative that when we say ‘parents’ and ‘parental choice’ and ‘parents are the final say’ that we include all parents — that we’re not just giving voice to a select few.”The library bill also raises some logistical concerns. In requiring school boards to approve each new library material, a responsibility traditionally overseen by school librarians, the bill’s proposed process would make it more difficult for libraries to obtain new books in a timely manner, librarians say. As a result, critics add, the bill could lead to school-aged children reading less, even as Texas students are still recovering academically from the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Friends,Although I post Be a Cactus early on Sunday mornings (early in California, anyway), I usually write posts/essays on Fridays and record them on Saturday. So, here I am on Friday night.My God.The level of today’s dysfunction and betrayal has me feeling shame and terror all at once. When I consider the Ukrainian people and Zelenskyy, I think about the ‘Greatest Generation’ of WWII—the self-sacrificing, courageous people whom we talk up in our schools and books about whom we fill our libraries. How many first person WWII (primary source) narratives did I buy? More than I can remember. Why? They are examples for teens, models of people who gave much, sometimes all, for the greater cause of freedom.I feel today’s Ukrainian people are another greatest generation. Zelenskyy is fighting for the values of democracy.Trump summed up his own motivation at the end: This is going to make great television.This is the man on whom our futures depend.Just one more resource (because—relentless)I had thought I was done with political action suggestions. Because of Friday’s implosion, I want to add one more resource to the lists I’ve made in past posts:Chop Wood, Carry Water from Jessica Craven Friends recommended this one to me a while back. I was already subscribing to several political action resources, so it took me a minute to look into this one. But, oh boy, is it wonderful. Lots of easy-to-perform daily actions. If you are in a state of despair (or something akin to it), you may still be able to act. Craven sets up the foundations—click through directly to your senators/representative, sample phone scripts, top priorities of the day, etc.More FridayI know today (Friday) was the shopping boycott date. I’m not sure how well that worked. I happened to be in a shopping mall because I was giving blood and the venue was one of the closed shops. Afterward, I went up the escalator and walked through the mall to the exit nearest my parked car. There weren’t many people around, which might or might not be typical for a Friday afternoon, but all the young people I saw had bagged purchases.I also went to the library and picked up two books, which was a fun thing to do on a no-shopping day. I confess, I went to Joann fabrics because it’s going bankrupt and isn’t part of the equation. (While I was there, two young women were talking about just that, and we had a little convo.) I got some ribbon. I need it for the fabric bookmarks I’m making as thank yous for people who buy my upcoming novel, Keep Sweet, directly from the publisher.Analysis of banned booksSo, there is an awful lot of book news this week. I had wanted to continue with my discussion of the top banned books. Last week was #4 Sold, and I have things to say about #5 13 Reasons Why. I’m going to save that for next week because of the sheer craziness of this week. Too much stuff for one post.I’m separating this news from the article links in ‘Part 2’ because it’s more than a weekly update. PEN America conducted an analysis of the books banned in the 2023-24 school year. I see that in the area of bans for explicit sexual content, the data agrees with what I’ve been saying here—generally, there is little explicit content and what’s there has value.PEN: “New Analysis Shows Stories about Disabled People, Immigrants, Social Activism and Bullying Are Also Targets and Debunks Exaggerated Claims about Explicit Sex in Books.” The entire article is worth reading:Book Bans in Schools Sweep Across Reading Levels, Genres and Topics, While Censorship Erases Stories about People of Color and LGBTQ Topics Most Often from PEN AmericaThe quoted sections below are discontinuous and the emphasis (words in bold) is mine.The removal of books from public schools focused on people of color, race and racism, and LGBTQ+ subjects continues as part of a concerted and dangerous campaign nationwide, according to new analysis of thousands of banned titles by PEN America. These topics are highly targeted among banned books across genres and reading levels—fiction, history, biography, memoir, even picture books.Of the 4,218 unique banned titles in the 2023-2024 school year, 1,534 or 36% featured fictional characters or real people of color. In analyzing banned history and biography titles alone, PEN America found 44% featured people of color, with 26% of banned historical and biographical titles specifically featuring Black people. The comprehensive analysis is based on PEN America’s documentation of the more than 10,000 instances of book bans nationwide, as school districts banned many of the same titles. The movement to ban books originated in a coordinated network of groups that also largely espouses white supremacist and Christian nationalist ideology.Proponents of book bans often label titles with consensual sexual experiences as “explicit.” But PEN America found their rhetoric to be exaggerated. Out of all 4,218 unique titles examined, 31% had references to sexual experiences but with minimal detail. Only 13% described the sexual experiences “on the page”. Books with sexual content allow students to raise questions about this aspect of human experience, which can help guide them. PEN America’s analysis showed other books offering real-world experience on important topics were among those banned at higher levels— on death and grief, violence, abuse, and mental health issues.Similarly, books about race and racism (20% of all banned titles) illuminate the ways in which these factors have impacted history and everyday life. Books on activism and social movements (15%) illustrate real and fictional stories about those who have worked to better the world in which they live. Books that touch on incarceration and policing (13%) can increase young people’s understanding of prison and policing systems, and foster empathy towards those impacted. Books about immigration or immigrants and refugees (7%) help raise awareness and dispel misinformation.AI mistakesI know all creative people are worried about AI stealing their work and using it for free. Another worry is how it can disseminate misinformation. I’ve noticed recently that my Apple products (phone, iPad) give an AI summary of emails in the email notifications. This is a thing I didn't ask for, don’t need, and that wastes energy resources. It also throws out some misinformation about what’s in the email. Here is a recent example:Notification:Actual text in article:This sort of thing—misnaming an assassin as also a hero is a pretty big oops. I was talking to my kids about this. One of my sons (a linguist) said that’s what happens when there’s no semantics. AI reports give new meaning to the complaint “it’s just semantics,” doesn’t it? Why yes, yes it is.Book Recommendations: What I’m ReadingBecause there has been so much in the banned books circus for many weeks, I never got back to reporting on a few of the books I’d read and listened to. So, I’m including those now.I mentioned a few weeks back that I was reading The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk. I really enjoyed it for the realistic portrayal of misogyny and the weird, but very real, theories about women’s capabilities (mental, spiritual, etc.). The spooky elements were fun, too, especially since the misogyny played into the creepy atmosphere. It didn’t feel like a typical book from a Nobel Prize winner, but that didn’t bother me. It did bother critic Robert Rubsam who wrote Has Olga Tokarczuk Been Struck by the Nobel Curse? in Vulture:Yet the best word to describe Empusium would not be horror but fear: not the reader’s, or any character’s, but the author’s. Tokarczuk seems desperately afraid that you not miss the point of her book or take away the wrong lesson. Philosophical ideas are presented only in their bluntest, most outrageous form because she can’t risk allowing the reader to believe them. She finds their misogyny odious, and so you must, too. Rather than learning from the novel, it ends up instructing you. So, too, the characterizations, which dictate exactly how we are meant to respond.I finished Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow by Steve Almond. It’s a craft book for writers. I found it worthwhile. It includes specific ideas for correcting story problems. I’m sharing with my writers’ workshops.I also mentioned that I was listening to The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez. Alma, a successful Dominican American author, retires from writing (and teaching) when her stories refuse to come to completion. She’s inherited land in the Dominican Republic and decides to move there to create a cemetery for all her unfinished work. People may only visit it if they can tell a story through an intercom at the gate.I loved the stories that were told from beyond the grave and also the idea that sometimes they are not available to the author who wants to write them. They must remain the property of those who lived them. This novel is lots of fun, especially the relationship among the author and her three sisters.This week, I listened to Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavitch. It’s a memoir told in free-flowing essays. Yuknavitch doesn’t discuss details of her abuse by her father, but the reader’s overall understanding is that she had a childhood and young adulthood full of trauma. There is so much darkness, and yet she creates light through her telling. Revisiting the stories through the memoir and through her fiction has enabled her to alter them. Isn’t that, after all, what memory does? Reading Waves,I felt that my life, which has included a bit of its own trauma, was actually pretty basic. (There’s a lot here for those who enjoy banning books to hate.)“I do not intend to mine my personal life for dramatic scenes and serve them up. … I mean to ask if there is a way to read my own past differently, using what I have learned from literature: how stories repeat and reverberate and release us from the tyranny of our mistakes, our traumas, and our confusions.”A writer’s way of making sense of one’s life. And it works.I started a few other books, but just barely, so they can wait until I’m further along.Part 2: Library and book ban news574 books removed from Monroe County Schools [Tennessee] libraries from 10NewsBooks about the Holocaust, World War II, race, religion and LGBTQ+ topics are among the list of books pulled as a result of the state's Age-Appropriate Materials Act.The article includes a database of the full list. Some of the books: To Kill a Mockingbird, The 57 Bus, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Of Mice and Men, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, The Outsiders, Grapes of Wrath, Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women Who Helped Launch Our Nation Into Space, and the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book.Director of Schools Kristi Windsor … declined an interview twice, but did confirm the books were removed to comply with the law.Relocation of 30,000 Young Adult Books in Louisiana Library Shows Harrowing Impact of Moral Panic Over Obscenity and Vague Laws that Lead to Book Censorship from PEN AmericaPEN America issued the following comment today on the relocation of 30,000 books in Livingston Parish, LA public libraries while librarians read through young adult titles to decide which may contain unacceptable sexual content.Sabrina Baeta, senior program manager in PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said: “Any public library relocating 30,000 books from its young adult to adult section is simply astonishing. What’s happening in Livingston Parish libraries shows the harrowing impact that vague legislation and a manufactured moral panic around obscenity can have on a community. Even if only temporary in the long run, readers of YA books will lose access to shelf after shelf of books; not to mention the immense burden it places on the librarians tasked with reviewing more than a lifetime of reading materials.”Georgia bill seeks penalties for librarians over restricted books from Fox 5 AtlantaSenate Bill 74, sponsored by Republican Sen. Max Burns, would impose misdemeanor charges on librarians who knowingly sell, loan, distribute, or exhibit materials harmful to minors. Supporters argue that similar restrictions already apply to teachers and coaches. However, librarians who make a good faith effort to remove flagged content would not face charges.CT library book banning bills raise concern among some lawmakers from CT MirrorSeveral Republican lawmakers spoke out Wednesday against the effort to pass legislation designed to deter book banning in Connecticut libraries. They argue that parents should have direct input into which books are taken off library shelves, particularly regarding those that contain material about sexuality.This is an interesting case. I believe in giving the benefit of the doubt to the parent who is challenging books in their own school library after their own kid has read them. This parent sounds reasonable in not blaming librarians. I do think that the author of the article did a poor job in reporting this—the two books should be named, so we readers have an idea of what is in them. The local control issue is one I agree with. But do opponents want every challenged book to be removed? (That’s not local control, that’s censorship.) The proposed law protects librarians from criminal charges over book selection. That’s a good idea in our current environment, so, again, the author of the article needs to discuss the proposed law and the objections in more specific terms.Two stacks of books sat in front of the podium representing literature that concerns opponents of the legislation, including “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human (A Graphic Novel)” by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan and “You Know, Sex: Bodies, Gender, Puberty and Other Things” by Cory Silverberg. …Mona Colwell, a mother of three, author and educator from Old Lyme, spoke at the press conference about two fantasy books she found troubling that her son brought home with themes related to drug use, violence, sex and suicide.Colwell said she wouldn’t have a problem with those books being included in a public library in a section for adults. But she was horrified that a librarian recommended those books for summer reading for her 10-year-old …“Librarians choose these materials based on recommendations from the American Library Association. Librarians are not going to be able to read everything. But once you read it, you have to be thinking: is this appropriate for a 10-year-old kid?” Colwell said.…The law is also aimed at protecting librarians by giving them immunity from being sued or prosecuted for good will actions related to their work, and it includes language that empowers them to sue others for harassment.Thanks for being here! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,It’s getting to be something of a cliche to say “Another hard week!” I hope you have found the things that help you make change in the world.The short story I’m working on lost its voice somewhere in the middle, so I have to work on landing that. I wanted the final scene to be both wacky and poignant—in other words, to have the flavor of life that teaches and nurtures me. I haven’t gotten that down yet—it’s a tough mix—but I persist. For encouragement, I started to read Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: a DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories by Steve Almond. And there is much that is encouraging, many good ideas on how to lay the foundation of a story. But this made me laugh and I want to share it. If you are an avid reader, but not a writer, you may be surprised. If you are a writer, you are nodding along:Let me start by stating something I hope we all have in common, which is that I find writing excruciating, a form of self-imposed exile with a side order of shingles.Banned books and Sold by Patricia McCormickLast week I included the list of the top eleven banned books of the 2023-24 school year and discussed the first three:* Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult* Looking for Alaska by John Green* The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chboskyand you can look back at that post on Perks and at this one on Alaska if you want to see why I think those books belong in the high school library.The fourth book on that ‘top banned books’ list is Sold by Patricia McCormick. We had multiple copies in the library and it was pretty popular. A librarian can’t read all the books in her library (we had a big library for a high school—over 40,000 books)—and Sold was one I hadn’t read.I’ve discussed previously how librarians select books based on reviews and awards. As it happens, I’d read another book (Cut) by the author, Patricia McCormick, and found it very good, realistic, and hopeful about family trauma and therapy. In addition, it had wide appeal to our students and was accessible to all, even those who were reluctant readers. I booktalked it to classes. So when the reviews on Sold came out, it was a must purchase. And then it was a National Book Award Finalist.With the other books I’ve discussed, I’ve posted my thoughts from years ago—thoughts I had when I first read the books. I thought it would be fun this week to read Sold and discuss it since it’s next on the list. So, read it I did, this Thursday.Sold is about a thirteen-year-old girl, Lakshmi, who lives in poverty in a small village in the mountains of Nepal. Her stepfather gambles away money the family doesn’t have. He has a crippled arm and does no work of any type because of it. However, he is able to ride a motorcycle, gamble, go to the tea house daily and meet up with friends. Lakshmi’s mother tells her that it is better to have him than no man at all, an assumption the reader knows isn’t true, one based only on the patriarchal rules of the culture.When a monsoon washes away the family’s crops, they are desperate. Lakshmi is told she is being sent to India to become a maid in a rich woman’s house. She doesn’t object, thinking she can save her family and send her earnings home. She imagines they will be able to buy a tin roof for their hut. Her mother is sad because she wanted Lakshmi to continue with school. But she instructs Lakshmi on how to gain favor as a servant and believes she will see her after a period of separation.What neither mother nor daughter knows is that Lakshmi’s stepfather has sold her into sexual slavery. (The publisher’s summary says ‘prostitution,’ but that’s not the right description.) When Lakshmi figures out her fate, she hopes to earn her way out. But the old woman who runs the brothel is deeply cruel—perhaps sadistic is a better word—and also makes it impossible for Lakshmi to get ahead by charging for food, clothes, medicine, 50% interest on the money ‘loaned’ to her parents, etc.When a possible opportunity for escape comes, Lakshmi doesn’t know what to believe as she has been lied to so many times by so many people, always being put in danger.While this is a novel about a very dark topic, it is full of beauty and hope. The narrative is a novel in verse, very brief and very poetic. In Nepal, Lakshmi has the open heart of a poet, seeing the beauty in nature all around her, eloquently describing it. Even in the brothel, she makes friends with some of the other girls and learns a bit of English and Hindi from the child of one of the women there.So—as this book is about a very difficult topic, why have it in the high school library?* Trafficking of girls (and boys) is a topic that seems to interest conservatives, a thing they claim to want to put an end to. (Remember the Pizzagate conspiracy theory?)* Information is power. The author interviewed trafficked girls and activists fighting for them to present this realistic portrayal.* Knowledge of these terrible but very real circumstances engenders empathy.* Empathy may engender action. Many high school students form clubs, get a teacher to be their advisor, bring guest speakers, and raise funds to fight for good in the world.* High school activism is a foundation for a life of concern and goodwill for humankind. Even if a student doesn’t get to this step, they’ve done the first step: read the book.As PEN America has pointed out, 57% of the books banned in the 2023-24 school year had sex or sex-related topics. And, yes, some of them have normal, sexually-active-teen issues. But a good number are like Sold, books that are frank looks at abuse. Which is important for this age group (see bullet points above.)In an interview, author Patricia McCormick states that her goal is to “tell this heartbreaking story from the point of view of one individual girl. … I believe that young adults want to know what's happening to their peers on the other side of the world, but that media accounts, by their very nature, cannot usually go beyond the surface. To me, there is nothing more powerful—or permanent—than the impact of a book.”Now—here’s an ask of you. I usually mention that I’m going to include all the spoilers because you are most likely an adult and are not going to read the banned book. This time, I didn’t include the most important spoilers. I want you to read Sold. It’s so short—it’ll take about three hours, four if you look back over the lovely descriptions and read them aloud to yourself. It’s the perfect book to use to see for yourself what is going on in these banned books. The time investment is minimal; the reward is great. Think about those 57% of banned books having a sex-related topic. Should we address these topics with teens?What I’m readingAs mentioned above, I’m reading the writer’s guide Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow by Steve Almond. I’m about 25% into it. So far, good ideas. Recommend for writers.I read Sold this week, see above for detailed account.I’m listening to Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett. A friend (who is one of our readers here!) recommended it since the library of my former hometown has selected it for a citywide read. Plus, it has the cult connection, which I am always interested in. Jollett spent the first years of his life in the Synanon cult, separated from his parents and raised ‘by the universe’—much like an orphan. I thought the book would be about this, but it opens with him, his mother, and his brother escaping. And while he’s a small child, the fallout is incredible. And that’s what the story is about.Just for fun: do you have a favorite?Before we move on to the library news of the week, I thought you might enjoy this. I asked my son for help on switching up my ‘donate once’ button since PayPal was not allowing it. I’ve gone to ‘Buy Me a Coffee.’ I told my son I liked four photos I had taken that could be the background for the donation button. Here they are (these are NOT clickable—just for fun!)The photos with the skeletons are from my Pilates teacher’s yard at Halloween. She’s a big fan of the holiday and decorates with all kinds of ghouls and spooky characters. But the skeletons are in some giant cacti—and that spoke to me, particularly the leaping one with the rose in its mouth! Ultimately, I decided people would find those too dark. I picked the photo with my favorite inland So Cal vista—Mt. Baldy (San Antonio) and Mt. Ontario, covered in snow beyond the desert landscape. (Check out that Joshua tree!)But I’m now wondering what people really do like. So—let’s vote on our favorites:I’m just curious. I can’t help it! Meanwhile, the ‘Buy a Cuppa’ link should be at the end of this post and it should work if you are so inclined.My first post was on July 30, 2023, a little over a year and a half ago. Some very wonderful people pledged their support, but I never opened the pledge pay form because:* I wanted to make sure I would be able to publish consistently over time.* I wanted to make sure that people who were willing to support me knew what they were getting into.So, now. I am thinking of opening the pledges, turning them into paid subscriptions in the near future. Thank you to those who pledged! However, everything here will remain free to everyone. That matters to me. In order to show gratitude to those who do get a paid subscription or who ‘buy me a cuppa,’ I will be raffling off books and fabric things I make as thank yous. (To be honest, it’s not many people—you’re bound to win something, quite possibly repeatedly!)Thanks for supporting me by reading, commenting or pledging!Part 2: Library and book ban newsThis week, I’m starting with three articles on book removals from U.S. military schools. (I believe these books are under review for permanent removal—which means they have not been officially removed, at least yet, and may make it back on the shelves.) I had considered not including any articles about Julianne Moore’s picture book Freckleface Strawberry. I’m worried people will think: ‘Oh, banning a book about being a redheaded child? That’s a bridge too far!’ And, of course, it is a bridge too far. But so is banning books about LGBTQ+ folks. It’s no different. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Not allowing mention of women fighting for women’s rights? Yes, a bridge too far.Military schools removed a book on Ruth Bader Ginsburg because of ‘equity ideology’ from ForwardA children’s picture book on Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been pulled from the shelves of U.S. military schools.No Truth Without Ruth: The Life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg was just one of several books removed from the shelves at Pentagon schools last week. Freckleface Strawberry, a picture book by actress Julianne Moore about a girl who struggles to accept her freckles, was also pulled, as was Becoming Nicole, a biography of transgender activist Nicole Maines.The removal is the result of Trump’s executive orders targeting trans people, diversity, equity and inclusion programs and “radical indoctrination” in schools. Federally funded military schools, which serve approximately 67,000 children of U.S. military personnel, are going over their educational materials to ensure compliance with the new orders banning “gender ideology” — including any discussion of the existence of trans and nonbinary people — and “anti-American ideologies,” which include topics like racism and oppression, in schools.Why Is the Pentagon So Scared of Julianne Moore? From VultureTo clarify, the book has been selected for review, so there’s a chance it hasn’t yet been banned, but it’s sad that a picture book about self-acceptance is judged on its face as threatening this administration’s Project 2025–inflected ideology, as though loving one’s freckles is a slippery slope to loving one’s identity. Moore says she is “particularly stunned” because she herself grew up attending a DoDEA-run school on a military base in Frankfurt, Germany.The White House said book bans aren’t happening. Now JD Vance’s memoir is a target from the 19th“Hillbilly Elegy” contains profanity, references to LGBTQ+ people and passages celebrating diversity — features that may conflict with Trump administration executive orders.SC House Dems call for amendments to public schools’ book banning process from ABCIn a press conference Wednesday morning, House Democrats said they’re introducing a bill that would make amendments to South Carolina’s current process for banning books in public schools.Led by Rep. Heather Bauer, lawmakers say the “Freedom to Read Protections and Respect for School Library Media Specialist Autonomy Act” would allow school librarians and media specialists to make autonomous decisions about book selections in good faith, while protecting them from intimidation or harassment from parents.Library directors’ degree requirement to be dropped under latest bill from ‘Book Ban Dan’ from the Arkansas TimesState Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Jonesboro) — infamous for defunding his hometown library system in 2022 and for his 2023 effort to criminalize librarians who allow young people access to books on sex education and sexuality —is now seemingly taking aim at the state’s top librarian, along with directors of the state’s regional public library systems. (That 2023 law, Act 372, has been partially struck down by a federal judge for violating the First Amendment.)For the current legislative session, Sullivan introduced two bills aimed at libraries. On Tuesday, members of the Senate Committee on City, County and Local Affairsgreenlighted Senate Bill 181, which will now go to the full Senate. SB181 would substantially reduce academic standards for the state library director and regional library directors, repealing the requirement that they hold master’s degrees from programs accredited by the American Library Association.Colorado Senate passes bill that would make it harder for certain books to be banned from school libraries from Denver 7 NewsSB25-063 would require school districts to write a policy in regards to how books could be removed from libraries, and the policy must follow anti-discrimination law concerning protected classesThe following 11 books have been banned in SC public schools:* “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson* “Flamer” by Mike Curato* “Push” by Sapphire* “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky* “A Court of Frost and Starlight” by Sarah J. Maas* “A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas* “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas* “A Court of Wings and Ruin” by Sarah J. Maas* “Damsel” by Elana Arnold* “Normal People” by Sally Rooney* “Ugly Love” by Colleen Hoover This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,It’s been another wild week. (Are you writing letters and phoning to support the courts?) I decreased my news and op-ed reading/viewing time. I’m down from five hours a day to about three hours. So I still need to work on it. That said, I did get some work done.I rewrote an essay about 2020-21 to cut over 400 words so it would be in shape for submission. I’m not sure any lit mags will think it’s a fit but it was important to me to get it down, even if it just eventually serves as a piece of family history. It correlates to what is happening now, so it feels pertinent/relevant. I’ve had an idea for a short story for almost a year. After working on it this week, I now have a complete first (very rough) draft. I submitted a flash nonfiction piece to a journal and a flash fiction to a local short story contest. I queried a literary agent about my novel on book banning. If you write, you know that the likeliest outcome for all of these is rejection. However, I belong to a 100 Rejections Club, so I’m working that goal quite nicely, thank you! 😊The ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies, uncorrected) for my upcoming novel are ready. The cover reveal isn’t happening until March, but I have permission to share my dedication page. I really like this because I’d asked if these words could be a sort of watermark on the book cover. It made the cover look way too busy, but the designer said he would try to work it in elsewhere. I love the way it looks like a graphic pattern, but then when you see it closely, you find the words. Very much what the lives of the characters in Keep Sweet are like.Chin up: How to carry onI’m going to get into specific banned books this week, but in case you are still cowering in the corner and need more ideas for relief from the Constitutional crisis we are in here in the USA, a few ideas:* Most people I know have been politically active in some form since 2016. If you aren’t, but want to be immediately, two good places to turn are Vote Forward and Swing Left. They have very specific directions on letter writing, making phone calls, etc. All data-driven, meant to yield real results/change.* Last week I mentioned Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day. They also have words of the week, and it’s a quick way of seeing what people are interested in by seeing what words they look up. Most relate to politics, but not all. (For example, ‘genre’ was probably looked up because Beyoncé mentioned it in an acceptance speech at the Grammys.) An interesting, low-stakes way to consider the ‘state of the state.’* When you need a break, a fun Substack to follow is Letters from a Wanderer by Emese-Réka Fromm. She is quite the traveler with interesting facts, stories, and photos from many places in the world.* I thought this comic in the NYer was pretty funny: Totally Reasonable Coping Strategies for 2025. The artist, Liana Finck has a Substack you might like to subscribe to.* Did you subscribe to Dave Barry last week when I mentioned him? His posts this week made me laugh ‘til I cried. Now that’s a gift.* Last week, I also mentioned sending notes and cards to friends as a pick-me-up. I received a few from friends, too. And my husband got me funny cards (one ostensibly from my dogs).* Remember there are smart people out there looking for solutions to big problems. I read this in the LA Times this week. It seemed like such a smart idea.Could inflatable tanks have helped?Some say an energy company’s Water Trees could be a game-changing solution to create storage where needed to fight infernos like the Palisades and Eaton blazesThe Perks of Being a Wallflower and other banned booksLet’s look closely at the top banned books of the last school year.Most Banned Books of the 2023-2024 School Year from PEN America1. Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult, 98 bans2. Looking for Alaska, by John Green, 97 bans3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, 85 bans4. Sold, by Patricia McCormick, 85 bans5 (tie). Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher, 76 bans5 (tie). Crank (Crank Series), by Ellen Hopkins, 76 bans7. Identical, by Ellen Hopkins, 74 bans8. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, 73 bans9. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, 67 bans10 (tie). Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen, 66 bans10 (tie). Tricks, by Ellen Hopkins, 66 bansI’ve not only read some of these top banned books, but I bought thirty copies at a time of some of them and ’booktalked’ them to classes during library visits. I got a lot of teens to read these books, and with good reason.1. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi PicoultI didn’t read Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. At the time it came out, I’d read and enjoyed My Sister’s Keeper (also sometimes banned). Looking for the same author, I started Nineteen Minutes. I found the characters more stereotypical than real, so I stopped reading pretty quickly. But I had it in the library because my personal taste is not one of the criteria I used to decide on what belonged in the collection. It was moderately popular with the teens. It’s about a school shooting. Censors remove it because there is a rape scene.2. Looking for Alaska by John GreenThe second book on the list, Looking for Alaska by John Green, is one I covered in a previous post. I loved it. It was my first John Green book and I became a fan. It was wildly popular—I had multiple copies, often booktalked it, had copies that wore out or were stolen, bought lots of replacement copies.3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen ChboskyI mentioned Perks of Being a Wallflower in a previous post and quoted from the review I’d written in 2009, when I first read it. Here’s the (short) review in its entirety. It was hard to say too much about the book without a major spoiler. And since you are probably not a teen, I’ll give the spoiler here because it’s the reason for the banning. Toward the end of the book, the protagonist realizes he was sexually abused by a much loved and trusted relative when he was a child. After landing in a psychiatric hospital, he works through his trauma, comes to forgive his aunt, and learns to engage with others (no longer a wallflower).I like to share what I wrote about the book at the time because it is not influenced by today’s politics. So—in 2009, it was a citywide book club choice in the city where I worked on the school side of a joint-use library. (The school and the city had their libraries together in the same building. This is an exquisitely bad idea, but that’s a story for another day!) Here’s what I said on first reading Perks:“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is the next book for the Teen Book Club here at the library, sponsored by the Ontario City Library, Colony High Branch. Since the discussion date is quickly approaching (January 26), I moved this title to the top of my list and read it last week. I can see why it’s a ‘cult classic.’Charlie, the protagonist, sends letters to an unnamed ‘friend’ without giving his identity away. He discusses what it’s like to be in high school. He’s a wallflower in the sense that he is an observer of all that goes on, yet he is not a participant. Something about his writing style made me think of the narrator of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time,” a character with Asperger’s Syndrome. Charlie is much more average on the scale of normal interaction, but still, he doesn’t quite understand social situations in the same way that most people would.Despite the strikes against him, Charlie befriends a small group of misfits—and the novel makes clear that just about everyone in high school is a misfit, even the most popular cheerleaders and football stars. Though “Perks” has been compared to “The Catcher in the Rye,” partly because it deals with teen depression, the subject matter is more contemporary—the characters must deal with current sexual attitudes, parties and drugs, date rape and teen pregnancy. Not that they don’t have fun—some of the most poignant passages in the book are on how carefully Charlie chooses gifts for his friends, how well he ‘reads’ their hearts and how much he loves them—and receives love in return. This is a truly engaging and honest book for mature readers. It’s also a quick read, so if you’d like to check it out before the discussion on January 26, come by the reference desk and pick up a copy!So—more than fifteen years ago, we didn’t have any complaints about this citywide read for teens despite the novel’s inclusion of some difficult subject matter. These are topics teens must content with. As I’ve said before and will say again (I’m sure), one of the best ways to be introduced to difficult subjects is through reading.We’ll continue with the above list next week.PEN has a Banned Books Press Kit that includes articles and graphics.Here’s one example of a graphic on the above ‘most banned books.’Part 2: Library and book newsLibraries & Well-Being: A Case Study from The New York Public Library from the NYPLThe article is a summary of the key takeaways, but there is an option to download the full report.1. Libraries create a foundation for well-being. (Space and resources)2. Libraries foster the core elements of well-being (comfort, joy, discovery, inspiration, enrichment, connection, care, support, knowledge, reflection, purpose, and productivity.)3. Libraries promote personal development beyond well-being. (Growth and expansion)4. The Library’s positive impact on well-being is highest for patrons living in lower-income communities.5. This positive contribution to well-being is also higher for patrons with more physical and time-intensive library use. (patrons who spent time in NYPL’s spaces and attended programs reported consistently higher impact than e-only users.)6. These findings demonstrate that public libraries support the flourishing of their patrons—and thereby help strengthen their communities. (This evidence argues for public libraries, like NYPL, to be on the map, and at the table, for community discussions about individual and collective well-being.)I wondered if there were any similar research on the school library’s affect on well-being. I asked the CA school library hive mind. One top researcher in the area thought not, but did send a link to a study from 2005 that has a bit about well-being in that it asks if library use helps the student outside of school. (Studies on school libraries generally focus on information literacy.)How Authors Against Book Bans Helped Defeat Attempted Library Censorship in Florida In LitHubHere’s a nice, useful quote:Things are grim. I won’t lie about the state of the nation. But in darkness, we find our communities. And our community is deep with the smartest, most educated cohort available: readers. And I truly believe that if we leverage even a fraction of our community’s power to face this moment, we will have significant wins all across the nation.If your public library uses Hoopla to manage its digital collection, you (and your librarians) may need to be on the lookout for AI slush. | 404 MediBanned Books List: Romance Novels From PEN AmericaRomance novels are among the most frequently banned books in U.S. schools, according to PEN America’s analysis of school book bans. Romance fiction is often targeted and banned in schools for its inclusion of sex, even if only referred to and not explicit.Most of these books were written specifically for young adults and feature love and romance story lines for teens figuring out romantic relationships. A love of love stories can turn teens – including 18-year-old students who are legally adults – into lifelong readers.* A Court of Thorns and Roses series, by Sarah J. Maas* Throne of Glass series, by Sarah J. Maas* Last Night at the Telegraph Club, by Malinda Lo* The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green* Red, White and Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston* Like a Love Story, by Abdi Nazemian* Twilight series, by Stephenie MeyerIn legal move, Elizabeth district returns banned books to libraries, but few will have access From Chalkbeat ColoradoElizabeth school district officials say they have returned to school libraries 19 books they removed last fall. But most students won’t be able to read or check out the books, which include “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini.That’s because the district decided to make the returned books available only to a small number of people: Specifically, plaintiffs in a recent lawsuit against the district over the book removals. Those allowed access to the books include two district students, members of the NAACP, and children of members of the NAACP.Books in school libraries could get an extra layer of protection from bans from Colorado Public RadioA bill to make it harder to remove books from public school libraries cleared its first legislative hurdle Monday night. …The bill stipulates that only parents or legal guardians of children at a school could challenge a book in their child’s library and ask for its removal. It protects school librarians from retaliation and requires that a school’s challenge policy be transparent and posted for the community. It also limits challenges to a book’s place in a library to once every two years. …[Bill sponsor state Sen. Lisa Cutter] said the bill would protect school libraries from what’s known as “ban bombing,” where hundreds of requests to ban books bombard school librarians. Book challenges have become more prevalent nationwide. In 2022, Colorado was home to nearly 10 percent of all book challenges, according to the American Library Association.To Defend Religious Freedom from the Trump Administration, We Need to Fight Book Bans from Book Riot[Author Reverend Paul Brandeis] Raushenbush is the President and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, an organization dedicated to protecting the integrity of *both* faith and democracy in America. He has been a champion for intellectual freedom, encouraging people to show up for their public libraries and schools to ensure their longterm existence.Amanda Gorman says a ban on her poetry felt ‘like a gut punch’: Full interview from NBC NewsChristian Nationalists Are Reshaping Texas’s Public School CurriculaThe Texas State Board of Education will pay districts $60 a student to use a curriculum infused with Christian content. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hi Friends,I realize this is posting on the day of the Super Bowl, but it’s landing many hours prior, so I hope you read and enjoy! If you’re busy making chili and snacks, there’s always the listening option! The audio is not AI—it’s me, a human being. 😊A friend pointed out that I had an article up on BuzzFeed this week. I didn’t know about it as they didn’t notify me. They pulled it from HuffPost, where it was published in June. (BuzzFeed owns HuffPost). If you happened to have read that article about the hypocrisy of purity culture and subscribed here because of it, welcome!🤗I know it’s been another insane week, but the courts are (at least in part) pushing back on the firing chaos and privacy invasions. Being where we are, I want to mention many comforting things this week before looking at the library and book news (which is a rough go right now. Ugh.)Good stuffThe world may be on fire, but I have a novel coming out!I’m a bit stressed about my upcoming novel Keep Sweet because it was pointed out to me that a novel by the same name about a teen in a polygamist cult was published fifteen years ago. (Note: Titles are often repeated. Keep Sweet is the title of lots of romance genre books.) I looked at the publisher’s description of the older book and it appears to have a romantic element and a girl who is forced to marry an old man, neither of which are plot points in my novel. I very purposefully didn’t include a romance because I’m tired of boyfriends being the answer to problems. The guy my protagonist likes has already been kicked out of the cult for disobedience. So, yeah, he’s a good guy—but he isn’t going to save her. (Plus something to drive the book banners crazy: not all the women like men.)Speaking of plot points I don’t enjoy, let’s remember that Liz Shipton has the funniest short videos about dystopian and romantasy genres. It’s another way to laugh out loud in stressful times. Here’s a favorite:Women Writing Women in YA Dystopian(Let’s also remember that, as a librarian, I think you should read whatever genres make you happy.)Games are good for youI found the link to this article on Roxane Gay’s “Audacious Roundup”: Cozy comfortNew research backs up what gamers have thought for years: video games can be an antidote to stress and anxiety.I’ve never been one to play games, but last weekend I played a few simple card games with my sisters. Not being a competitive person, I’d never had much interest in card games. My sister pointed out to me that the object is social time. The games (Kings’ Corner and Golf) were mostly about chance, but I did need to be reminded to check the cards in play to see if I could put my stack onto an existing stack and therefore continue with my turn. And, yeah, it was fun.I know this might seem a bit compulsive, and I’m wondering if any of you have the same issue: if I spend time playing games, I think about how I could be reading instead. When this happens, I’m generally in the middle of a book. If I weren’t, maybe I would spend more time gaming.I’ve found the Substack RobinPlays to be fun to read. At one time, I tried to play D&D with my sons, but I was terrible. I was afraid to take any action that might endanger the group or the campaign. So I enjoyed Robin’s discussion of D&D and her suggestion that I try again. If you enjoy role-playing games, you should subscribe.Words are good for youMerriam-Webster will deliver a ‘word of the day’ to your inbox daily. Honestly, I know all the words I’ve gotten over the years. However, there’s a little quiz (with a hint) that asks you to name a specific synonym or antonym. I’m only so-so at that. It’s fun.Here’s a word from this week: malapropism (A malapropism is an amusing error that occurs when a person mistakenly uses a word that sounds like another word but that has a very different meaning.) The synonym was eggcorn. Now I have a word to describe “for all intensive purposes” (all intents and purposes).Words are also good when you send them on their way to your friends. I just finished sending some valentines. About a month ago, I also saw that Merriam-Webster had ‘galentines’ for sale, so I bought a pack to send. Once I started addressing them, I wished I had bought two sets because I wanted to send them to lots of women. But they are POD, in addition to a slowish delivery time, so it was too late. But more excuses to send cards to friends are on the way!Laughing is good for youDave Barry has a Substack and this was shared on Substack Reads: The Haggis MenaceI used to read Barry regularly including in the Funny Times. During Trump Round 1, nothing felt funny anymore and I stopped my subscription. I’m glad Barry is able to make me chuckle again. I find him hilarious. Good news is good for youI’m pretty sure everyone loves David Byrne, and I now have another reason to do so: Reasons to be Cheerful Magazine. This is a project of his that a friend alerted me to. It’s been around since 2018, but I somehow missed it. It covers all sorts of topics: Climate and Environment, Health, Culture, What We’re Reading, Science/Tech, Economy, Civic Engagement. I read an article about how they are working to save hedgehogs in the UK through ‘hedgehog highways’ (linked garden passages) and a rescue called Prickles in a Pickle. (I am terrible at titles, so I just love that clever one.)Giving blood is good all aroundLast week I included in my post the idea that we can give blood as a way of doing good and feeling good. So I found this article in the New Yorker interesting. While the quest for artificial blood is advancing, it still appears to be many years out (both completely artificial blood and blood grown from cells in a lab).The Long Quest for Artificial BloodBetween my last post and this one, I got good news from the Red Cross: I still have CMV negative blood, which means my blood can be donated to babies, people battling cancer, etc. This is true of only 15% of adults over 40. I knew I was CMV negative for a long time, but hadn’t been notified in years, so I figured I’d caught CMV (symptoms in adults are mild, so it’s easy not to know).What is CMV Negative Blood? Why Is It ImportantCMV (cytomegalovirus) is a common flu-like virus that up to 85% of U.S. adults have been exposed to by the age of 40. … CMV can be quite serious, even fatal, for babies and people with weakened immune systems. … For this reason, babies needing transfusions as part of their medical care should only receive CMV negative blood from donors who have not been exposed to CMV. …If you are CMV negative, please consider donating blood as often as possible throughout the year.What I’m reading and other book ideasPrintThis week, I started reading The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk (Nobel Prize winner, 2019). I bought five books in November at Warwick's in San Diego and this is one of them. So far, it dives into the thoughts of a tuberculous patient seeking a cure in a rural town in the Silesian mountains around 1913. Someone in the Sanitorium dies, supposed by suicide, but it could have been murder. I’m all in. The misogyny of particular characters is pretty crazy. That seems to be a theme. (Erasing women is a theme in our own lives—the Musk/Trump 2 administration required NASA to remove mention of them, as well as indigenous people, from its website.)AudioI’m listening to The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez because it's a book club read in our local library. It’s about a writer who, as her career comes to an end, is unable to make her stories work. She decides to create a story graveyard on inherited property in the Dominican Republic (her homeland). It’s a lot of fun. Those stories demand to be told, even from the grave!Recommendations for KidsIn a educational forum, I found teacher librarians recommending these children’s books for speaking to youth about possible ICE raids, Inclusion, Justice and Equity. If you’ve been a subscriber for a while, you know I generally discuss adult and YA (teen) books and was a high school teacher librarian, so I want to lean on others for picture/younger kids’ books.* I am Ruby Bridges by Ruby Bridges* All are welcome by Penfold* Mixed by Chung Arree* Dreamer by Yuyu Morales* I am Human by Peter Reynolds* Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Tompkins-Bigelow* I promise by Lebron James* Change Sings by Amanda Gorman* Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena* Free to Learn: How Alfred Lopez Fought for the Right to Go to School by Cynthia Levinson* I am an American: The Wong Kim Ark Story (about birthright citizenship)* Ari is a Dreamer: A True Story by Ari Morales* Dreamers/Sonadores by Yuyi Morales & Bright Star* My Shoes and I- Crossing 3 Borders/ Mis Zapatos y Yo Cruzando 3 Fronteras by Rene Colato Lainez* Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonitiuh* Pancho Conejo y el Coyote/ Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote by Duncan Tonitiuh* Undocumented: A Worker’s Fight by Duncan Tonitiuh* Facing Fear: An Immigration Story by Karen Lynn Williams* Two White Rabbits by Javier Buitrago* The Notebook Keeper by Stephen Briseno* Efren Divided (middle grade)* The Crossroads (middle grade)* Enrique’s Journey (middle grade)* Frontera por Julio Anita* Ali and Sylvia ( true story about their friendship amid the 1940’s CA lawsuit on education)* Still Dreaming / Seguimos Soñando por Claudia Guadalupe MartínezPart 2: Libraries and Book bansTrump fired National Archivist Colleen Shogan on Friday.It was leaders of her agency, the National Archives and Records Administration, who raised concerns about Mr. Trump possessing boxes of classified documents that he had taken after he left office in 2021, setting off a criminal case against him.Kelly Jenson moved off Substack but still has her newsletter. She reports on library and book ban legislation (exclusively as far as I know). From this week’s post:It will be the states who also protect students, library workers, and educators from what will come following the Mahmoud v. Taylor decision from the Supreme Court (you can read about that here but in short, it’s about whether or not people can opt out of LGBTQ+ books and curriculum in public schools due to religious beliefs).* There are states seeking to criminalize library workers for as much as having LGBTQ+ books, while there are others writing into their laws that library workers are protected from such prosecution.She goes on to report on book banning/librarian criminalizing legislative bills under consideration in 21 states!A South Carolina rabbi’s Holocaust memorial speech was pulled from public TV for being too ‘political’ from the ForwardRabbi Sam Rose had used his speech to inveigh against refugee, LGBTQ and book-ban policies.A rabbi in South Carolina used the occasion of a Holocaust memorial ceremony to draw parallels to modern-day federal and state policies on refugees, LGBTQ issues and book bans — only to have his speech cut out of the state public television station’s archived video of the event.Those behind the broadcast said the decision to pull the segment actually came from the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust, a state-operated Holocaust education initiative, which had hosted the event and hired the TV station to make the recording.“We do not believe the political statements made during the benediction were appropriate for a standard-aligned educational resource and therefore requested that portion be removed from the final production,” the state council said in a statement.ACLU files lawsuit on behalf of Arkansas librarian fired after opposing book censorship effort from WTOP News (Associated Press)Hector was fired after a group called the Saline County Republican Women began a campaign urging the censorship of books that touched on themes involving race or LGBTQ+ themes. Hector spoke out against a resolution the quorum court, the county’s governing board, passed calling for such books to be moved to areas not accessible by children.The quorum court later passed an ordinance taking away the library board’s authority to hire and fire library staff, instead giving that power to the county judge. Brumley fired Hector less than two months later.The lawsuit accuses Brumley and the county of violating Hector’s First Amendment rights and asks that the ordinance taking away the library board’s hiring and firing authority be struck down as unconstitutional.Publishers, Authors Sue Idaho Over Book Removal Provisions in Law from School Library JournalPenguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks, along with authors Malinda Lo, David Levithan, and Dashka Slater, the Donnelly Public Library District, a teacher, students, and parents have filed a lawsuit challenging the book removal provisions of Idaho's HB 710, a law that restricts books in school and public libraries. …“Idaho 710 goes even further than previous laws by removing classic books from public libraries in addition to schools,” Dan Novack, vice president and associate general counsel at Penguin Random House said in a statement announcing the suit. …HB 710, which became law on July 1, 2024, forbids anyone under the age of 18 from accessing library books that contain “sexual content,” regardless of the work's literary or educational merit. The definition of "sexual content" is broad, vague, and overtly discriminatory, according to the suit.“Libraries should be for everyone. We foster learning, provide resources, inspire creativity, and support our patrons,” Donnelly Public Library director Sherry Scheline said in a statement. “As a result of HB 710, our programming—which includes the only option for after-school care in Donnelly—has been severely impacted, with children unable to step inside the building to use the bathroom or keep warm without a complex waiver. Our circulation has also declined significantly. In essence, it has become impossible to fulfill our purpose of serving the Donnelly community.”Utah bans a 16th book from public schools. Here’s what it’s about. From The Salt Lake Tribune“Like a Love Story” by Abdi Nazemian joins 15 other titles banned from Utah’s public schools.Another book has been added to Utah’s growing list of titles banned from all public schools in the state.The new entry is “Like a Love Story,” by Iranian-American author Abdi Nazemian. The historical, young adult queer novel follows Reza, an Iranian boy, as he grapples with his homosexuality in 1989, amid the AIDS crisis in New York City.The novel was among Time Magazine’s ″100 Best YA Books of All Time” in 2021.SC board of education removes handful of books from public schools for sexual content From WIS News 10The … books that were removed for violating the regulation were:* “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky* “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson* “Flamer” by Mike Curato* “Push” by SapphireThe two books the state decided to retain were:* “Bronx Masquerade” by Nikki Grimes* “House on Mango Street” by Sandra CisnerosThe South Carolina Board of Education posts the excerpts that the board was shown Tuesday on their website.These are not the first books to be challenged by South Carolinians or removed the State Board of Education. In 2024, seven books were banned from South Carolina schools:* “A Court of Frost and Starlight” by Sarah J. Maas* “A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas* “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas* “A Court of Wings and Ruin” by Sarah J. Maas* “Damsel” by Elana Arnold* “Ugly Love” by Colleen Hoover* “Normal People” by Sally RooneyThree classics had also been brought before IMRC due to potentially objectionable or challenging material: “1984″ by George Orwell, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee and “Romeo & Juliet” by William Shakespeare.The classics were allowed to stay on school shelves.Bill aims to stop [public] libraries from banning books based on politics, ideology From New Mexico Political ReportA bill aimed at protecting public libraries from politically charged book ban attempts is making its way through the Roundhouse.HB 27, the Librarian Protection Act, sponsored by Rep. Kathleen Cates, D-Rio Rancho, seeks to prohibit public libraries from getting state funding unless they adopt a policy prohibiting the removal of books or other materials based on partisan or doctrinal disapproval.So much going on this week, this is a long one!—thanks for reading to the end! I tried to work out the ‘donate once’ issue with PayPal, but I ended up with a chat bot that answers nothing (but has a lot to say!). I was too busy to go back and work on winding my way to a human being. I will try again next week. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends!I know this is a week of “What fresh hell is this?” The mistake I’m making—and that I made all through the four years of Trump Round One—is reading news for hours on end, asking myself just that question. I missed a co-write on Wednesday morning, completely forgot about it, because I was pouring over news and opinion pieces. Last Friday, I forgot the time of one of my online critique groups and logged in after it was over. This week I also slept through a work session.I need to step away from the chaos and do the work. My lifespan is a ticking clock. I don’t want to waste four more years in the anxiety whirlpool. I want to stay informed and keep up the letter writing and other campaign support. But I think I have to set a limit to my news/opinion consumption each day and adhere to it. Right now it’s about five hours per day. Maybe an hour is enough to be informed? And a few extra hours per week for the letter writing, etc.? (*How much time do you spend on news and politics on a given day?* Any helpful hints for keeping anxiety under control are welcome.)So I got the “Substack Reads” (that is, a post from Substack itself, which is automatically sent to people who have Substack accounts) lauding free speech and saying that Elon Musk is a “vocal supporter” of free speech. My initial reaction was to find this shockingly ignorant, as Musk has removed X users, deleted comments and silenced critics on his platform. Then the deeper worry: perhaps it’s not about ignorance but about bending the knee, which appears to be the hottest new hobby among both legacy media and tech bros.I’ve generally been lucky on Substack because I consistently engage with decent people. But a troll popped in last week because I wrote a bit about Bishop Mariann Budde in my post. I clicked on his account, where he defined himself:I read some of his commentary. It was downhill from there. All misogyny. You don’t need to see it.I hope Substack doesn’t become like X/Twitter. It’s been nice discussing some of the things I care about—reading books, writing books, book bans—with people who care about the same things. It’s also been nice to periodically discuss faith and religion, particularly as it relates to … books. (😉) If I can’t do that here, I don’t think there’s a place I can.I’m writing this a few days early because I am going to hang out with my sisters in Palm Springs over the weekend. Since last week’s post centered on Bishop Budde and her hopeful message, I want to add this week that there is/was a resolution pending in the House of Representative to condemn her for her plea for mercy. I’m not even going to look to see how that panned out. Ugh.I found an interview of Bishop Budde in the New Yorker interesting. They give her a chance to talk about the other three parts of her sermon that didn’t make the news. While the NYer doesn't give subscribers a limited number of ‘gift articles’ to hand out, I believe non-subscribers can read a few articles each month for free.Why Bishop Mariann Budde Wanted to Speak to Donald Trump“If you know what people are thinking about when they’re coming into church on Sunday morning, it’s very important to acknowledge that,” Budde says.This was a key takeaway for me:I try not to do this in isolation anymore, because I just need more eyes and ears to help me think this through. And so I was with the director of communications at the Cathedral, a dear friend, Kevin Eckstrom. And I said, “What do you think?” He said, “Yeah, yeah, put it in there.” And he himself is a gay man. And I thought, O.K. I wasn’t speaking in the abstract. These are not stick figures in my head, these are real people, my friends’ children.Yes, she was speaking for our families, friends, and neighbors. If you think you don’t know any LGBTQ folks or immigrants, here’s a news flash: they aren’t telling you out of self-preservation. You might be too mean for them to tell you the truth.Let’s grab hold of the positiveI really enjoy Lidija Nagulov - ArtDHD Substack because it asks important questions. It’s a nice space to ruminate in, and I hope you’ll subscribe. This week’s post:Made me think, oh I want to support her! And there was a ‘buy me a coffee’ link, so I bought her some coffees!(BTW—yes, I have a ‘buy me a coffee’ link, but it doesn’t work! I don’t know why, but if you click on it, it goes to a page that says, ‘this site doesn’t accept donations’ or something like that. I’m going to try and get help fixing that.)For another place to find solace, try Dan Rather’s Steady Substack. He will periodically do a “Lessons in Courage” post. Here’s the first one. (Of course, it includes Bishop Budde, but also discusses corporations and more.)Elsewhere, someone mentioned Heather Cox Richardson as an important person to subscribe to since she is a history professor and, in her daily posts, places everything in a larger historical context . I’d just figured everyone was already following Richardson because she adds her post to Substack, Facebook, and will also send it as a newsletter. But it was a good reminder for me—if there's a chance that you don’t subscribe to Richardson, you need to!One of the things she included in her newsletter this week caught my attention because it mentioned Meals on Wheels:The administration’s pause of all federal funding and grants until it could make sure “DEI” had been purged out of them cut everything from Meals on Wheels, a food delivery program for shut-ins, to education, local law enforcement, and the Medicaid on which programs for the elderly depend. Trump/Musk’s pausing of federal funding and grants isn’t legal (and so, at least for now, not happening). Nevertheless: I have two sons that work for Meals on Wheels. One texted me that they were fielding all sorts of calls from frightened elderly folks who thought their meals would be cut off. Meals on Wheels also provides for disabled veterans of any age, so cutting them off would be quite the slap in the face after their service to the country.Give bloodThis is something healthy adults of any age can do! They don’t retire senior citizens! There are a number of organizations that accept blood donations, the biggest being the American Red Cross. But I have also given blood to the City of Hope many times. When I worked in public schools, they had LifeStream Blood Bank come to campus and we donated to them. (They work through So Cal, but blood banks are in many places.)I recently got an email from the Red Cross with an image representing that I had donated 8 gallons of blood to them. Actually, I received an 8-gallon pin a long time ago, but some of my donations are under the name “Vicki,” so I think they got separated as two different people. At any rate, it’s fun to get little badges and pins. You can put them in a box with your scout badges. 😉Alright. It’s my great desire to get back to talking about specific books and writing challenges next week. There are some great YA books being challenged and pulled or banned in various libraries. And since I’ve not only read them but, as a high school librarian, also talked lots of teens into reading them, I want to share them with you.What I’m readingPrintI finished reading the manuscript of Scout’s Honor by Carlos Cortes. It will be published later this year. Here’s my take on it:When Harry Vincent turns up dead at Boy Scout Camp, inquiries test the fidelity to ‘Scout’s Honor’ of his friends, patrol members, leaders, and the local sheriff’s department. All have something to hide from a curious female newspaper reporter. Through these characters, Cortes explores questions of loyalty, trust, and a shifting grasp of reality. In an era when ‘boys will be boys’ excused sexism, prejudice, and bullying, the pursuit of truth just might be a trap.I’ve gone back to reading The Bog Wife and hope to finish it in warm, cozy Palm Springs.AudioI finished listening to How We Learn to be Brave by Bishop Mariann Budde. She discusses a lot of great examples, all of whom are people of faith (various faiths). Several were active in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, both well known and unheralded. She discusses Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries, whom I deeply admire.Part 2: Let’s talk books and librariesUnintended consequencesThis little excerpt from a comment by Christina’s Substack on Kathleen Schmidt’s Publishing Confidential Substack made me realize how often I don’t think of all the repercussions of actions: If Fed funding for libraries and schools is stopped or significantly decreased, that sales channel will crash, which will have a more significant impact than specific bans. What that means is that authors will sell fewer books. as if things aren’t already hard enough for writers. Book ban newsALA to U. S. Department of Education: Book bans are real From the American Library AssociationBook bans are real. Ask students who cannot access literary classics required for college or parents whose children can’t check out a book about gay penguins at their school library. Ask school librarians who have lost their jobs for protecting the freedom to read. While a parent has the right to guide their own children’s reading, their beliefs and prejudices should not dictate what another parent chooses for their own children.The new administration is not above the U.S. Constitution. Federal judges have repeatedly ruled that removing books from school library shelves based on the objections of a person or group, or due to prejudice against a group – book banning– is unconstitutional censorship that violates students’ First Amendment rights. Already several states have wasted countless taxpayer dollars defending lawsuits that seek to vindicate students’ Constitutional right to read freely in a safe and supportive environment.Everyone, everywhere, regardless of their age, background, or political views, deserves access to information from a wide range of perspectives and books that reflect their lived experiences. Libraries have provided that access for hundreds of years. We won’t stop offering access to the world of ideas, and we won’t back down from defending everyone’s Constitutional right to access and read any idea free from government censorship.The 2025 Texas Legislative Session: Criminalizing Librarians and Teachers From the Texas Freedom to Read ProjectIn Texas, several bills have been pre-filed in an attempt to get rid of affirmative defenses against prosecution for library materials, including those that have scientific, political, artistic, or literary value. (Click the link for a complete list.)In past legislative sessions, a number of states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, and more, introduced various bills attempting to criminalize librarianship - many of these laws have been challenged in court. While the trend of attempting to criminalize librarians and teachers is not new, it is one of the most concerning aspects of book-banning laws and policies. Historically, teachers and librarians have been exempt from prosecution under obscenity laws because they are obligated to provide access to diverse books and materials to uphold the First Amendment. In Texas, several bills have been pre-filed in an attempt to get rid of affirmative defenses against prosecution for library materials, including those that have scientific, political, artistic, or literary value.The 23 Most Banned Picture Books of the 2023-2024 School Year from PEN AmericaI spend a lot more time with YA books (books for teens) than I do picture books, so I’m not familiar with many of these titles. But I have mentioned here in the past how much I love No, David!, In the Night Kitchen, And Tango Makes Three, and Baseball Saved Us. The whole thing with nudity being “harmful to minors” is insane. David’s cute little butt and Mickey falling through space in the nude. Toddlers all have butts and they’ve seen them. All toddler boys have little boy penises and lots of sisters have not only seen them but taken baths with them. (Is any parent crazy enough to bathe their preschool boys and girls separately? All that extra time. All that wasted water.)The article linked above includes links to purchase each of the books. Here are the titles:1. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell,Justin Richardson, and Henry Cole, 7 bansThe heartwarming true story of two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo who adopt a baby penguin.2 (tie). The Family Book, by Todd Parr, 5 bansThe Family Book celebrates families of all kinds — big or small, messy or clean, or with two moms or two dads.2 (tie). Julián Is a Mermaid, by Jessica Love, 5 bansInspired by women in costumes, Julián uses a curtain and other household items to transform into a mermaid.4 (tie). When Aidan Became a Brother, by Kyle Lukoff and Kaylani Juanita, 4 bansWhen Aidan was born, everyone thought he was a girl until he settled into life as a boy. So when his parents announce that they’re going to have a baby, Aidan wants to make sure everything is right for his younger sibling.4 (tie). Draw Me a Star, by Eric Carle, 4 bansThis 1998 title from the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar features a young artist bringing the world to life around him. It also features an image of an Adam and Eve-like couple without clothes.5 (tie). This Day in June, by Gayle E. Pitman and Kristyna Litten, 3 bansThis Day in June features a pride celebration, with facts about LGBTQ+ history and culture.5 (tie). Prince and Knight, by Daniel Haack and Stevie Lewis, 3 bansIn this book published in partnership with GLAAD, Prince and Knight find their own fairy tale ending.5 (tie). Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, by Christine Baldacchino and Isabelle Malenfant, 3 bansMorris likes to play in the dress-up center at school, even though classmates say dresses are for girls.5 (tie). Milo Imagines the World, by Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson, 3 bansOn a long subway ride, Milo imagines the lives of people around him. When he discovers another boy getting off at the same stop, he learns to questions his assumptions.5 (tie). In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak, 3 bans“Milk in the batter!” This Caldecott Honor book features Mickey’s adventures as the night bakers make cake. A Moms for Liberty leader called nude drawings of Mickey “harmful to minors.”5 (tie). Baseball Saved Us, by Ken Mochizuku and Dom Lee, 3 bansA moving story inspired by true events of playing baseball in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II.5 (tie). A Is for Activist, by Innosanto Nagara, 3 bansAn alphabet board book preparing young activists to stand up for LGBTQ+ rights, environmental justice, civil rights, and other progressive causes.12 (tie). Unicorns Are the Worst! by Alex Willan, 2 bansThis glittery picture book, told from the point of view of an envious goblin, features an image of the goblin’s butt, which a local Moms for Liberty leader called “pornographic.”12 (tie). Sofia Valdez, Future Prez, by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts, 2 bansIn this bestseller from the Questioneers series, Sofia tries to convince her town to build a new park. Book banners zeroed in on a pin on her grandfather’s hat that appears to resemble a Pride symbol.12 (tie). Pink Is for Boys, by Robb Pearlman and Eda Kaban, 2 bansA message that pink is for everyone emphasizes a message that life is not color-coded, encouraging children to love racing or unicorns, no matter their gender.12 (tie). Our Subway Baby, by Peter Mercurio and Leo Espinosa, 2 bansThe heartwarming true story of a baby found abandoned in the subway and adopted by two men.12 (tie). Ogilvy, by Deborah Underwood and T.L. McBeth, 2 bansIn Ogilvy’s town, bunnies in dresses play ball and knit, while bunnies in sweaters make art and climb. Ogilvy wants to do it all, and won’t let clothes get in the way.12 (tie). No, David! by David Shannon, 2 bansThis Caldecott Honor book features a boy serving up mischief — including running through the street with no clothes on. Kids love it; book banners don’t.12 (tie). It Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity, by Theresa Thorn and Noah Grigni, 2 bansA child-appropriate exploration of gender identity posits simply that some people are boys, some are girls, and some are both, neither, or in between.12 (tie). I Am Billie Jean King, by Brad Meltzer and Chrisopher Eliopoulos, 2 bansPart of a popular biography series about history’s icons, this picture book explores the life of tennis champion Billie Jean King and her struggle for equality in sports.12 (tie). Harriet Gets Carried Away, by Jessie Sima, 2 bansHarriet enjoys playing dress-up and gets swept away by a colony of penguins. The apparently controversial part: She has two dads.12 (tie). Different Can Be Great: All Kinds of Families, by Lisa Bullard and Renée Kurilla, 2 bansWhen Makayla’s family is about to change, she goes on a quest to find out about different kinds of families.12 (tie). Bathe the Cat, by Alice B. McGinty and David Roberts, 2 bansThis hilarious rhyming picture book features two dads deciphering scrambled letters in an attempt to get their chores done and a cat who really doesn’t want a bath.Librarians featured in Sundance doc on book bans receive standing ovation from SLC audience from The Salt Lake TribuneDays after Utah banned its 15th book from all public schools, an independent film following the pressures school librarians face received a warm welcome from a Salt Lake City crowd at the Sundance Film Festival.“The Librarians,” a documentary by Kim A. Snyder, follows a handful of school librarians across the country — including in states like Texas, Florida and New Jersey — as they navigate a wave of book bans.Last week, Utah banned “Damsel,” a dark, feminist fairytale by Elena K. Arnold, from all public schools. Of the 15 books banned in the Beehive State, all but one was written by a woman.“The Librarians” focuses on mass-ban lists proposed by parent groups, or in some cases, by government officials like Texas state Rep. Matt Krause, who pursued banning a list of 850 books.The librarians featured in the film detail allegations of being fired, harassed, stalked and targeted for asking questions about why they must pull books from shelves.Florida judge rules against book ban-opposed parents alleging censorship, discrimination from the Pensacola News JournalA federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit accusing the Florida government of discriminating against those opposed to the surge of school library book removals across the state.A 2023 law and its implementing regulations created a state process for parents to appeal when a school board decides to keep their challenged books on the shelves. But that process doesn't extend to parents who want to contest a school board's decision to remove a book.Parents of public school students sued, arguing to U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor that the inconsistency violated the First Amendment, penalizing them based on viewpoint.In a Monday order, Winsor – who was appointed by President Donald Trump and took the bench in 2019 – dismissed the case. He gave the plaintiffs the option to file an amended complaint in two weeks but added that it's "unlikely any amendment will cure the defects." This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Help is out thereAlmost everyone I know has had a horrible week and is looking for both allies and positive moments that will re-energize them. So rather than list all the terrible things from this week—from the truly heinous to the ridiculous (Gulf of America, anyone?), I want to be positive and point, first, to some allies, and then to the incredible embodiment of hope that is the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington.I’ve never understood the ethics of being a billionaire, but one thing I’ve always believed is that if you are one, you don’t have to submit to anyone. So I was really surprised when all the tech bros bent the knee for Trump. Yeah, he could affect government contracts, but loss of contracts won’t affect billionaires’ lifestyles, etc. They have the option that someone whose livelihood is threatened by not being ‘loyal’ doesn’t have—that is, they can tell absolutely anyone to fuck off.I was talking to my friends and family about this because I still don’t understand it. I saw last week in Paul Krugman’s post “The Pathetic Billionaires’ Club” that I’m not the only person wondering about this:Why is this self-owning by billionaires so extraordinary? Well, ask yourself: What’s the point of being rich?Past a certain level of wealth, it can’t really be about material things. I very much doubt that billionaires have a significantly higher quality of life than mere multimillionaires.To the extent that there’s a valid reason for accumulating a very large fortune, I’d say that it involves freedom, the ability to live your life more or less however you want. Indeed, one definition of true wealth is having “fuck you money” — enough money to walk away from unpleasant situations or distasteful individuals without suffering a big decline in your living standards. And some very wealthy men — most obviously Mark Cuban, but I’d at least tentatively include Bill Gates and Warren Buffett — do seem to exhibit the kind of independence wealth gives you if you choose to exercise it.My favorite political cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, wasn’t allowed to criticize that billionaire self-owning in the Washington Post. And then one of my favorite columnists, Jennifer Rubin, left. So I left, too, canceled my subscription. Rubin, along with Norm Eisen started The Contrarian on Substack, so I got a paid subscription. (They have a lot of free posts, FYI.) And Ann Telnaes also has a Substack that I subscribed to. (I still subscribe to two newspapers, both of which have done some crappy stuff, too. Ugh.)The Contrarian has many writers and guest writers. Here’s a good example of what it offers from the article “How to Drink from a Firehose” by David Litt. Litt discusses how not to despair and to work for the good. One of his suggestions is not to weigh in on Trump (don’t ask people who disagree with you to discuss his character), but rather to use specific examples of what is going on.For right now, if a total stranger asked me to sum up this week, I’d say something like this:“There’s a guy named Daniel Rodriguez. On January 5th, 2020, he texted his friends ‘There will be blood.’ On January 6th, when he stormed the Capitol, he grabbed a police officer and shocked him repeatedly in the neck with a stun gun. A jury of peers sentenced him to twelve years in prison for his violent crime. And less than 24 hours after taking office, Trump let Daniel Rodriguez back out on the street.”If you're looking for actionable advice, subscribe to Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg. He always has the info on pending legislation (when to make calls to your representatives), campaigns around the country you can donate to, etc. He was too hopeful in his repeated assessment that he would rather be in the Harris camp than the Trump camp during the election campaign. (Yes, Trump was doing awful stuff and was becoming a convicted felon, but history—only eight years before—told us that America doesn’t care that a candidate is a sexual predator, grossly unethical, a failed businessman, etc. Competence and ethics are no longer the yardsticks.) Still, Rosenberg has good advice on where to focus your attention, week to week.Good people risingOkay, let’s focus our attention on the good people. Everyone I know is lit up by Bishop Budde right now. She’s the anti-dingus in lyz’s “Dingus of the Week” post.The bishop presided over a prayer service held in the Washington Cathedral on January 21, which was attended by the president, the vice president, and their families.During the sermon, Budde pleaded with the president to show mercy to the vulnerable — LGBTQ people, immigrants, and so many others who have been the target of the craven rhetoric and policies of the new president.Her words were gentle as she stated, "Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.”Sean Hannity described the sermon as a "disgraceful prayer full of fear mongering and division."Lawrence Jones, Fox & Friends co-host, called Budde a “radical leftist.”Matt Walsh declared that "hell exists for people like Mariann" and called her "exhibit A for why women should not be pastors, priests, or bishops.”And Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican from Georgia, said that Budde should be added to the deportation list.And like, listen, I grew up Baptist. So I am going to tell you that in a Christian religious context, if you are the one trying to nail the soft-spoken religious leader to a cross, you are the bad guy.Rebecca Solnit has cheered Budde in social media posts. My friends on social media are posting about her, too. Some are writing her thank you letters. I wrote her a thank you letter, on a card designed by my watercolor-artist friend Laura DeKloe. Yeah, the bad guys are trying to take her down, but it’s not working. The reason I included the photo of my tea mug with the words “This nasty woman gets shit done” is because Trump called Budde “nasty.” (She has a ‘nasty tone.’) But then, that’s his favorite word for women who oppose him, isn’t it?Some of the usual MAGA suspects just posted in socials like they are followers of the antiChrist. (See excerpt from Lyz Lenz, above.) Saying empathy is a sin? Are you fucking kidding me?In his Book Club newsletter, Ron Charles discusses Budde’s most recent book, How We Learn to Be Brave.And so, Budde cradles our doubts and reassures us that cowardice is natural but never final in the long arc of salvation. “The message throughout Scripture is that whenever God, or life itself, issues the summons, it’s normal to feel both unworthy and unprepared, but it doesn’t matter,” she writes. “We are to step into the gap between our current capacity and what’s needed anyway.“This country needs leaders now, and citizens who can face things as they are, work to change what can be changed, and not give up hope for the future.” Amen.I was delighted when, a few days ago, I saw that Budde had written this book. A high school friend posted that it was already sold out everywhere. True. And yay! I bought it as an audiobook. I could have gotten the ebook, but I have an unfortunate failing: my ebooks are out of sight, out of mind. I buy them, but I usually don’t read them.Showing my gratitudeI’m grateful for the support I have received in bringing my novel Keep Sweet to life. It launches on June 21st—the first day of summer! Yes, good people are everywhere in life! Three of them wrote ‘blurbs’ (quick, positive comments for the back cover) and one made very helpful editorial suggestions. While blurbs must be brief, a person needs to read the book in order to write one. So it’s a solid ask of another author to do so.I wanted to make something in return. I had a narrow piece of high-quality denim given to me by a friend as well as cotton fabric scraps from my own and my friends' projects. Scraps far too small for most projects. In the past, I posted about making bookmarks from them. (See this post for some bookmark photos.) I decided I could now make book totes. I didn’t have a pattern, but all the 12 pattern pieces would be rectangles. So I just needed to use some elementary math to plan. And, of course, I used the narrow strip left over from the front pocket design to make a bookmark for each. Yeah, I like matching stuff. Book tote matches bookmark? Happiness. What I’m readingI stopped reading The Bog Wife because I am going to write a blurb for an upcoming novel, Carlos Cortes’s Scout’s Honor. So far, it’s an incisive look back at mid-twentieth-century Boy Scouts, ages 12-14, when ‘boys will be boys’ excused all sorts of terrible behavior, including sexism, prejudice, and bullying. But when one of the boys turns his bullying against his own close friends, patrol members, and a scout leader, he ends up dead. (This is not a spoiler—he is dead in the first paragraph of the novel.) I’ll continue to read this week and find out ‘who done it’ and why.I’ve been listening to the audio version of The Algebra of Wealth by Scott Galloway. It’s about how to plan and invest in order to be able to retire. It’s a general overview and probably not informative for those in the know. But I’m guessing readers here weren’t finance or accounting majors. (Except you, Lisa. And thank you for reading and supporting me!) You might be thinking, “Aren’t you a bit late, Vic?” And, yes, you are right. But I listened to see if it would be useful to my adult kids, who majored in humanities and science subjects. I think it is very useful. I didn’t want to buy the book twice, so I put a copy on hold in the library (Yay libraries!) I’m going to see if I can get my guys to read it.I started listening to How We Learn to Be Brave, discussed above.Part 2: Library and book ban newsKootenai County library system approves adult-only room for books with mature content as 140 titles pulled from shelves for review from The Spokesman-ReviewBooks with mature themes will soon be relegated to an adults-only room in most public libraries in Kootenai County.The private room is a requirement of an Idaho law passed last year, and the Idaho-based Community Library Network board voted Thursday to set up such a room at the Post Falls Library.The library board also voted to stop children’s Community Library Network library cards from accessing other library systems that may not be subject to the Idaho law.Utah students can no longer bring personal copies of banned books to school From kuer 90.1 (NPR)While the 2024 law focuses on materials that schools own or use, one line in the state code explicitly states, “Sensitive materials are prohibited in the school setting.”According to the state board’s updated FAQ, any books banned statewide are prohibited on any school property. Similarly, those banned by a local school district for being “sensitive material” are prohibited on any of that district’s school grounds.“These titles should not be brought to school or used for classroom activities, assignments, or personal reading while on school property,” the FAQ page states.Authors Guild Files Lawsuit Against Book Bans in Colorado School District From The Authors Guilddiscontinuous excerpts:The Authors Guild, the NAACP, and individual plaintiffs filed a federal lawsuit on December 19 against the Elizabeth School District in Colorado for removing books from school libraries based on their content and viewpoints. The lawsuit challenges the school board’s decision to permanently ban 19 books, many of which are highly acclaimed and widely taught across the country.Beyond removing existing books, the board directed librarians not to order any new books for school libraries, banned classroom libraries entirely (causing teachers to cover their book collections with brown paper or take them home), and prohibited students from sharing books with each other in school. It switched from Scholastic to SkyTree Books, a vendor that promised book fairs without any LGBTQIA+ content, Critical Race Theory, foul language, explicit content, or dark magic. [Vic here—that’s a book fair that isn’t going to raise any money 🤣]The board also implemented a system requiring parents to be notified whenever their child checks out a book on the “sensitive list,” with no way for parents to opt out of these notifications. These actions stigmatized books by and about racial minorities and LGBTQIA+ people by labeling them as inappropriate or dangerous, creating an environment where parents and teachers feel afraid to disagree with or challenge these policies publicly. The board threatened disciplinary action against staff members who provided “harsh feedback” about its decisions, compelled teachers to create inventories of their classroom libraries for review and potential further removals, and ultimately caused some families to withdraw their children from the district entirely.To add insult to injury, board members admitted they had not fully read many of the banned books before deciding to remove them. The board’s actions appear politically motivated rather than educationally justified, with board members explicitly stating they were acting to impose “conservative values.”Education Dept. Ends Book Ban Investigations from the New York Times (gift article—worth reading in its entirety)The department said it would relinquish its role investigating schools that had received civil rights complaints after removing books dealing with sexual and racial identity.By proclaiming that the department would not intervene in cases where students or parents felt they were harmed by the removal of certain titles, the announcement appeared to clear the way for states to enact more restrictive policies.The headline for this change in the new Department of Education press release is:U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban HoaxFrom Every Library:If you worry about libraries and want to take action in helping them, go to Every Library (a registered 501(c)4 organization) and sign up for their newsletter. They will give you actionable ideas. Here are some of the things they are writing about now:One of Trump's first actions was to rescind Biden's Executive Order 14084, titled "Promoting the Arts, the Humanities, and Museum and Library Services."This action will dismantle the Committee on the Arts and Humanities and deliver a devasting blow to America's commitment to preserving the arts, the humanities, and museum and library services.Trump's previous administration proposed eliminating all federal funding for libraries.This action is the first step in dismantling the Institute of Museum and Library Services.We know his supporters are enacting state legislation to arrest librarians, ban books, and defund libraries.We'll have actions for you to take in the coming weeks, but we made it easy for you to write to your legislators today to ask them to support libraries. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hi Friends,The thing most on our minds here in Southern California this week is that large swaths of Los Angles are on fire. So many people have lost their homes. The adult children of two of my friends have lost everything. 2025 already feels like a difficult year. I hate seeing these fires being politicized—and the victims being disparaged— but I’m not surprised. Like Mr. Rogers told us to do, I’m looking for the helpers. The LA Times has a nice list of who helps and how for those wanting to donate.The home in LA County where I lived more than twenty years was adjacent to a wilderness area where fires sometimes broke out. (That area is currently closed out of an abundance of caution.) In 2003, the Grand Prix Fire raced through our neighborhood. I wrote an essay about my experience, which was published in a Manifest West anthology on ‘serenity and severity.’ As far as I know, that was in print only. I’m thinking of sharing it here, maybe once the current fires are under control, and we are looking at these conflagrations in the rearview mirror. I was hoping that would be next week, but it looks like the wind is coming back up. I made a late decision to visit my old stomping grounds for a quick 24 hours of meals and walks with friends. Though the current fires are 25 miles and more away from there, the air was hazy and the Santa Ana winds had knocked down lots of trees. Some of my friends had lost their electricity for a few days and schools closed. There’s a feeling that at any time, another devastating fire is on the way. In January, the mountains are usually stark against a blue sky, perhaps with a sprinkling of snow. In the hazy late afternoon (no blue skies now!), they were pink. The sunset was a stunning bright orange across the entire sky. This was probably the effect of the fire pollution. I tried to jog past clusters of trees to see it more clearly. It was like trying to get to the end of a rainbow to capture the leprechaun and his pot of gold. But I couldn’t help myself. Just the seeing and the movement toward it filled me with wonder. A ‘take what you can get’ moment.Some good library newsI read in Ron Charles’s Book Club newsletter that:James W. Lewis, an investment adviser in Washington, has made a $25 million bequest to the American Library Association to fund scholarships for library students.This is the largest single gift the ALA has received since it was founded in 1876. Lewis’s bequest, given in memory of his parents, is expected to provide funding to about 40 students every year in perpetuity.That LibrarianI mentioned in a previous post that I’d purchased and listened to the audio version of That Librarian by Amanda Jones and that I wanted to write about it. First, I needed a print copy of the book to go back over details. So—you probably guessed this—I added myself to the waiting list at my local library. My turn came up over the holidays, so let’s dive in.That Librarian is a memoir by Amanda Jones detailing the defamation and death threats she has had to endure after speaking in the public comments portion of a Livingston Public Library meeting in July 2022. She makes clear that her speech was centered on her concern over book bans and not focused on a particular title (she mentions no titles in her speech, the entire transcript of which is in an appendix at the end of the book).Jones’ mission is three-fold: to prove her detractors have defamed her by lying, repeatedly and in large public forums, about her message and her goals; to show that librarians all over the country are going through similar harassment and threats, even losing their jobs; and to give the reader detailed instructions on how to fight the censors.Jones has lived in the same small town southeast of Baton Rouge, Louisiana all her life. She is a librarian at the middle school she attended as a child. She has been the president of the Louisiana Association of School Libraries as well as the School Library Journal Librarian of the Year, and has received grants and awards for her work. In 2023, she was awarded the American Association of School Librarians' Intellectual Freedom Award and the American Library Association's Paul Howard Award for Courage, which honors "an individual who has exhibited unusual courage for the benefit of library programs or services."Yet this nationally recognized school librarian ends up being the target of the two men—Michael Lunsford and Ryan Thames—who started an online campaign against her. They tell their followers that she is a pedophile, a groomer who supports teaching kids about anal sex. That she fights to ”keep sexually erotic and pornographic materials in the kid’s section” of the public library.Jones’s antagonists are Christian nationalists; Jones is a Christian. While these are very different things, it appears that any mention of Jones’s faith makes reviewers uncomfortable. I’ve read several reviews and none hint at it. Yet any honest discussion of the book should include it. Jones relies on her faith to shape her actions and she discusses this repeatedly. That she fights to include books with LGBTQ+ or BIPOC themes and characters is based on her following Jesus’s instructions to love (value) all people.Her defense of diverse books leads to a pile-on of haters, people who have no idea who Jones is or what she really stands for. She receives death threats. She feels so unsafe that she purchases a Taser, pepper spray and additional security cameras around her home. Finally, she begins to carry a gun. She has to take anti-anxiety medication. This should be the saddest part of the story, but, no. Though Jones was part of a large group of people who showed up at the meeting in July 2022 to defend the right to read, the next meeting had far fewer defenders. As she states, “Nobody wanted to speak out if it meant becoming the next target.” This is how hate succeeds.A surprising number of the religious community railing against librarians turn out to be alleged child abusers themselves as in the example of Daryl Stagg, who voiced concern over the picture book Pride Puppy! “Not long after, [Stagg] was arrested and charged with three counts each of oral sexual battery, first-degree rape, aggravated crimes against nature, and indecent behavior with a juvenile, according to Baptist Press.” Even worse than the many self-righteous strangers who can’t be bothered to learn the truth while they are threatening Jones’s life and patting themselves on the back for ‘saving children’ is the betrayal by people in her own community. These are people she has known for years and whose children she has taught; people who celebrated her awards with her and commended her in public; people whom she had considered close friends. Since the book is so full of Christian arguments and imagery, they appear to be the Judases in the story. What are the thirty pieces of silver they hope to be rewarded with?It seems each former friend/neighbor/colleague who publicly denounces Jones is running for a public office in their deeply red county, where defaming librarians is a winning narrative. Landing the office is more important than the truth. Thankfully, Jones does have friends who support her as well as one courageous supporter in her district office, whom she doesn’t name for fear of him receiving backlash.To help the reader understand what really goes on in a librarian’s work, Jones explains that librarians curate collections. They have collection development policies. (Yes, they have to go to school for this, earning master’s degrees and/or teaching credentials in the subject.) And while the censors use BookLooks, a website from Moms for Liberty (identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center) to judge books, librarians use reviews from professional journals.Book censors will often say there are books containing pornographic or sexually explicit material in children’s sections of a library to rile up public fear. They decry the need to protect children from the evil smut they say is next to Dr. Seuss books. As if a kid could be looking for The Very Hungry Caterpillar and whoops, there’s The Joy of Sex or the Kama Sutra right next to it. That’s never the case. Libraries have collection development policies for ordering books, and appropriate books are placed in the appropriate section. Public libraries do not purchase pornography. Adult books are not in the children’s section, and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous.As the harassment and threats are unending, Jones makes the decision to sue Lunsford and Thames for defamation. The defendants quickly use the court of public opinion to claim that Jones is trying to take away their First Amendment rights by not allowing them to challenge books in the library. Because they do this repeatedly, Jones must repeat that this is a defamation suit, not a question of what books are or are not in the library. And she has the receipts.Like a good librarian, Jones keeps and catalogues the evidence of her harassment. Nevertheless, she learns through photos online that the judge in her case is friends with some of her detractors. The whole thing is jaw-dropping. I’m old enough that the song “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” started playing in my head as I read. The ‘backwoods Southern lawyer’ for the defendants presents like Foghorn Leghorn; the judge appears to have very little interest in the facts of the case.Surprisingly, there is fun in this book because Jones engages not only the Southern ‘bless your heart’ method of polite takedowns; she can directly slay her detractors as when she notes that one, an employee of Citizens for a New Louisiana, only writes “online snark with the spelling and grammar of a child of ten.”She says of a fellow educator: “She kept quizzing me like I was a student … . She made comments about ‘agendas’ and things against her religion and kept trying to find some ‘gotcha’ moment with me. It’s a good thing this conversation happened through Messenger, because I almost came unglued and wanted to ask her who was she to quiz me about religion, morals, and agendas when she had a very public affair while she was married, to a police officer who was also married, and both of their marriages just ended in divorce because of it.” While Jones doesn’t name this woman in the book, I’m sure her local supporters know exactly who she’s talking about. What goes around comes around.Jones details the tribulations of other librarians in other states. Of the censors in general, she writes: “Groups like Moms for Liberty are popping up like zits all over the country ... .These people are harming public education, and they’re harming our public library systems. Nobody has ever threatened their parental rights, just like nobody is putting sexually explicit material in the children's sections of libraries.”In discussing her own development, Jones covers a lot of ground (Kirk Cameron! From teen crush to adult repulsion!). She’s interesting because she is one of the few people I have encountered who can look at evidence and change her mind. Coming from a very conservative family and community, she was a Republican and voted for Donald Trump in 2016. She now expresses shame in telling this, but she wants to be honest about herself and her formation. She details the events that changed her—the first being reading a book. (Of course!) She acts on her conscience thereafter.Jones ends with some great ideas for both being aware of what is happening in the local community concerning libraries and of how to fight the censors successfully.Here she is in a brief interview with Ali Velshi for Velshi Banned Book Club: ‘That Librarian’ stands up to censorship.Amanda Jones discusses speaking out against censorship and also has links to many of her interviews on her website here.What I’m readingI haven’t read much this week. I was sewing some thank you gifts for people who blurbed my upcoming novel (Keep Sweet). But I did get to listen to audiobooks while sewing. I finished The Braindead Megaphone (essays) and then listened to another by George Saunders Pastoralia (fiction). It includes one of my favorite stories, “The Falls.” I also thought "Pastoralia" (the story) was great. Lots to love in this collection—”Sea Oak” is there, too. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Happy New Year, Friends!In a previous post about banned books and The Court of Thorns and Roses (first book only), I mentioned that I didn’t object to the sexuality on display—the reason the book is so often banned from high school libraries—but that I don’t like books with men (or faeries) who have episodes of no control over their behavior, and thus are not responsible for what they do. There are more general reasons that romantasy makes me roll my eyes. But—I’m a librarian, so I welcome books that I don’t enjoy because—reading is for everyone.Knowing my taste in books, my middle son sent me a link to a short video by Liz Shipton. From there, I saw that she has a whole collection of fantasy send-ups on YouTube. They are such fun! Very clever as well. She’s always ‘pretend typing’ the story on a computer. Minimal set up and choreography (smart!), maximal laughter. Here are three favorites that show why I hate romantasy:Women Writing Women in YA FantasyVillains in FantasyWomen Writing Fantasy MenMy holidaysI had fun seeing both family and friends. Baked, had two teas (breads, cookies, coffee cakes!) with one of my college roommates, watched movies with my husband and sons. Here’s a look at the San Diego Botanical Gardens holiday ‘Lightscape’ event, which my family and I visited.Not really resolutions* I’m thinking I might keep a spreadsheet list of books I read in 2025, sorted by genre, and see how much I read these days and what I read more of.* I’m adding a 10-minute jog on the treadmill each day to increase my heart rate. Typically I walk my dogs 3 or 4 miles a day with my youngest son (though I have really fallen off this schedule during the holidays), and do Pilates twice weekly, but those are slow, not very aerobic.* I want to write a draft of a novel that I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time (years). I have a very good idea but haven’t been able to come up with plot points. Recently, some plot events have come to mind, so I want to give it a try.Do you make resolutions? I haven’t in years, but since my productivity has taken a nosedive, I thought I’d give it a try.Something to look forward toIn 2025–June, if all goes well—my novel Keep Sweet will be published by Inlandia Books. I know so much about this year will be difficult, but I’m thrilled for this solid, good thing! You might have guessed, but it’s the opposite of romantasy. The protagonist is a 14-year-old girl trying to escape a polygamist/patriarchal cult.Also new this year are a group of Be a Cactus subscribers. Some of you appear quite real (Thank you for joining us! Welcome!) and some appear to be fake. I don’t understand why anyone would bother creating fake accounts to join Substack newsletters—it’s hardly like X. My eldest son tells me it may have something to do with future advertising structures on Substack. I mentioned that, while I am very small potatoes here, I have a good engagement rate, and it will decline because subscribers who aren’t real don’t read weekly posts. He reminded me that this just means the engagement rates are also fake. And that’s true. I guess I’ll just keep writing and not think about bots.Books I started the year withThis may surprise you since I am a cactus, but the first book I read this year was Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life, edited by Barnaby Conrad and Monte Shultz (son of Charles Shultz, the creator of the Peanuts cartoon). A friend who is cleaning out her house found it among her things and gave it to me. It includes writing advice from more than 30 authors, generally in short essays that are about as informative as anything you’d find online from people hoping to become writing influencers. Some of the writers I admire, some I don’t know anything about, and a few are authors I avoid. But none of that matters because what is great about the book is Snoopy.Full disclosure: I loved Snoopy as a kid. I used to take the full-color comics from the Sunday newspaper and cut out images of Snoopy, then tape them to my bedroom door. Well—the door of the bedroom I shared with my two older sisters. I think they didn’t like this because one day, all of my Snoopy images had been taken down. I never asked about this; communicating wasn’t a family highlight.I thought I’d gotten over Snoopy, but reading Snoopy’s Guide made me fall in love again! I want to have the same sanguine responses he has to repeated rejection (a fact of the writing life). He is never daunted by Lucy’s endless criticism of his work.I read Jim Wallis’s The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy. I’m interested in what is happening with Christianity In America, so I’ve read several books about it in the past year. I don’t know that people reading Cactus are interested in the topic, but if so, I discuss The False White Gospel in detail in a post on my School Library Lady blog, here.I also read That Librarian by Amanda Jones, but I’m not sure if it counts because I had previously listened to the audiobook. I needed the print book to read so I could write a discussion of it.Audiobooks I started the year withColored Television by Danny SennaSo much well-deserved praise has been heaped on this novel by professional reviewers that there isn’t much for me to add. If you don’t know anything about it: The protagonist (Jane) is a mulatto writer who is exploring the history of multiracial people in the U.S. through her second novel—ten years in the making. Meanwhile, she is an untenured professor hoping to get tenure when she finishes the novel. She’s on sabbatical and has the good fortune of spending the year with her family (husband Lenny and two kids) house-sitting in the hills of Los Angeles for a wealthy, successful screenwriter friend. As things take an unexpected turn, Jane decides to give screenwriting a go.Anyone who has had to deal with the academic life will connect to this. Anyone who has focused on a creative endeavor to the detriment of their pocketbook/family time/relationships will connect. Any frustrated fiction writer will connect. But the story is also very much about what it means to be a mulatto—how the individual is perceived and treated in American society. And while there’s humor there, I mostly felt indignation for Jane and her predicament.SPOILER ALERT—AND I MEAN THIS WILL GIVE AWAY THE WHOLE BOOK.I often include spoilers when I discuss banned books because they’ve been around a long time, and they are for teens, and if you haven’t read them, you probably aren’t going to. This is different because Colored Television is a currently popular book, and it’s for adults, and you will want to read it if you haven’t. SO SKIP TO THE NEXT BOOK IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THIS ONE YET.Alrighty then. If you have read Colored Television, I have something I want to ask you. Near the end, Jane finds out that her novel ideas and even, in some instances, her exact words, have been stolen for a TV series that she had been brainstorming ideas for. She has no recourse because she had handwritten her notes and had no specific emails to the show runner about her work. I know the novel needed to have things turn out this way, but here’s the issue for me:Previously, Jane had sent her novel to her agent, who had forwarded it to the editor at her publishing house. The editor read it and said it was unsalvageable. That happened before the TV series issues, so there is evidence that the ideas and the words are Jane’s. She has the emails (with the dates). She also worked with an agent for the screenwriting. Though nothing was solid, they were working on writing her a contract with the show runner who stole her work. More evidence. She has text messages from the show runner proving that she was in contact with him long before the TV show aired. More evidence. Then, when her work is stolen, all this is forgotten and she has no recourse. This bugged the hell out of me. Did it bug you, too?The Braindead Megaphone by George SaundersI just started to listen to this essay collection. The first essay, after which the collection is named, is about the dumbing down of news. I thought of two ideas from that essay in the context of the publishing world:1) “Tell us as much truth as you can while still making money” is not the same thing as ”Tell us the truth.”2) The ‘national’ is closer to God than the ‘local’; the large market looks down upon the small.Isn’t this true of fiction? If the novel is too truth-telling, it might not engage the audience of, say, a Hallmark movie—or a romantasy. It might not make enough money to support an agent—and no disrespect there, because agents need to make a living (deserve to make a living)!I once listened to an agent describe fiction as ‘the lie that tells the truth.’ This is certainly not a new idea. That storytelling is fictional but is capable of delivering a great truth is an ancient idea. (Jesus’s parables—take the Good Samaritan as an example.) However there is also this: a fictional story (novel, movie) can be a lie that tells a greater lie. (*Checks romantasy titles.*) One that sells well. We don’t think about that often. This can be fun escapism. Or dangerous. Depends.Handy 2025 stuff for writersClifford Garstang came out with his 2025 Literary Magazine RankingsThese rankings are based solely on the number of Pushcart Prizes and Pushcart Special Mentions the magazines have received over the past ten years. They are intended as a guide for determining where writers might submit their work for publication.Part 2: Library news, book challenges and book bansThe year in reviewBook Riot has links and summaries for their top book censorship stories of the year:Catch Up on This Year’s Most Read Book Censorship StoriesFrom School Library Journal, one of the stories with most views was:Of our frequent roundups of censorship news, one stood out for our readership: “13 Books Banned from All Utah Schools,” posted in August.2024 Year in Review from American Libraries MagazineIn 2024, states including Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Vermont, and Washington passed laws that disincentivize public and school libraries from banning books based on viewpoint. These states join California and Illinois in adopting legislation that aims to deter censorship. Under these laws, books can still be challenged, but reconsideration processes must be documented and followed. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom reported that nationwide, during the first eight months of 2024, book challenges were down from 2023 numbers from the same period—414 challenges compared with 695 challenges—but were still much higher than prior to 2020.The New York Public Library Top Ten Checkouts for 2024 from the NYPL* Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin* Happy Place by Emily Henry* The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride* The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson* Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano* Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus* Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez* Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann* Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver* The Covenant of Water by Abraham VergheseThese were the most-borrowed books from public libraries in 2024 from capradio (NPR). (Mentions a few titles from each of several large public libraries—no lists)Year-end lists are fun to parse, but it's important to keep perspective, said Brian Bannon, the Meryl and James Tisch Director at the New York Public Library. He oversees the 88 neighborhood branches of the nation's largest library system."Even though we published our top ten, none of these books made up more than 1% of our overall circulation," he said.General library and book censorship newsLibrarian Amanda Jones Files New Defamation Lawsuits from School Library JournalKleinman’s posts against Jones have escalated, she says. He has tweeted about her more than 300 times in the last year and contacted her principal and school board members. He frequently tags her legislators, district, and school in his posts. He showed up at one of her recent events where she was promoting her book, That Librarian.“In addition to me feeling unsafe and that he is escalating [his harassment], I’ve been watching him do this to other librarians for years,” Jones told SLJ the day Kleinman was served. “I’ve had enough for me, and I’ve had enough for everyone else.”Ripple effects of children’s book bans From the Los Angeles Times (thanks to reader Joan for the reminder!)Efforts by conservative parents have tanked sales. Culture-war-weary schools and libraries are shunning materials on LGBTQ+ issues, race.In what some in the book publishing industry call “shadow bans” or “soft censorship,” the effects are far-reaching:Teachers and librarians, facing threats and fearful of losing their jobs or even going to jail in states that have passed laws criminalizing certain works, are hesitating to put controversial books that include LGBTQ+ characters or discussions of racism on their shelves.Publishers — which depend on schools and library purchases — report that sales of such books are down significantly, even when the works receive critical acclaim.And authors have seen school visits canceled, leaving them without a crucial income stream.“Teachers and librarians have to really weigh whether it’s worth the risk,” said Lee Wind, chief content officer for the Independent Book Publishers Assn.Who uses public libraries the most? There’s a divide by religion, and politics. From the Washington Post.The top library users all have one thing in common. But the Americans least likely to use libraries fall into two groups, each of which share some surprising traits. This is interesting—lots of graphs and sorting of readers.Judge rules Arkansas law threatening librarians with jail unconstitutionalThe law, which threatened imprisonment if librarians or booksellers provided ‘harmful’ content to minors, violates the First Amendment, a federal judge ruled.U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks ruled that two parts of Arkansas Act 372 — which Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed in 2023 — are overly broad and vague, and violated librarians’, booksellers’ and patrons’ First Amendment rights.The two parts of the law that were struck down would have established a criminal misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison, for librarians and booksellers who distribute “harmful” material to a minor. It also would have required local governments to create oversight boards to review challenged content, which often deal with themes of race and sexuality. The ruling, which will likely be challenged, comes as a growing number of GOP-controlled statehouses have considered similar laws that threaten librarians with prison.Bill to charge Ohio teachers would combat ‘obscene’ classroom books, lawmaker says From NBCAn Ohio legislator says a bill to charge educators with felonies for handing out “obscene” materials is needed after substitute teachers saw books in the classroom “depicting actions that students don’t need to be seeing.”The legislation, House Bill 556, received an Ohio House Criminal Justice Committee hearing on Dec. 3 and would establish “criminal liability for certain teachers and librarians for the offense of pandering obscenity.” The bill would charge teachers and school librarians with fifth-degree felonies — punishable by a sentence of six to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500 — for creating, reproducing, publishing, promoting or advertising “obscene material.”Citing tax dollars spent, judge urges Florida school district to settle book ban lawsuit from the Tallahassee DemocratA settlement "should be particularly important to (the school board) because it is spending taxpayer money to defend this suit and it could end up having to pay all or part of Plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees on top of its own attorneys’ fees if Plaintiffs prevail in this case," wrote Pensacola-based U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II in the footnote of a court order late last month.In that case, the Escambia County School Board has spent more than $440,000 on its own attorneys' fees, according to payment information the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida obtained in a public records request. This was precipitated by a First Amendment lawsuit filed by national free speech group PEN America, book publisher Penguin Random House, book authors and parents of students who have been denied access to various school library books.Conservative censoriousness is holding Florida back from the Tampa Bay Times fun (snarky) op-edThe worse news: You, Florida taxpayer, are now shelling out $15.6 million to an education technology outfit in Maryland to put together a “statewide, centralized, easily accessible” system for anyone from parents to random ideologues to “examine” materials in Florida libraries and classrooms.The state pretends this is about “transparency;” but we all know it’s about finding books to object to, demanding certain instructional documents be removed, and protesting anything they deem “inappropriate.”It’s a tool to make it easier to ban books — and Florida already bans more books than any other state in the nation.This absurd waste of public money may appease Moms for Liberty, neo-Puritan evangelicals, and everybody else terrified of 21st Century realities.They fear Their Youth will discover that 1. Racism has been part of the fabric of the U.S. since its founding; 2. Slavery was not vocational training; 3. People have sex; 4. Sometimes gay sex.What this nonsense does NOT accomplish is advancing education in Florida.Moreover, these hysterics may deny it, but their children already know about sex.Their children have cellphones. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hi Friends,I see that Hanukkah begins on Christmas Day and this has led me to wonder about whether movie theater ticket sales on December 25 will significantly drop. I’m thinking about pointless stuff because it’s Friday as I work on this Sunday post, and I want my mind off the drama of a possible government shutdown. [I thought I typed ‘shutdown,’ but that autocorrected to ‘s**t down’—I’ll just leave that there.] I don’t want to think of an unelected shadow president. Not at least until after the new year.I mentioned previously that I understand why people who have had traumatic spiritual experiences have become atheists. This is not a thing I worry about because I don’t believe in a hell or any sort or eternal punishment (I don’t believe in reincarnation until we get it right, etc.). But I also know people who want to be empowered by taking back their spiritual lives and beliefs from the abusers. And since this is the week of Christmas, I want to share two books about people whose faith is centered in love and reconciliation. Today, I finished reading one and listening to the other. They reminded me of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol when the ghost of Marley admonishes Scrooge: “Mankind was my business!”Cherished BelongingA bit of background on Gregory Boyle and Tattoos on the Heart:Father Gregory Boyle is the Los Angeles Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries and Homegirl Café. He received the Medal of Freedom this year. He has also received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. Back in 2010, I was so taken by his first book, Tattoos on the Heart, that I bought copies for my relatives for Christmas and wrote this review:Their motto: Nothing stops a bullet like a job.Father Boyle—“G-dog” as he is known by his homies—acts in a way that is very much centered in his faith (Catholicism) as a Christian, but is also so unusual that his story makes a startling read. And here’s why: he believes that every individual has equal value in society. And unlike most of us, he doesn’t just say it. He truly believes it. For Father Greg, there are no throw-away people. He never stops caring—and so the subtitle of this book—The Power of Boundless Compassion—is apt. When I say that his compassion is amazing, I know that the word ‘amazing’ is so overused that you may not understand what I mean. But I think it is the right word—I’m filled with wonder at the life of this man.Father Greg’s stories of gang bangers leaves us to wonder—Am I really a good person or have I just been sheltered from the things that would make me bad? When you read what many of the ‘homies’ in this book have gone through, you’ll wonder how they ever made it out to a normal, productive life. And you will wonder at the life of ‘G-dog’—who, in the twenty-five or so years that he has been working with LA gang members, has helped so many out of the gang life only to bury them later, when they are shot in drive-bys or targeted. Father Greg has buried almost 200 gang or former gang members. And yet, he keeps the faith.Father Greg tells the reader that centering one’s life on love will get a person through the worst. Gangsters often tell him that they don’t want people to ‘mistake their kindness for weakness.’ But as Boyle shows, “sooner or later, we all discover that kindness is the only strength there is.”Even with boundless love, a person needs a real sense of humor to find joy in this life, and Father Greg has it. Many of his anecdotes about dealing with young men and women are really funny. My favorite is when he writes about gangsters reading aloud and replacing words they don’t know with words they do. Thus in Bible passages referring to the ‘Gentiles,’ they use the word ‘genitals.’ Father Greg says this really livens up the public readings!Yes, you will laugh—and you’ll cry, quite a bit. But do read this book. It will remind you that saints have a beginning as real human being.The Healing Power of Love in Divided TimesCherished Belonging is Father Greg’s fourth book. Again, he looks at how love (“Cherishing is love fully engaged. Cherishing is tenderness in action.”) is our job, how it is active, and how it resolves troubles. And again, I am amazed at his capacity for cherishing, his ability to walk the walk of genuine Christian calling. What I mean is that I only dream of being so fully accepting of others. Like many people, I’ve sometimes felt that unconditional love is beyond human capacity. But no—Father Greg’s life and work disprove that. He doesn’t see anyone as ‘the other’ and everyone involved in Homeboy Industries learns that lesson. Former gang rivals who once might have wanted to shoot one another on the street now work side by side.If it feels like people in the U.S. have forgotten the roots of Christianity, Father Greg’s worldview is an antidote for the Christian nationalism blues. This also means that many purported people of faith will not agree with the “two unwavering principles” of Homeboy Industries:* Everyone is unshakably good (no exceptions)* We belong to each other (no exceptions)He repeatedly makes the point that God’s power lies not in rescuing us, but in loving us. While he refers to Jesus often, he also sometimes uses the pronoun ‘She’ in reference to God and chides the Church for continuing “to prevent women from full inclusion.” He seems to have no concern with upsetting religious literalists:At a house where I was leading a weekend retreat, the first reading was a story of Abraham and Isaac. It begins, “God put Abraham to the test.” I opened my homily by telling the congregation that life provides us with endless “tests,” but not once has the God of love ever thrown one our way. Not ever. “And besides,” I told them, “any father who hears God tell him to kill his son is mentally ill.” They applauded, which surprised me. I proceeded, then, to preach on the transfiguration.If conservatives really want to feel outrage, they will find their dose in reading about Father Greg’s defense of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence—all gay men who sometimes dress in “mock wimples worn by nuns in 1954”—for their “considerable service and charitable works.”Boyle’s God is the God of second chances (and third and fourth…). Reading about his metaphysics made me think of the idea of ‘turning the other cheek’—that this might not mean what I’ve always thought it meant (be a punching bag) but rather is just another way of saying forgive seven x seventy times. But there is an important progress to this that doesn’t include allowing people to take advantage of others. For example, at Homeboy, if people test positive for drugs or have other relapses, they are sent out and told, “Come back to us when you’re ready [sober, etc.].” This understanding of human relationships extends to all people. Of Donald Trump, Father Greg says that no mentally well person would be that malignant narcissist and sociopath, so we have to feel for him in his mental illness. But he also notes that a person that ill should not be handed the Presidency of the United States. (Oops!)Father Greg’s writing style is epigrammatic. It reminds me of Ralph Waldo Emerson in that you can pull quotes, sentences from within the same paragraph, that encapsulate different ideas. (“People don’t become homeless because they run out of money…They become homeless because they run out of relationships.”) As in past books, Father Greg tells anecdotes about the former gang members who have been helped at Homeboy. There are some “I’m not crying, you’re crying” moments once again, but there are some laugh out loud stories as well. When Father Greg went to Washington D.C. to receive the Medal of Freedom this year:A homie sends me a congratulatory text: “I heard you got a presidential pardon … or some s**t like that.” A home girl, Ivy, stands in for me at a luncheon talk at which she says, “Father Greg couldn’t be here today because he’s at the White House being knighted.”If you love language, you’ll enjoy some of the words Homeboy workers make up to suit the circumstance. A few favorites:”I feel belongance.”When Steve Avalon’s encounters a homie who manipulates, he calls him a “shenanigizer.”UndividedI listened to Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church by Hahrie Han. If you read my earlier post about the book Circle of Hope, you know that I was wondering if a church that engages in work to bridge racial divides—one that openly discusses racism and the question of how the church can make racial equality part of their mission—can survive. The Circle of Hope did not. Though leaders came apart over their differences, they continued to do good work elsewhere.I was intrigued by the publisher’s blurb that suggested the megachurch Crossroads had succeeded in combating racial injustice and managed to hold together.Crossroads is a racially mixed but majority white evangelical megachurch in Cincinnati. In 2016, it was a critical force in helping to pass a ballot initiative for universal preschool, providing early childhood education for the poorest, mostly Black, constituents. Author and political scientist Hahrie Han investigates how this happened in an area that voted for Donald Trump in 2016.Han finds that Crossroads Pastor Chuck Mingo begins the work of combating racial injustice through the church after he feels called by God to do so and gives an honest sermon about his own experience with racism (he’s Black)—experience that most of the white parishioners don’t comprehend. Congregants then have the opportunity to participate in a faith-based program designed to foster anti-racism and systemic change called Undivided. They look at their own prejudices, but also—importantly, vitally—beyond them to understand systems of oppression.Just as in Circle of Hope, Undivided focuses on four participants—two men, one Black and one white, and two women, one Black and one white. They are all changed at the core through the program. While they don’t all stay in the church itself, the church is huge and survives. What they learn is very powerful. It made me think: Crossroads’ success with their anti-racism program is due not only to the goodwill of the Undivided participants—Circle of Hope had people of goodwill in their anti-racism efforts—but to their curriculum. I know this makes me sound like the teacher that I am, but as you read the book, you’ll find that it’s true. Curriculum matters.Since I listened to the audiobook, I’ll add that the narration is very good.More books I’m glad I read this yearI don’t have a list of ‘best books’ of the year because, as a librarian, I think more about books serving needs than being in a contest. Nevertheless, some of my favorites this year were also on lists of literary greats and won prestigious awards.FictionJames by Percival EverettWinner of the National Book Award. I mentioned previously that beside the fact that this is a beautiful piece of writing and a meditation on race in America, it corrects the last one-third of Huck Finn, the section of the novel that fell apart and always made me crazy.American Spirits by Russell BanksThese three long stories were timely—people’s lives in the era of Trump—but so dark that I had to put it down a few times (hostile, violent, tragic, and lost people in the fictional town of Sam Bent). Banks’s writing is brilliant. He died in early 2023; American Spirits is his final publication (2024).Small Things Like These by Claire KeeganShortlisted for the Booker Prize. Taking place in Ireland, this little novella shows the dark side of Catholicism. It’s fiction based on the historically real Magdalene Laundries, run by Catholic nuns with the labor of unwed mothers, whose babies were sold out to adoption. It’s centered on the abuses that occur in a particular convent and deals with the difficulties and dangers of doing the right thing. Such powerful writing. This is a ‘can’t put it down’ for readers and a lesson in mastery for writers.NonfictionKnife by Salman RushdieWhile I knew that Rushdie almost died in a knife attack in 2022, I didn’t realize how numerous and serious his injuries were. A great number of people came to his aid, both during the attack and through his long recovery. As nonfiction, the style departs from that of his works of fantasy and magic.That Librarian by Amanda JonesI hope to review this in the near future. For now: Jones, quite civilly, speaks up against book banning at a local public library hearing and is ostracized and threatened with her life. The part that was most shocking to me was how, in a town she had lived in all her life, fair weather friends turned against her, attacking her character.Sexism & Sensibility: Raising Empowered, Resilient Girls in the Modern World by Jo-Ann Finkelstein, PhD I also hope to review this in the near future. For now: This is a discussion of the effects of sexism on girls and ways to help them fight back while maintaining their self-esteem. A great book for libraries, including high school libraries.Top 10 checkouts for the New York Public Library in 2024I found this list on Ron Charles’s (Washington Post) Book Club newsletter this week. I thought it was a fun deviation from the usual top ten of the year list. Charles noted that none of these are new books.* Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin* Happy Place by Emily Henry* Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros* The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride* Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver* Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus* Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano* Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt* Yellowface by R.F. Kuang* The Covenant of Water by Abraham VergheseOf the ten, I have read six:* Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow* The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store* Demon Copperhead* Lessons in Chemistry* Hello Beautiful* Remarkably Bright CreaturesI loved the first three. The second three, not so much (not for me).Part 2While there is lots of book ban news, I decided to forgo it this week and stick with the positive holiday cheer of good books.I need to take a break and work on a few other things, so there won’t be any news from me next Sunday. But, God willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be back in the new year.I wish you happy and peaceful holidays.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

“Let them buy books” is not the answerBecause I’m a retired high school librarian, well-meaning social media acquaintances often share a quote from Stephen King: “Hey kids! This is your old friend Steve King telling you that if they ban a book in your school, haul your ass to the nearest bookstore or library ASAP and find out what they don’t want you to read.”Their posts are followed in the comment section by expressions of solidarity against book bans, accusations of making porn available to kids, and snarky comments on King (‘Your books were better as movies!’). What I don’t see is a discussion of the school library or its purpose.This saddens me. Too many well-meaning people suggest the solution to book bans in school libraries is to remove those libraries from the conversation. To do so shows disdain for its mission of serving all students.What’s the mission?I worked at Title I schools throughout my 35-year career as a public educator. The high school where I spent most of my time as a teacher librarian has a total minority enrollment of 96% and 84% of its students are economically disadvantaged. Most receive free breakfast and lunch. The staff runs clothes closets and a weekend backpack program, sending kids home with snacks and meals for their families to eat when school is not in session. They have a Thanksgiving dinner giveaway for the neediest and sponsor a Christmas gift drive. Teachers purchase graduation gowns for needy seniors.While it’s hard for people removed from poverty to imagine, there are kids with no access to the public library, nevermind money to buy books. Parents work night and day. Public libraries may not be within walking distance; public transportation can range from abysmal to nonexistent. If these kids, years earlier, lost a library book, the resulting fine would include the cost of the book plus processing. Food insecure parents can’t prioritize paying that fine. The child is banned from checking out any more books. For so many reasons, kids need access to the full range of books their school libraries provide.Let’s choose to accept itSo the fight for challenged books to remain in the school library is essential. As banned or removed titles have come up in news stories over the past few years, I haven’t needed to rely on memory to tell me why I selected them for my libraries. I regularly ‘booktalked’ them to classes. To prepare for these talks, I read the books and then wrote reviews. I decided to create a blog, School Library Lady, and post those reviews. This was primarily an organizational tool for me—by tagging each post with keywords, I could pull up any subject a teacher wanted discussed.With titles I’d booktalked now so frequently censored, I look back at what I wrote because these essays show—in real time, without revision—my purpose in, and justification for, purchasing those books. Here on Substack, I the hope that giving people a window into a school librarian’s thought process will create understanding. I’ve featured older books like Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, still being removed after 25 years, to show how important it is to allow books that depict sexual assault. I include evidence of readers confirming that this novel saved their lives. I look at more recent books as well. Since Ta-Nehisi Coates’ latest book The Message includes a piece on the banning of his book Between the World and Me, I look back at my thoughts from 2016, at why I bought it, and why I was promoting it to students.For each book I discuss, there are common justifications for its inclusion in the school library. Often, for nonfiction, it covers important aspects of American history. For all genres, it supports the school’s mission of providing for the needs of every student; it lets students know they are not alone in their traumas and tragedies; and it engenders empathy for others. Such parameters are what we should all be discussing when we’re deciding whether a book belongs in the school library. In the only place where a student might find it.We should never succumb to book removal with the excuse that kids will find the book elsewhere.Part 2: Library book challenge and ban newsFriends, I was going to link to some mainstream religion and cult stuff this week because I’m down to the last 24 hours of checking copy edits on my upcoming novel (Keep Sweet) and am in that mode. But—there’s a lot going on in the book censorship arena! So, let’s focus on that. I’m going to start with a great Substack to follow for those worried about book censorship (in schools or public libraries) in their state. I’m following with some end-of-the-year lists and then leaving other topics for last. However, all are worthy of your consideration. I hope you have the chance to view each one.Well Sourced from Kelly Jensen is a great Substack for those interested in the freedom to read. It’s particularly vital for those living in states where book banning is an issue. Jensen follows bills that come before state legislatures, so you can be aware of what’s happening and contact your representatives to oppose laws that would cancel books and criminalize librarians for having those books in the collection. She also lets you know if an anti-book-ban bill is up for a vote, so you can call your representative and express support for it. Here’s this week’s post:The 11 Most Banned Books of the 2023-2024 School Year from PEN AmericaI’m guessing you are familiar with many of these titles. Details on each are in the linked article.* Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult, 98 bans* Looking for Alaska, by John Green, 97 bans (I discussed on Substack here.)* The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky, 85 bans* Sold, by Patricia McCormick, 85 bans* Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher, 76 bans* Crank (Crank Series), by Ellen Hopkins, 76 bans* Identical, by Ellen Hopkins, 74 bans* The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, 73 bans* The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, 67 bans* Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen, 66 bans* Tricks, by Ellen Hopkins, 66 bansMore Books Banned in 50 or More School Districts in the 2023-2024 School Year* A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (I discussed this title in a Substack post here.)* Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas* A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas* A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas* The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie* The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison* The Color Purple by Alice Walker* A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. MaasThe Most Popular Banned Books in Florida from Electric Lit.’Most popular’ doesn’t mean ‘most frequently banned.’Conceived and supported by Paul English and Joyce Linehan, in partnership with Bookshop.org and Electric Literature, Banned Books USA made over 900 banned and challenged titles available to all Florida residents. Anyone living in Florida could order a banned book for the cost of shipping via the Banned Books USA website, and as a result, nearly 1000 books were mailed to individuals from Pensacola to Key West.Here are the most requested:* Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders (Banned in the Palm Beach County School District)* Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation by Ari Folman (Banned in the Palm Beach County School District)* Beloved by Toni Morrison (Banned in the Escambia County School District)* The ABCs of Black History by Rio Cortez (Banned in the Miami-Dade School District School)* The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story created by Nikole Hannah-Jones (Banned in the Escambia County School District)* The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country by Amanda Gorman (Banned in the Miami-Dade School District)* Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe (Banned in the Manatee County School District)* And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson (Banned in the Escambia County School District)* A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maass (Banned in the Clay County School District)* To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Banned in the Palm Beach County School District)* All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold (Banned in the Florida School for the Deaf & the Blind)* A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer & Trans Identities by Mady G (Banned in the Clay County School District)* The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V. E. Schwab (Banned in the Clay County School District)Censorship Trends For 2025, Part II from Book Riot (and Kelly Jensen, recommended above)Looking to statewide book bans and restricted access to public libraries. Kelly Jensen also makes a point I’ve been discussing here (even today!) and in other venues:This list is not comprehensive. Instead, it’s meant to highlight a small number of things to pay attention to and to take action on when they arise. It’s also a reminder that personally stocking up on banned books or giving them away as gifts, while nice, is not actually doing anything to help stop the attacks on the democratic institutions of public libraries and public schools.Taking that personal action with the belief that it is a solution to book banning is to not only not understand what book censorship looks like right now, it’s playing right into the very mentality of those seeking to destroy these institutions of access. Books will never go away, even if many of the themes or topics in them may; books will simply be because the luxury item is only accessible by those with the privilege and wealth to get them. This ongoing fight has not stretched out nearly half a decade because of fears around getting the books at the bookstore or online. It’s stretched out because the people who need access most are those who are most marginalized and who most benefit from strong institutions that have public support. Handing Nana a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird for Christmas does nothing to help ensure the lower-class queer Brown kid in Idaho has access to books with characters like them…or access to any books, to classes that strengthen their literacy, to experts in various subject fields, or to actual factual information at all.State anti-book-ban law leads some school districts to forsake grants to maintain local control from Yahoo NewsStarting this year, public libraries in Illinois had a choice: adopt principles against book banning or give up state grants.A number of school districts, many of them in deeply conservative areas of south and central Illinois, appear to have taken the latter option. Administrators at some of those districts acknowledged being concerned about giving up any measure of control on what books are allowed on their schools’ library shelves.The state library grants are not large — about $850 for small districts. No district that opted out of applying for funding this year received more than $4,000 in grant money during the last fiscal year, according to state records.New Jersey governor signs law blocking book bans From NBC NewsThe law follows nationwide attempts by conservative lawmakers and activists to limit publicly available books centered on LGBTQ issues or people of color.New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed a law Monday prohibiting public schools and libraries from banning books and protecting librarians who obey state law.Murphy’s signing of the Freedom to Read Act comes amid an ongoing push by conservative lawmakers and activists across the country to challenge books they consider inappropriate for minors, particularly those about LGBTQ issues and race. Lawmakers in at least 13 states this year have introduced legislation to disrupt library services or limit their materials, according to an NBC News tally.“Across the nation, we have seen attempts to suppress and censor the stories and experiences of others,” Murphy said in a statement. “I’m proud to amplify the voices of our past and present, as there is no better way for our children to prepare for the future than to read freely.”As children’s book bans soar, sales are down and librarians are afraid. Even in California from the Los Angeles Times* Teachers and librarians, facing threats and fearful of losing their jobs or even going to jail in states that have passed laws criminalizing certain works, are hesitating to put controversial books that include LGBTQ+ characters or discussions of racism on their shelves.* Publishers — which depend on schools and library purchases — report that sales of such books are down significantly, even when the works receive critical acclaim.* And authors have seen school visits canceled, leaving them without a crucial income stream.Va. library survived battle over LGBTQ+ books. Now, it faces a new threat. From the Washington PostThis is a gift link, so you can click and read the entire article.Samuels Public Library in Front Royal withstood a funding challenge in 2023 over its handling of LGBTQ-themed books and won big awards. Now, local supervisors want to take it over.It’s hard to quote from this article because there are many elements, but here are some of the factors in play:Recognized as Virginia’s Library of the Year and winner of a $500,000 Mellon Foundation grant, the library seemed to have emerged stronger than ever from a 2023 fight to defend LGBTQ+ books against a small but vocal community group that almost cost Samuels its county funding. The former library director resigned amid the pressure and the library wound up hiring a lawyer and public relations firm for crisis management.Library president Melody Hotek was named trustee of the year by the Virginia Library Association and the Friends of Samuels was named top library booster group.Lisa Varga, executive director of the Virginia Library Association, who has monitored library challenges around the state and the country, was named national 2024 librarian of the year by Library Journal.Nevertheless:Two members of the Warren County Board of Supervisors stunned library leaders by issuing a deeply critical report that portrays the nonprofit Samuels as feeding at the public trough without oversight or accountability.The proposed solution: formation of a new library board, appointed by county supervisors, to take over library services. Samuels Public Library could apply to be a vendor for the county, or it could become a library booster organization, or — deprived of county funding — it could disband.This article was followed by others with the news that the Warren County Board of Supervisors did, in fact, follow through with a hostile takeover. Williamson County School Board Removes, Restricts Books in Libraries from Nashville Scene'The Perks of Being a Wallflower,' 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' and 'Where the Crawdads Sing' have all effectively been banned.The board also restricted access to the 1999 novel Speak for high school students, while the 2019 novel The Field Guide to the North American Teenager was restricted for high school juniors and seniors. Speak was previously present in WCS middle and high schools, while the four others were previously only in high schools.Suburban Houston book bans trace to a complex web of influences, including an SBC pastor From Baptist News GlobalHow conservative influencers push their agenda into public school policy and how some, like Mike Huckebee, stand to make some money from the situation.Gardner Edgerton will remove book with trans character from library after one mom complained from NPRThe complaint against "Lily and Dunkin" came from one Johnson County parent who has repeatedly challenged books she finds objectionable. A special committee overwhelmingly recommended to keep the book in circulation, but the school board voted this week to remove it anyway.Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com

Hello Friends,I’ve realized that I tend to riff in the audio version/voiceover. If you want a few sidebars about the banned books, that where they are. 😊 On the anniversary of my mother’s deathIf you read Be a Cactus last week, you know that it was the first anniversary of my brother's death and that today is the fourth anniversary of my mother's death. To state the obvious, the holidays have a different atmosphere than they used to.On this anniversary, I’ll be helping a friend with a garage sale at her mom’s house. I’m heading out her way a few days early to sort and label things along with two other friends who are coming from the Bay Area. The mom who owns the home recently moved to nursing care after falling and breaking her femur. So—sorting out parents’ stuff is on my mind.Since my parents died, months apart in 2020, I’ve been writing a lot about them. Creative nonfiction, mostly. I wrote an essay, published on HuffPost, about their obsession with sexual purity for my sisters and me. It went viral in many places. I’ve also tried to write to understand and empathize with my mother. That work has been of less interest to publishers (“Loved this, but it’s not quite a fit. Please send us more of your work!”) A thing I learned: it’s hard to write about your mother.I have some longer unpublished essays about caring for my parents during the pandemic and about my mother’s pride in her Irish background. I decided to go another direction and write about her in drabbles—that is, in (exactly) 100-word stories.A person can’t be condensed into such a short form, but it has helped me to think about the forces that shaped my mom. I could only look at one aspect of her at a time, so these drabbles are named after parts of her body—her teeth, her ankles, her tongue. Then I tried to write one about the tiny orange tree we bought to commemorate her. It’s a bit of a mess for only 100 words. What I want to say there may not fit the micro-form. Finally, I took the drabble “My Mother’s Tongue” and converted it into a poem, which is a bit longer, about 115 words. But I think I like it better. To be sure, poetry is not my forte, but some friends who are poets helped me with the line breaks.So, Mom, here’s for you.Three Meditations on the Death of My Mother During a PandemicMy Mother’s TeethWere a full plate of false, which she hid, being but thirty. Her secret discovered when, brushing in the shower, she dropped them, chipping the right front incisor. A backhanded gift of realism. Mother of five, measuring herself against conventional beauty standards, she daily lowered her bucket of desire into a well of shame.Decades on, suffering from dementia, she is a pandemic convict, I her voluntary cellmate. Awaiting the advent of order, I urge her to finish her lunch. She removes her teeth at the table, wedging her fingernail between molars, flicking a bit of lettuce in my direction.My Mother’s AnklesForced offices of intimacy now bind us, though you never desired touch. You accept me scrubbing your back, trimming your toenails. Bending to dry your feet, I note your swollen ankles, comprehend their meaning, having been through this with my in-laws. Your heart is failing. Tucking you in for the night, I raise your feet on pillows. I place a hand over your ankle, gauging.“You’re warm,” you say. “That feels good.” Your words an invitation to rest a second hand on your other ankle. I’ll remain here, a sentinel at the foot of your bed, awaiting your imminent sleep.The poem after the drabble “My Mother’s Tongue”Mother TongueWhere did your consciousness go? I call youfrom every corner of the room. Some daysyou identify me. My daughter.I can see this is a win for you, but the homecare nurse presses. What’s her name?You pull many from memory, none of them mine.Rosemary is a favorite. Finally it is simplyyou watching me watching you, suspiciousof my presence. Wheredid your consciousness go? I imagine ithanging out at a single’s bar, bourbon and cigarette, waitingstill, for the right man to deliver youfrom the reality of five childrenin seven years. But you receivea more practical Eucharist, your own bodyplaced on your tongue, swallowed.Here’s the one that isn’t working out. Feel free to make suggestions. (Actually, feel free to make suggestions about any of these.)The GroveorThe TransplantIn a sibling group text about my move, Lee, agricultural water manager, advises starting over. “Digging up citrus is a BAD plan. The rootstock of modern hybrid trees sustain damage. Transplanted, it won’t do well.”“She’s trying to save the tree she planted when mom died,” Lisa answers.“It’ll live,” Lee says, “just stunted.”“Can it bear fruit?” I ask. “I don’t need big.”“Stunted trees bear the sweetest fruit. All the energy goes into fewer pieces. When we grew up, our stunted navel nearest Center Drive? Best fruit ever.”“You're right,” John jumps in. “Best oranges I’ve ever had.”Part 2: Library and book ban newsThere was a lot of book news this week; these are some of the stories important to me. And they only go through Wednesday since I have been gone the rest of the week to help a friend.How To Explain Book Bans to Those Who Want to Understand from Book RiotI’ve shared this before, but it’s important and will be new to our newer subscribers.Here are several talking points you can and should use with the people in your life who may otherwise not understand the complexity and seriousness of book bans happening in school and public libraries. It will not include everything, nor can it. Instead, this is meant to be for people who are eager to listen and learn but may be overwhelmed with where to even begin.Texas State Board of Education proposes taking over school library book ratings. Here's why from the Austin American-StatesmanThe proposal would give the elected education board significant power over determining what’s appropriate for public school libraries and would mirror legislation that has been filed by Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, who in 2023 authored the Reader Act, a law that placed the burden of rating books on vendors and has been on hold over litigation.A process of rating books that children are reading in schools is best fit for the state board, said board member Tom Maynard, R-Florence.…If passed, HB 183 would largely rewrite a section of the 2023 Reader Act that has been under litigation since July 2023. Patterson's 2023 Reader Act requires book vendors that sell to school libraries to rate their material for either sexual relevance or sexual explicitness.Book vendors — including Austin’s BookPeople — and library associations sued the state over the law, insisting it was overly burdensome to businesses.…Member Rebecca Bell-Metereau, D-San Marcos, worried that the task of wading through every possible book review request that could come before the state board from across Texas could be insurmountable.“This would be a herculean task to read and rate all of these books,” Bell-Metereau said. “That just seems insane to me.”Maynard also suggested local school boards would welcome the state board taking decisions about the appropriateness of library books out of their hands.“They don't like having protesters in front of their building,” Maynard said. “For us, it's business as usual.”First list of banned books in Knox County Schools released, schools have until winter break to remove them from WBIR 10 News.The list was sent out to teachers and contains 48 books that are scheduled for removal from Knox County Tennessee public school libraries:* Me, Earl & The Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews* The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie* Go Ask Alice by Anonymous* Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony* 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher* Girls on the Verge by Sharon Biggs Waller* There's Going to Be a Baby by John Burningham* Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle* Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky* Just Listen by Sarah Dessen* A Stolen Life by Jaycee Duggar* The Carnival of Bray by JessieAnn Foley* In A Glass Grimmly by Adam Gimwitz* Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green* Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen* Locke and Key: Alpha and Omega by Joe Hill* Locke and Key: Clockworks by Joe Hill* Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill* Identical by Ellen Hopkins* Tricks by Ellen Hopkins* The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini* Attack on Titan Vol. 2 by Hajime Isayama* Grown by Tiffany Jackson* DUFF by Kody Keplinger* The Walking Dead: Book Ten by Robert Kirkman* Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe* Monstress Vol. 2: the Blood by Marjorie Liu* Late Night at the Telegraph Club by Malina Lo* Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas* Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas* The Way We Work by David Macaulay* Wicked by Gregory Maguire* Sold by Patricia Morrison* The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison* Skin by DonnaJo Napoli* Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez* Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick* Beautiful by Amy Reed* Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Graphic Novel by Ransom Riggs* You: The Owner's Manual for Teens by Michael Roizen* I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez* In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak* A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein* The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater* Blankets by Craig Thompson* Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall* Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut* Everything, Everything by Nicola YoonState school board cranks up heat on 1 book from Charleston City PaperThe S[outh]C[arolina] Board of Education on Tuesday voted on the fate of two books challenged by a parent under Regulation 43.170, a blanket school book-banning policy that took effect at the beginning of the school year.The books in question — HMH Into Literature, an 8th-grade English textbook, and Crank, a novel by Ellen Hopkins — were challenged by Emily Clement of Fort Mill. The board opted to keep the textbook in classrooms, but restricted access to Crank to students whose parents sign an opt-in form.Advocacy groups across the state have fought the state regulation, claiming that it will open the floodgates for mass book bans from politically motivated pro-censorship groups. …Crank is a fictional, cautionary tale of a high school student whose life is derailed by drug addiction and a plummeting mental health. Hopkins, the novelist, spoke at the Dec. 2 press conference about messages she’s received from young readers.“I’ve received over the years literally thousands of messages like that one in support of the book, telling me that the book turned them away from that path or gave insight into a loved one’s addiction or even encouraged them to become drug counselors or social workers,” she said. “Many of those people found that book in their school libraries or classrooms.”A Year Among My Fellow Banned Writers from the New York TimesGift link (you can read the full article) toi an essay by Sandra Cisneros, whose The House on Mango Street faces bans. Not only did we have it in our libraries, but we taught it in tenth grade English classes. (I taught English for 12 years before becoming a teacher librarian.)The poet Joy Harjo has said books are medicine. If so, libraries are pharmacies with a prescription out there for every human. Parents have the right to supervise what their children read, but might they also consider that the book they regard as harmful for their own child may be the perfect remedy for another?My first novel, “The House on Mango Street,” is among those deemed inappropriate by the South Texas book-removers. Most of the vignettes in the book were inspired by my time teaching at Chicago’s Latino Youth Alternative High School. My students were former dropouts who struggled mightily just to return to school. Some were gay, some were addicted to drugs, some were children raising babies, some couldn’t walk outdoors without being targeted by gangs, some were targeted by abusive boyfriends or parents. This was their reality. As their teacher and counselor, I had no means to heal their wounds beyond listening and telling their tales.Because I wanted my novel to enter classrooms and libraries, I felt obliged to censor myself by writing about mature themes elusively, in a way that would sail over the heads of little ones. I needed my book to reach teens who were living these same stories, but I was also aware the stories might be read by younger readers, too. So I found myself crafting with care, respecting what children could handle at certain ages, since I certainly didn’t wish to offend anyone, especially parents and school boards. That’s why I told my truth, but told it “slant,” as the poet Emily Dickinson would put it, in a lyrical way so that the tale would be understood gradually by readers as they aged.Michigan librarians back bills aimed at thwarting book bans From M Live Media Group“Sometimes we forget that all ages, all abilities, all interests, all races, all religions, the rich, the poor, the traditional, the nontraditional families – they all have First Amendment rights as well, and we want to make sure that they can find materials of interest in the public library,” said Debbie Mikula, executive director of the Michigan Library Association (MLA).Thanks for reading Be a Cactus! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com