📕2 Book Reviews, TV movies

Here it is, 🇨🇦 Canada Day. 

Someone had fireworks Sunday night, as well as Monday night. It echoes around the lake a km away. There are a lot of cottagers who come up from the US. They'll set them off July 4th, as well.

I mentioned we hang out on the back deck in the afternoon, avoiding the sun or bugs. We read, watch the birds, or our fox, or Fred. Somebody in my house is caught up in Wimbledon. It's a great past time. He's fighting a cold or something. I like burying myself in books. 

Just skim these, if you wish. I wanted to get down some salient points. We tend to pass our books on to the library. At 4 a.m. I heard a podcast talking about the renewed production in Gander of Come From Away. It is an excellent show. It's about how people can show generosity and kindness in tragic times. 

📕Daytime reading

I finished The Situation Room, by George Stephanopoulis and ghost writer Lisa Dickey. Joe brought it home to read, and I thought I'd give it a go in the light of all the chaos south of the border. Our 🇨🇦 government has reported that 55 Canadian citizens have been kidnapped by ICE. 

Trump wants a concentration camp to be built in the Florida everglades (NYT article), surrounded by alligators. What could go wrong? They'll put in tents until it is bricks and mortar. Don't you guys have mosquitoes?! 

It is an interesting notion to compare the crazy things that have gone on, and how the Situation Room evolved over the years. The Situation Room (Sit Room) has gone from a private place to meet, to a secure facility. In the 2000s, it's name has been changed to WHSR, or whizzer!

The Sit Room was dreamed up in the 1960s. There were issues with the actual creation of it, the money and renovations required, as well as shutting the room down during renos. Also, it is interesting how technology evolved during those times, including vacuum tubes, and teletype and radio, video and phones. It was finally staffed 24/7 by officers rotated in from various spy agencies. 

Stephanopoulis talks about the players who were in this room, and how the gender bias was evident, as well. It was many years before women were part of the story. The first female officer who staffed it cryptologist Sarah "Sally" Botsai, who served under Nixon and Ford. Nixon never darkened its doors, she said. She had to fight for recognition. It was common in meetings such as this, for women to put forth a great idea, they move onto another idea, and a man then regurgitates HER idea and it is accepted. 

There are 12 presidents whose tales were told, from Kennedy to the current administration, based on the role the Situation Room played. Think of Bosnia, Russia, North Korea, Haiti, Somalia, as well as the Oklahoma City bombing, the crash of TWO Flight 800, and 9/11. 

The people with background experience, knowledge, and expertise were trusted to provide information to presidents. Blinken said, "The Achilles heel of any autocracy is that you don't have people who are willing or able to speak truth to power." This premise is supported by Tapper's recent book on the Biden years. During this current administration, people may be speaking truth, but those in power do not listen. Most of them have drunk the KoolAid. Others are spewing garbage during media plugs, swearing white is black, and all people on Medicaid and Medicare are lazy. After the Bezos wedding, we can say how the 1%, in power, are able to throw money around. 

Imagine if people paid their fair share of taxes, they increased the number of judges and courts to process legal immigrants, and you wouldn't have to worry about not having farm workers or other employees. Immigrants are willing to work. 

Racism at its finest: 'send them back home'
says the white men where First Nations thrived

Those are the lies, perpetuated against us. Meanwhile, Canada Border Agency continues to arrest those smuggling drugs and humans across the border INTO Canada.

It is awful, the lies (YouTube). 

🔦 Nighttime Reading

The Frozen River

It's by Ariel Lawhon, and an amazing book. It is based on the diaries of Martha Ballard, a midwife/healer in 1736. Not all were literate in those days, but her husband taught her to read, and write. Tales were told of murder, rape, stillbirths, murder, trials, as well as the issues of the time. Ballard wrote of people and times when doctors were few and far between, but dominated the field. They also dominated midwives.

Ballard was a strong woman, brought to life by this historical fiction. Two of my grandies were delivered in the presence of midwives, with before and after care that focused on the family, not just the birthing event. When I was pregnant in 1979, midwives in Ontario were fighting for hospital privileges. Now midwives can order tests, and do wellness checks, and help with breastfeeding under our universal healthcare. 

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📺Viewing: TV Movies

We've just finished watching The Nordic Murders. It is in German, with subtitles. I love hearing the language, as I've sung in German, Italian, Russian, English and French, when I was in a professional choir. 

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📺I watched The Vanishing Triangle (2023). Set in Ireland, based on a book by Alan Bailey, and it is an excellent TV Series. (The book is out of print, was published in 2015).

It is filmed in County Wicklow, Ireland, and set in the 1990s where 15 women disappeared, murdered, some buried in shallow graves. Others were never found.

It is raw, and gruesome in spots, but an excellent portrayal of the events and attitudes of the time. Women disappear in this triangular area, there was no correlation of incidents, but there is finally assumption is that there is a serial killer after 5 women were found. 

Crime/ Mystery Drama series "After a series of disappearances of young women, newspaper reporter Lisa Wallace (26), sets out to find the man responsible who she believes is the same man who murdered her mother almost twenty years earlier."

'Alan Bailey served as the National Coordinator for the task force for thirteen years, and the stories in Missing, Presumed all come from his personal experiences.' – from Amazon.