Wish I could share this talk via actual video, but the best I can do is share the feed. Rabbi Harold Kushner visited Toronto at the end of last year to give a talk based around his latest book, Conquering Fear, Living Boldly in an Uncertain World. I really enjoyed the depth and breadth of his insight and spirituality. He covers many topics, though he starts with fear, but does not ever seem to be wandering. What he says regarding fundamentalism, fear, not being intimidated, God vs. nature and what God has in store for our lives all struck me deeply. I’ve yet to read his books, but his name keeps popping up lately and the quality of message in this talk makes me think long and hard about doing so soon.

The Rabbi’s talk was aired on a Canadian television show called Big Ideas. From their website,

“BIG IDEAS is a showcase of ideas that shape our public debates. At their best the lectures featured on the program expose us to the differing ways of defining what matters and how that affects our understanding of the world as it is and as it is likely to be… Each age has a set of questions by which it defines itself. If, 50 years from now, someone came across a list of BIG IDEAS shows, they would have a pretty good idea of what people thought about and debated in the early 2000s.”

From this link to the Big Ideas website, you can see the video or listen to the audio. We get the show in podcast form via iTunes each week. Expand your world view and have a listen. It certainly did for me.

Agatha Christie.

This book was an addition to my Women Unbound Book Challenge because I found it for $1 at Value Village and my curiosity about the author has been peeked, having never read any of her books, ever since I watched the Doctor Who episode where she is featured. Yes, that’s my second Doctor Who reference in as many posts. Sorry, big fan here!

Murder on the Orient Express is a departure for me in another way. Mysteries haven’t been a favourite genre of mine since I finished every single Nancy Drew my hometown library had in stock. Perhaps there was some burnout involved. Hard to say.

Nevertheless, Christie surprised me with a quick deft read that kept the adrenaline coursing in my veins and the eyes open over night shifts. Not an easy task.

Indeed it was a fun little book. Old style mystery writing too. Find the clues. Piece it together. No CSI computers, lasers or digital recreations here. Just a knack for observation and experience with human psychology.

Hercule Poirot is the featured detective. I hadn’t previously realized that she had her own Sherlock Holmes consistent throughout her books. He had my brain running in loops. Every time I thought I’d figured something out, I had not. Oh well, the end was sufficiently stunning that I didn’t mind being less astute than he.

However enjoyable this little jaunt, I feel no further urge to read more of Christie’s work. I get just enough murder and mayhem in my diet when we try to solve one of the stories in this book over the dinner table.

As an aside, I know I’m really really late but…

I am so proud that in 2009

I read 22 books total, not counting short stories or graphic novels
was a member of Goodreads for my first full year
met some amazing women among the Chicks on Lit group there
found more books than I can read in five years for my to-read shelf
and finally – finally! – found a book podcast i can call favourite, Books on the Nightstand.

The best of the best book selections from the year would have to be Eat Pray Love in nonfiction and Ender’s Game in fiction, though there are very close runner-ups in both categories.

Here’s to the journey of 2010!

trying to see if bit.ly will shorten my blog post link in my twitter feed. i don’t think i’m asking all that much. am I? *crossing fingers*

Having a Star Wars birthday party for your son or daughter?

We recently  did – and it turned out great! The hardest part of planning was coming up with a really fun indoor-only game to play with really rambunctious nine year old boys in a small house. After much pulling my hair out with unnecessary worry, I mashed up a few ideas that I found online, and out came an all new scavenger hunt that ended up being a lot of fun. I wanted to share it in hopes of one day saving someone else the same worry.

The object of the game is to find all of the Star Wars characters assigned to your team.

The items to be found were my son’s Star Wars action figures. These were scattered around the house in plain sight. The clues that led you from one item to the next was a quote by a character in one of the six Star Wars movies, and the challenge of the game was to figure out who said the quote and then go in search of that character, placed somewhere around the house.

We split the boys into small teams, gave them their first clue and had them return to us after they thought they had figured out the answers and found each character. If they were right, I set them off to their next mission. If they were wrong, I asked them to place that character back and try again. This was because each team had a specific set of nine action figures to find, and if one were to be carried around by an opposing team, it would prevent the other team from finishing their quest.

I wrote out the quotes on index cards and these were placed with the action figures. Use your imagination but usually the top side said something like “Congratulations you have captured/rescued (depending on if the figure was a good guy or bad guy) so and so. Your next mission is to defeat/find the person who said: …” Then the flip side of the card had the quote.

Quotes themselves were not difficult to procur. Simply google “star wars quotes” or try imdb.com — their site is really nice because you can search for individual characters in the films. That way it was easy to find the characters that we had action figures for, and voila, that part was done.

The winning team got their pick of the prize loot – Star Wars stickers and hand towels found at a party store – but after congratulations were over, they were off to help the losing team find their remaining action figures and the game continued with everyone helping out. That was definitely a heart-warmer.

My favourite part was when they’d come back to me with the answer to one quote, I’d often read the next quote for them in the best imitation voice I could. The dawn of recognition on their faces and the sprinting before I was even finished speaking… priceless.

so let’s have some fun and see if you guys know your stuff!
I’ll post the answers in the comments after you’ve had sufficient time to sweat it out.

Here is Team A’s collection of quotes:

1. I don’t want to hear any more about Obi-Wan. The Jedi turned against me. Don’t you turn against me!
2. Remember, concentrate on the moment. Feel… don’t think. Use your instincts.
3. What if he doesn’t survive? He’s worth a lot to me.
4. You know, I think that R2 unit we bought may have been stolen.
5. Listen to them, they’re dying, Artoo! Curse my metal body! I wasn’t fast enough!
6. Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerf herder.
7. Monsters out there, leaking in here. Weesa all sinking and no power. Whena yousa thinking we are in trouble?
8. At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last we will have revenge.
9. All who gain power are afraid to lose it, even the Jedi.

and Team B:

1. Look, Your Worshipfulness, let’s get one thing straight! I take orders from one person! Me!
2. You must join me, Obi-Wan, and together we will destroy the Sith!
3. Why do I get the feeling you’re going to be the death of me?
4. Try not. Do or do not, there is no try….
5. I listen to all the traders and star pilots who come through here. I’m a pilot, you know, and someday I’m going to fly away from this place.
6. Anakin Skywalker. I expected someone with your reputation to be a little… older.
7. I’m just a simple man, trying to make my way in the universe.
8. These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.
9. I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this invasion in a committee!

My first book for the Women Unbound Book Challenge is done!

Confession: I finished it before Christmas, but my life is bonkers from then until now and I’m finally ready to write again. You don’t mind, right?

Especially because my reaction and appreciation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale hasn’t dimmed one bit. My reaction was very British… Brilliant.

(Anyone else notice how much the islanders say that word? Or is it just those interviewed for their work in the tv series Doctor Who?)

I feel like Atwood’s self categorized piece of “speculative fiction” was a perfect choice for the first book in the Women Unbound Reading Challenge. It deals with a future society in which women have been stripped of their rights and society as a whole organized into a caste system for the good of all mankind. Those who have — eek, perhaps this is time for a SPOILER ALERT!!! — proven fertile and able to bear children are put into service as surrogate mothers for the upper class wives who are unable to bear children. This is the theme I found most enthralling. For society had not simply removed women’s right to external entities like having money or holding a job or marrying whom she pleases. No, they went so far as to physically disassociate their sexuality from her occupation as a child-bearer or as a wife. No one was having fun in bed. No woman felt like a woman. Which is just enough of a step further in the line of discrimination against women than we are accustomed and what made this book so thought provoking.

In the story, women among the privileged elite participated in their husband’s adultery with a handmaiden, lying still and silent underneath the girl, watching the amputation – and subsequent death of herself – claim another. The handmaiden herself faired little better as an object, an womb surrounded by an invisible person hood. It was all rather appalling to picture and Atwood’s story is a slow unfolding of the details of how this society works as a whole with small tidbits and references to a political uprising that brought them to this place. The story is told from the point of view of one particular handmaiden and her struggle to understand her new place in the world, whether she likes it, whether she can live with herself and participate and believe the brainwashing or choose her own path.

I found it reprehensible that anyone might suggest that any society, particularly thinking of our own that has fought over so many years to secure legal rights and break social mores surrounding what women are and are not allowed to do, could degenerate into what is alive and well in Atwood’s world. And yet I felt like I must consider the possibilities. For to not be on watch, to not put forth my own genuine femininity and guard and treasure it, would be to open the door for repression masquerading as revolution.

The Handmaiden has to make hard choices and constantly be on watch. She has to decide whether to be a rebel and if so, what kind of rebel? She taught me to duly watch and, more importantly, be thankful, both for my own self and for, in an odd way, the men around me who have been unafraid to let my femininity become what it will.

I am really looking forward to reading more of Margaret’s work in the future. For now, I have my pile of further Women Unbound reading but I am tickled to know that Atwood is worthy of the immense persona she carries as a Canadian literary giant who just happens to be a woman.