Skip to main content

Educated 10 chapters

Mormon author describing her childhood in Idaho with an "end of the world is coming" father.  No schooling. The Feds are satanic. Guns and stored food.

Notable scenes:  Father has daughter help him with his junkyard work and nearly kills her.  Piece of metal goes through her leg.  She's supposed to hop out of her father's dump truck just before he dumps it and help "settle" the iron into the larger container.  She is pinned by the metal in her leg and just manages to jump out at the last second. 17 foot fall, serious bruises, but she feels she's let him down--and he does, too.  "How did you manage that?" he asks.

Older brother and narrator listening to classical music together--a shared bond outside the narrow scope of the family.  He leaves the house later, pointing the way for her.

Another brother, helping the father, junk cars, is badly burned by car gasoline. Our narrator, at 10, manages to get the brother's leg into a black plastic bag filled with water that is held in place by a garbage pale. No doctor. Father on hillside putting out fire before the whole mountain burns. Brother screaming in agony.

Mom becomes midwife but is then injured badly in the second snowy/dark crash the family has.  Both are caused by driving in insanely difficult conditions. Dad thinking "angels" are watching over him. After the second accident, Mom can't remember well enough to mix herbs for medicine or supervise child birth. She becomes a "muscle reader," some hocus-pocus tapping on muscles gives her the "power" to divine illnesses.

Who ever said Mormon's were a little odd?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Puppy, Story by George Saunders

PUPPY  Dysfunctional family has puppy that they need to get rid of.  Mom places ad; family is coming over. Description of family.   Mom:  husband changed from long-haired attractive to stooped old man. Husband: talks constantly of living on a farm and doing what needs to be done, though he never lived on a farm.   Conversations together:   Sell and move to Arizona, get hooked on phonics for kids, buying a car wash. . . wonderful randomness. Straight-laced suburbanite comes to look at puppy.  Seems like she will buy it, even though she is repelled by house.  (Dog turds on carpet, filthy.) She is proud of how accepting she is until she looks out window and sees white trash's son tied by harness to a tree.  Reader knows he is a menace to himself, darting across I-90, for example.  Suburban mother beats hasty retreat, leaving dog to be (probably) drowned by dad who does what has to be done.   Suburbanite remembers her own pathetic ch...

Napoleon 14 Amiens

"Ambassadors are essentially spies with titles."  Napoleon President of Italy . . . Peace treaty with England (Amiens) in March 1802, with Turkey in June 1802 . . . flawed peace treaty with England because there was no opening up of France for trade with England, infuriating the English who thought peace would mean trade. . . tourism, though--Brits come to Paris and admire Napoleon . . . British liberals enamored . . . Napoleon "consul for life" . . . lots of unsettled territories, Switzerland being the largest . . . Industrialization much greater in England than France . . . France in 1802 is about the same as England in 1780 as a manufacturing center . . . Napoleon is basically Anglophobic, complaining of any art work that celebrates English victories being shown in Louvre . . . peace unraveling . . . by 1803 . . .  War May 18, 1803! . . . Louisiana Territory sold, advantageous to both parties.  France gets money; USA gets land.  France avoids possible war with ...

Napoleon, Ch 18 Blockades

"The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude. . . . Courage is only the second." Conquers cities of present day Germany. Spandau, Berlin, etc. Shortage of men in France . . . Russians next, but his mind is on Britain. He wants to use trade sanctions to force Britain to its knees, but this doesn't work either. French (and others in empire) need to trade with Brits. Smuggling results.  Also, unintended consequences crop up. Example is shoes:  Napoleon requires 200,000 pairs of shoes from Hamburg.  Hamburg can't supply these to Napoleon, so they buy what they can't produce from Brits. So much for the sanctions!  British are supplying uniforms and shoes for Napoleon, and making $$$. . . . Continues after the Russians in December 1806. . . has to withdraw, 40% of his army out of commission.  Horrible battle with Russians, thousands killed. Napoleon in tears . . . dire moment, Napoleon orders full out cavalry attack . . . Eylau a massacre without any result . ...