To Return Home

They say a prophet is never accepted in their home town. 

But what of us who are not prophetic? What of those common men who simply find themselves returning? Those bringing no great message, just the weight of experiences from a decade of their life spent elsewhere? 

This concern has been tickling at the back of my mind for months now, building from an occasional chime to a clarion call. It demands to be reckoned with. And so I write to process and contemplate, to flush out and clarify. 

First, a declaration: I like myself. I feel confident in the person that I am - that I have become. 

Some clarification: that has not always been the case. 

Insecurities and inequities have plagued at my sense of self for most of my life - be they creative, physical, gendered, political, or spiritual. That is a through-line that needs far more time than I have here to unpack, so I will leave it as a clarification, albeit a vital one to understand my current state of dissonance. 

At the heart of this dissonance is the relationship between place and self. How much of me is me, and how much is merely a reflection of the place I reside? I know for certain that I have been a different version of myself, be it subtle or more glaring, in every place I've ever called home: Owensboro, Lexington, Louisville, Chapel Hill. Place by place I settled into an identity, combining my own intractable qualities with those more pliable facets molding into some reflection of the people and places I found myself around. I've also found that in each home I've felt a little more comfortable in my skin than the previous. 

Unfortunately this revelation, like most knowledge worth having, does not bring peace - only more questions. 

How much of the me that I've grown to love is just my love for a place or culture that has worked its way in to my definition of self? Which, if any, of the qualities I so value in who I am today are immutable? Do the parts of me that are environmental and cultural reflections travel, or are some of them geo-specific? Can they be transplanted into new soil or will they find themselves lacking nutrients and slowly fade? 

How will my current self react to a place that already has a version of me? A previous home where I've already lived and defined (or often - let others define) myself? Does the current self simply step into past me's life, boldly asserting itself? This is me now, that was me then. Or will they be forced through a reconciliation process - compromising and trading pieces of self to settle on some new version? Would I even be aware of this process as it happened? 

Can the new me slide comfortably back in to old relationships that were built on the shared identities of another life? Will my less-admired pieces of past identities re-emerge after exposure to those I built them around and for? 

What happens when my beliefs and identities that are ubiquitous in my home today find themselves starkly in the minority tomorrow? Can I create a home for this part of me within the 4 walls of my own nuclear home, or will the prevailing thoughts and beliefs of whatever future environment I’m in find their way in, eroding and shifting, adding and re-building? Is that a bad thing? 

How much of this geocultural-impact is macro, impacted by the sum of the community, and how much is micro, based in individual relationships? Can I carry this new sense of self against both macro an micro effect?

Or . . . am I just overthinking (as I tend to do)? 

Is my personal growth over 31 years really just the natural progression of time? The gradual increases in myelination stabilizing and optimizing my neural networks to create a more confident and stable sense of self? A homeostasis of identity?

And to what extent is there even value in attempting to wrestle and contort with these contradictions and multiple selves - to attempt to synchronize past and present in a single self? Can we apply Fitzgerald's claim of a first-rate intelligence, holding multiple opposing thoughts simultaneously, to identities? History fittingly contradicts itself in its answers. Legion contained many and was immortalized in scripture as a demon; yet Whitman confidently asserts self-acceptance in the face of contradiction -  I am large, I contain multitudes.  

With all of these questions stirring I return to my initial thought to find it reshaping, having no value to my state of mind in its original form. Though prophet or plebeian, maybe it doesn't matter if you are or aren't accepted in your home town. Maybe this externally assuming axiom should be turned inward and rephrased as inquiry:

Can one, after finding themselves elsewhere, accept themselves in their hometown? 

Read More

WhitehousePJ

Share Tweet Pin It +1

1 Comments

Hey, it's been awhile!

"I recently read the book When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalinithi. If you haven't already heard of it (or seen my many Instagram story posts), the premise of this book is a neurosurgery resident accounting on his life and experiences after he realizes that he has been diagnosed with metastatic (terminal) lung cancer. I am by no means a crier. I think I've cried in maybe one or two movies and a book or two. This book was tough. Having just finished MICU with many tragic cancer patients and the emotional and physical wear of working so much, all the topics really hit home for me. "

I sit here giggling a little reading the above paragraph. I started that post on May 20, 2018. It's July 30th. I clearly haven't blogged in forever. While that makes me a bit sad as it means I'm not quite keeping up with my life record like I'd hoped, it's pretty satisfying to look back and realize that it also means I've been so busy living life I haven't had a few moments to mull over my thoughts on the computer. That being said, consider this the first catch up post of many to come (since I'm on vacation this week).

I think it's still a legitimate time to reflect on at least 2 big lessons that were learned during the…we'll say experience that is intern year. This is probably especially relevant as I have made several new friends who are now interns trying to navigate their ways through this craziness.

1. You can do anything for 8 weeks.

Ok, I didn't really do any one thing for 8 weeks. But still. I was told this phrase by the course director of our third year surgery rotation. I had 8 weeks of surgery with 28 hour call every fourth day as a med student. At this point, I am so grateful for that experience for many reasons. For one, I already knew how it felt to be horrifically tired on your post call day (the day after you are "on call"). I was already primed for how grumpy, intentionally or not, people can get when they, too, have been awake for 28 hours. This was useful because I knew that it made a difference if I the resident being paged by nursing at 3 am was less grumpy on the phone. It also gave me a thick enough skin for when people were mean, and it was always a pleasant surprise when people were nice (yes even surgery people are very nice here).  The point here being; this too shall pass. Everyone survives intern year (the hours, the scary learning curve, the finding the bathroom on your first day).

2. Friends are everything.

I think I previously wrote about how hard it had been moving out here. For the most part, I'm too busy to notice. But I think in the down time, or the time when I realize that social interaction can be more energizing than actually getting the sleep I missed, I realized a few months ago that it didn't feel like we'd made very many friends here. Almost as soon as I said that, I actually started spending time with people outside of the hospital (I know, right, I can't believe we all were actually out at the same time – it's like Grey's Anatomy or something).  And now, at the start of second year I'm feeling more and more that we've really established a life here and are surrounded by so many high-quality people. My point here is that loneliness is real. Moving somewhere far away is hard (even if you're as extroverted as Parker and I are). At the end of the day, though, if you keep being open-minded, friendly, and intentional the right people will settle into your life. The next thing you know you'll start having weekly family dinners, fake weekly book clubs (aka girls' night), and weekend taco traditions.

More to come…

(But seriously, I have a lot to catch up on haha)

Read More

Unknown

Share Tweet Pin It +1

0 Comments

"The Steak" Valentine's Day 2018

There is a lot of value in tradition. This is doubly true when you find yourself in a new surroundings. Annie has been working a lot lately with very few days off (except the 3 days we spent hospital/couch bound thanks to her appendix) and honestly it's been really hard on both of us emotionally. It's so much harder than expected being in a spot with no long-term friends, while social media allows us to watch all of our friends from past lives go on without us there. Everyone is new, and though we've surrounded ourselves with some great people since moving here, it just hasn't been easy yet, if that makes sense.

In short, we've both been feeling  a bit homesick of late, so having traditions in our relationship that transcend geography has been critical. Traditions anchor us to what really matters. To each other. We have several of these throughout the year, but none has been as consistent as our Valentine's day tradition.

While parts of it have changed over the years - letters, records, apartment, etc., what has not changed is the meal. This year marks our 10th (yikes) Valentine's day together, 6 of which have involved good music, good wine, and a recipe we have dubbed THE steak. I'd like to share the story of that first experience, as well as a modified recipe for those of you who are interested in giving it a try.

It all started our senior year of college, we had been dating for 4 years, we were comfortable in our relationship, and didn't feel like we had to do any grand gestures or gifts as we had in past days. We'd made no plans until around 5pm and realized we wouldn't be able to get into a restaurant, so we'd have to opt for a plan B. I did some quick googling and stumbled on the recipe that we've based our last 6 V-day celebrations on - THE steak.

That first year was experimental - we had cooked, but were FAR from experienced. It may have been my first homemade sauce I ever made, it was the first time I'd ever oven baked a steak, and even Annie making mashed potatoes from scratch seemed daunting (we laugh every year now at how simple most of the recipe actually is…).

We picked up our supplies (what's thyme?, where do you buy port?, you mean the garlic isn't powder?) and got to work, with Pandora radio (is that still a thing?) playing in the background. After a good deal of fumbling, slicing, and prepping, it was all coming together.

 

The steak was in the oven, the sauce was beginning to meld, and I recall a very specific moment then that hit me pretty hard. I believe John Green would refer to it as feeling 'infinite', Maslow may have referred to it as a peak experience of self-actualization, Thomas Moore may've thought of it as a second revelation. Norah Jones' come away with me was playing, the smell of garlic-thyme port wine sauce wafted into my nostrils, and Annie leaned on the counter next to me drinking a glass of wine with a look of absolute content on her face. It was an almost out of body experience. I found myself imagining our future together, realizing that this could be the rest of my life if I chose it.

I saw years down the road standing in a nicer apartment than where we stood, or our own home, cooking a similar meal, with the same smells, and the same girl by my side. I came to teary eyed and couldn't help but smile like a little kid for the rest of the night. I think part of my excitement ever year is the hope of re-creating that feeling.

Last night we completed our 6th attempt at THE steak. Things have changed, but the core of the tradition remains the same: Norah Jones plays, but now on vinyl. The steak is a nicer cut, typically bought from a butcher or Whole Foods. The recipe has been modified, but the flavors are all still there, now enhanced.

I think that last night reminded us that it doesn't really matter where we live. It doesn't matter who we're surrounded with. Those are all secondary pleasures to the core of our life together. Because while the location, the friends, and our schedules drastically change, our love remains the same. 10 years in, 6 rounds of steak. Much like our love, it's gotten better every year. Here's to 50+ more years of tradition.

 Recipe - THE Steak

We base our recipe off of this post

Here's how I've come to tweak it.

- We use ribeye rather than filet. We've tried both, but preferred a high quality, well-marbled ribeye over filet. The fat and the blue cheese and the panko all work SO well together.

- We typically buy 1 large steak and split it rather than eating ourselves into a coma. Annie also always makes a dessert (dark chocolate mousse this year - yum)

- I like to reverse sear the steak rather than the sear/bake technique they use. Bake for 40 minutes or so  at 275 (check steak with a meat thermometer - should be about 115 degrees for medium rare) then cast iron skillet sear it for 30 seconds on each side, then proceed to broiling blue cheese/panko on top

- you can cut the blue cheese/panko in half - it always makes too much

-  find a good mashed potato recipe for the base - we like this one from Pioneer Woman, but it takes a bit of work and advance prep

Let us know if you try it out!

Read More

WhitehousePJ

Share Tweet Pin It +1

0 Comments

Lent 2018: Joy and/In Sacrifice

Today is the first day of the Catholic season of Lent - the 40 days leading up to Easter - which are typically filled with different types of self-sacrifice. As a child, I was always confused why Lent was such a big deal in the Catholic Church. It seemed to me that the truly celebratory days were Easter - Christ's resurrection from the dead, and Christmas - the birth of Christ. These were joyous days, victorious days. If we really believed Christ has come, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, then it seemed to me that that mantra was pretty perfectly summed up between the joyful holidays of Christmas and Easter.

On the other hand - Lent, and really all of Holy Week leading up to Easter, was hard. It's a lot of church. A lot of sacrifice. And a lot of dark, sullen music. I couldn't see how being asked to make sacrifices - to fast, to give up meat on Fridays - could be the pinnacle of anything, much less the holiest days of the year.

But as I've aged I've come to realize why we see Lent as such a Holy Time. That realization really came not through study of Catholic teaching, but through observation of other religions. If you look specifically at the original three Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Islam, and Catholicism, there is a critical common thread that they share when it comes to observing the Holiest time of the year: Sacrifice. Muslims celebrate the holy month, Ramadan, by fasting entirely from dawn until dusk to celebrate the revelation of the Qu'ran. Jews celebrate Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, with a 25 hour fast. Catholics celebrate Lent, the period leading up to Easter, with fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, plus additional sacrifices of our own choosing. Sacrifice, not celebration, is what we choose to commemorate our holiest of days. That is not to be looked over lightly.

I think this tells us a lot about faith, life, and happiness in general. When it all comes down to it - life (and religion) -  are not about the pinnacle experiences, the mountain, the highlights and the celebrations. Religion and life are defined by sacrifice and self-discipline - the struggle, the valley, the conflict points of growth.

 

This is hard for us. We live in a culture of self-service and immediate gratification. We have at our fingertips every piece of information and any good or service we could ever want almost instantaneously. There are a plethora of benefits to this. But with it also comes a lack of struggle that previous generations grew accustomed to. As a society we expect immediate satisfaction and joy, and we base our happiness on how it makes us feel in the immediate moment.

But that immediate satisfaction doesn't last. It's fleeting. It doesn't bring us the lasting joy that we truly seek. That's because life isn't about self-gratification. Life, when you really boil it down, is about sacrifice and discipline - it is only in training ourselves to put off immediate gratification to work towards a higher purpose that we can achieve a lasting joy and satisfaction.

This has many names - intrinsic motivation, grit, self-discipline. Call it whatever you want - but they are all sacrificing immediate satisfaction for a greater goal or purpose. And according to the famous Stanford Marshmallow test, not only does that lead to higher reported happiness later in life, it also leads to healthier, more successful lives.

As a way to further prove this conjecture - I challenge you to think about the pinnacle experiences of your life. The moments you were happiest, or ecstatic, or celebratory - and ask yourself where the joy truly came from… I'd be willing to bet that most of these experiences are actually the culmination of a difficult experience of sacrifice rather than a single joyous event. The highlights of my career come through letters from students, thank-you notes form parents, and lightbulb instances for students who were struggling. But those peak moments of joy in my career weren't really a celebration of a single instance - they were a joyful celebration of months or years of hard work and sacrifice on my and the student's part.

But these moments of joy at the end of sacrifice can often be misleading. Because sacrifice isn't always about the end of the road. It's about finding joy in the experience of sacrifice itself. Teaching has its moment of absolute and total frustration - low moments where you feel totally burnt out and don't feel like you can sacrifice anything more. Any teacher who tells you otherwise is lying to you, or not trying hard enough. But what faith does for us is it allows us to take joy in those moments as well as the highs.

Going to weekly mass is not a highlight of the week for me, many weeks it only brings frustration or annoyance at giving up valuable time from my weekend. But I've come to take joy in the spiritual grit necessary to make it to church every week, even if I don't take anything away from it that day.

Waking up at 4:45 3-4 days a week to work out is awful most days. And though the end result of 2 years on this path has led to great results, the real joy that I find comes in the repetition. The discipline necessary to keep getting up and working hard. The goal is good - but the journey can itself be a source of joy. It is difficult to see that in a culture of self-serving immediate gratification. 

So my challenge for you all this Lent, and for myself, is to embrace the sacrifice. Embrace the grind. Find joy in struggle. It may be the only common thread connecting human existence. I think that's why it's such an integral part of the religious experience, and why we celebrate our holiest time of the year, not with celebrations and festivals, but with sacrifice.

Read More

WhitehousePJ

Share Tweet Pin It +1

0 Comments

When I became a patient.

Another rotation down (cardiology), and I'm starting to see the light at the end of the deep, dark tunnel that has been intern year. Though to be totally honest, I can't complain that much - it's been a pretty nice compared to some of my friends from med school. My last stretch of rotations have few to no "golden weekends" off and vacation is fairly far off in the distance.

That being said: my body (and bowels) decided to have different plans for me. During work the other day I had some serious belly pain. I'm usually pretty good at dealing with belly pain (I would argue that I have irritable bowel syndrome) so I tried to push through it. My hypochondriac/I-know-too-much side was self-diagnosing with all kinds of things. I even had my friends consult and examine me. My doctor side that grows frustrated with convincing patients nothing is wrong with them and that they should go home was fighting feeling sick and just wanting to get back to work. I ultimately asked some of my family and was convinced to go to the ED.

Long story short: appendicitis happened. I spent 2 nights in the hospital and am now one vestigial organ less. This is a laughable occurrence to me as it's been less than a year since I broke my ankle. Broken bones and appendicitis are common childhood ailments, and here I am 26 years old faux-adulting, trying to be a doctor instead ending up as the patient.

While I missed out on some time at work, I do actually think this little experience has been a very educational milestone during residency (ironically). Here are some things that I've learned:

1. While health care providers are running around busy in the ED, on the floors, in the OR etc. it doesn't seem like our patients are waiting very long for things to happen. From a patient's perspective - it does actually feel like forever. Friday morning we decided I needed surgery, but I didn't have a specific time. Knowing my experience with frustrated patients, I was happy to wait, but that's not to say it wasn't a very long day of boring, somewhat painful waiting. 
2. Being attached to an IV pole is miserable. I slept for maybe 2 hour stretches because I had to wake up and mess with the settings on my IV pump to get it to shut up. Dragging it to the bathroom is less than convenient (and I was going often since they were pumping me full of fluids). And none of this accounts for how I couldn't bend my elbow the whole night because of where my IV was placed. 
3. IV contrast feels super weird. This is basically a dye that they put in your veins before you have a CT scan. It makes you feel all warm all over. They warned me even, "you'll feel like you peed your pants". I laughed. They were not lying...
4. Similarly - and this and #3 are both more for my fellow friends in medicine - subcutaneous heparin hurts. A lot. Not only is someone coming at you with a needle, which I can handle, but you have a residual burning that lasts for a pretty extensive period of time. 
5. I very ironically freaked out when waking up from anesthesia. Surgical pain is real, and I am still slightly disappointed at my pain intolerance considering how "small" my surgery was. I didn't think I would be the person confused, panicking, crying, and asking for pain meds in the PACU. Hoping my anesthesia colleagues didn't judge me too much, ha. 

Being a patient is hard. Thankfully there are countless doctors, nurses, etc who do their best to make the patient experience a little less miserable than it has to be when you're sick in the hospital. Even more, I am so thankful for supportive friends, family, residency program faculty, and especially Parker who all took so much time to take care of me.

Special shout out to the people who covered for me at work! Having amazing team members in this tough doctor world we live and work in is everything. 

Read More

Unknown

Share Tweet Pin It +1

0 Comments

Literature Reflection 2017: A look back at the books I read in 2017

At the start of every year I set reading goals. For 2017 My goals were this: 6 works of fiction, 1 historical biography, and 1 other non-fiction.  8 total books. It was my assumption that in a year of celebrating the end of Annie's time in medical school, a summer of moving, and finding a new teaching job, I wouldn't have as much time to read as I might like… So I settled on 8.

1 year later and my number ended up a bit higher… Counting audio books ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ my total this year was 20. 11 works of fiction (one a re-read), 6 works of non-fiction (including 2 biographies), and 3 audio books (great for driving back and forth to North Carolina.)

In the interest of sharing this year's crop of winners, I put together a quick blurb about each one of them, including a quick gut-feeling rating system between 1-10.

As I went back and looked at my notes I remembered some of these very fondly, and others I recall the waste of time that they were. But books, like life, aren't always what you want them to be - that's part of the joy. They can surprise you or disappoint you, inspire you or leave you in the dumps. But just like life, you know in the end you'll always end up coming back for more.

So here's to a great year of reading, and hopefully an even better one in 2018.

FICTION

Blake Crouch - Dark matter - 9.5/10

• My favorite of the summer. Nothing flashy about it, this was just a brilliant concept done with impressive storytelling prowess. You will finish this book in 1-2 days. It is that good. You will not be able to put it down. Superposition and Infinite realities make this science fiction work one that I couldn't stop thinking about. Hell I'm still thinking about it.

Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch - 9/10

• Clocking in at 784 pages, this one took me a while to get through, but I promise you it was worth it. Just going back to read a few of my favorite excerpts from the book had me a bit misty eyed remembering how beautifully Tartt wields the English Language. At times unnecessarily lengthy, she makes it completely worth it with the occasional line that completely takes your breath away, like this one that still occasionally stops me in my tracks. 
• "And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky - so the space where I exist, and I want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime."

George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo - 8/10

• Told as a dialogue between over 100 different characters, mostly ghosts, the magnitude of work put in to each character astounded me here. One of my absolute favorites of the year. A quick read, I knocked the whole thing out on a day of traveling to Mexico. The story itself is interesting, though not gripping (Abraham Lincoln entering the graveyard to visit his recently deceased son). But the depth of emotion and the reality of human nature addressed via the ghosts' journeys to accepting their own mortality had me teary-eyed and feeling on a flight full of strangers.

Fredrik Backman - Beartown - 8/10

• This felt like someone took one of my old childhood sports novels and turned it in to an adult version just for me. A small town Canadian hockey team isn't the type of book I would usually pick up, but something about it called to me, and I'm glad it did. One of the key characters in the work, Benji, was probably my favorite of any I've read this year.

Jonathan Franzen - Freedom - 8/10

• This one came as a recommendation, and another lengthy piece, it is worth it for different reasons than the Goldfinch. While the Goldfinch spoke at times of a depression and despair that I couldn't understand, Freedom was one of those books where you can somehow see yourself in every single character in the book. It was as if every character represented some stage of my life, or someone in my life presently. It also gave me this stanza, which perfectly summarizes my own experiences with attention and compliments.
• "she believed that it was because she was selflessly team-spirited that direct personal compliments made her so uncomfortable. The autobiographer now thinks that compliments were like a beverage she was unconsciously smart enough to deny herself even one drop of, because her thirst for them was infinite."

Matthew Quick - The Reason You're Alive - 7.5/10

• NC Book Club Book #4 - From the author of Silver Linings Playbook. I Knocked this out in a few days on Christmas Break. If Hillbilly Elogy is necessary non-fiction to understand the psyche of our current populist right wing, then The Reason You're Alive is its fictional counterpart. This is a quick read, 200 pages, spent in the head of a vietnam war veteran watching the world change around him and seemingly forgetting him. A dynamite read for our current political and social climate.

Colson Whitehead - Underground Railroad - 7/10

• Great fiction read for any fan of American History. Whitehead takes the history of black America and weaves it beautifully and at times heartbreaking-ly into a single slave narrative. The twist of an actual freedom railroad operating underground made for fascinating imagery.

J.K. Rowling - Cursed Child - 5/10

• Not sure why I hadn't read it yet - I picked it up around the 20 year anniversary and knocked it out in 2 days. Of course it lacked the magic of the originals and the screenplay format made it annoying at times, but it answered a lot of questions about Time Turners that I'd spent way too much time debating in my lifetime. If you haven't read it yet and you're, like me, a Potter nerd - it's worth it mostly due to the little time you'll have to put into it..

Dennis LeHane - Since we Fell - 4/10

• Not great, not bad. An interesting read that was meant to keep you hooked from the get-go, it kept me intrigued enough to finish, but the story itself wasn't the most believable and only one character was properly developed. Don't recommend, but it's far from wasted time.

Paula Hawkins - Into the Water - 3/10

• Maybe it's because I audio-booked Girl on the Train that I enjoyed it so much, but I was anything but impressed by Hawkin's second novel. Predictable throughout and the story seemed at times just a re-write of Girl on the Train. My fear after reading this is that Hawkins will be adopting the model of Grisham, Cussler or Child: Books that will never let you down if you know what you're looking for, because they're all pretty much the same thing in different iterations.

NON-FICTION

Paul Kalanithi - When Breath Becomes Air - 9.5/10

• I can't remember a book that made me feel like this since I finished the 7th Harry Potter in 2007. I'm talking Where the Red Fern Grows level heartbreak. Paul Kalanithi was finishing his residency in Neurosurgery when he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. This was his attempt to chronicle his life and experience. What he ended up doing was reshaping my view on humanity, on religion, on human nature. Kalanithi was initially a philosophy and English literature student before switching to medicine, so this book reads more like a humanist manifesto than the story of a dying neurosurgeon. This book is not easily forgettable.

Ta Nehisi Coates - Between the World and Me - 8/10

• As a white man this was the most challenging book I picked up this year, but I would argue it could also be the most important. You don't have to agree with Coates or with his view of the world. You can even vehemently disagree with it. But reading this is important because you should try to understand it. To empathize with it. Even if you don't agree with Coates you can feel the fear and the hurt he has in this series of letters written to his teenage son. In our current racial climate this should be required reading if only for the discussion it provokes.

Lost City of Z - 7/10

• Recently made into a movie, this has proven to me one thing: I never want to explore the Amazon… Colonel Fawcett, a famous British Explorer with the Royal Geographic Society, famously disappeared along with his son and son's best friend while searching for El Dorado, or as he called it, Z. Similar to Splendid Savage, this book chronicles the life of a man who never seemed content. The world needs men like this, but I'm pleased that I do not happen to be one, as Fawcett's life, and his family's, were made difficult in many ways by his obsessions with the Amazon. Probably the best historical NF work I've read since Devil in the White City.

A Splendid Savage 7/10

• My first North Carolina book club read - A historical biography of Frederick Russel Burnham. A scout, a prospector, an explorer, Burnham lived an unbelievably fascinating life. For a history teacher I usually don't read a ton of biographies, as they typically end up taking me a year to get through, but this one held my attention. One of the most fascinating characters I've ever read of.

Hope in the Dark - 5/10

• At some point this summer I needed something positive to pull me out of the hole of reading the news and realizing nothing was going to change. That the world we were living in was the new normal. This series of essays written almost 10 years ago was an enlightening view of how activism really works. We expect movements or protests or boycotts to be immediately successful, but they rarely are. Instead change, like most else in life, comes gradually and often comes with steps in the wrong direction. But progress, in the end, always wins out.
• "To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable."

Enough - 5/10

• John C. Bogle, founder of Vanguard Investments, in writing about the ideal way to handle our personal finances, ended up penning the perfect explanation of why our financial systems crashed in 2008 and why it will undoubtedly happen again. Too much speculation, not enough investment. Our financial system values speculation and hitting it big (see, Bitcoin), but no one values long-term investment anymore. A short-read, It's a great one to slowly work your way through so you have time to digest it all.

RE-READ

Madeline L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time

• Childhood classic - had to give it a read to prep for the upcoming Disney remake!

AUDIOBOOK

(I just don't invest into audiobooks quite the same way I do into physical books, so in fairness to these books, I'll just list them below)

• Stephen King - 12.22.63
• Ben Winters - The Last Policeman
•  Paula Hawkins - Girl on the Train

NOW READING

Everything that Remains - a Memoir by the Minimalists 
Ron Chernow - Grant 

Anything you read this year that you think I should pick up? Comment or shoot me a message! I am always in the hunt for a good book, and my list is rapidly expanding.  

Read More

WhitehousePJ

Share Tweet Pin It +1

0 Comments