Month: January 2024

Accentuate the Positive! · Beauty · Books

“Live Alone and Like It”

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Timeless advice for the single gal

As someone who has lived alone for most of my adult life, I haven’t always liked it. But growing older and wiser makes me glad for all the many blessings: a bathroom to myself! No one to wake me up by snoring. I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want!

One of my favorite blogs is Apples and Roses, the blog of Dorothy Cummings McLean, who once wrote Seraphic Single, blog full of advice for single women. She recommended “Live Alone and Like It” as “the most enjoyable book I ever read on the Single Life.” As I adore McLean’s writing, I immediately ordered the book.

Vogue editor Marjorie Hillis published this slim volume (only 154 pages) in 1936, back in a time when a woman past the age of 25 was considered “on the shelf.” Her book became the eighth most popular non-fiction book of the year and one of the best sellers of the decade. Obviously, attitudes were starting to shift.

This charming book reads as if your chic, worldly-wise older aunt or cousin came over for cocktails or tea and decided to share her wisdom. The language is delightfully dated: Hillis speaks of a woman’s “beau” coming to pick her up, and that scrambled eggs and sausages are favored at the “smartest debutante parties.” The twelve chapters cover everything from how to furnish your home or apartment, the necessity of keeping up with the latest styles – not spending money you don’t have, but never being dowdy – as well as the morals of a single lady. (“A Woman’s Honor is no longer mentioned with bated breath and protected by her father, her brother, and the community. It is now her own affair.”)

Never, never, never let yourself feel that anybody ought to do anything for you. Once you become a duty you also become a nuisance.

Chapter Two, “Who Do You Think You Are?”

Her breezy chapters chock-full of good tips close with case studies of single, divorced, or widowed ladies who demonstrate their good sense – or who serve as a warning to others. My favorite was case study XXV: the lady who knew how to spend a weekend alone: spending Saturday at the beauty salon while her housekeeper cleaned, taking a good tub soak at home before enjoying dinner served on a tray by said housekeeper, then relaxing with breakfast in bed the next day. Sounds wonderful!

This is your house, and it’s probably the one place in the world where you can have things exactly as you please.

Chapter Six, Setting for a Solo Act

The many mentions of bed jackets and satin pajamas make me think of Eva Gabor in “Green Acres” – but they also make me want to upgrade my wardrobe immediately. Every single woman deserves that luxury!

Books

“They Walked Like Men”

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I used to think that science fiction was as odd as the people who read it. In my view only nerdy, insecure teenage boys liked to read stories set on different planets, or which featured aliens come to Earth. Everything was so fantastical, so unreal.

Then I realized my mistake: I’d been reading *bad* science fiction.

Later in life I discovered Sarah Hoyt. Reading her work I found character-driven stories that didn’t rely on gimmicks. Only good, old-fashioned storytelling, with interesting plots and characters I could cheer on. Learning about her influences from her blog led me to Heinlen and other masters.

This past week I finished one of those classics, “They Walked Like Men.” Author Clifford Semak published this in 1962, after a career as a newspaperman. Naturally, he wrote what he knew, and the hero of the tale is a hard-working, hard-drinking journalist. He’s got a story which NO ONE believes that no one will publish.

Of course I won’t give any plot spoilers but imagine a world invasion handled completely by the book – by our own laws. Everything nice and tidy. An invasion carried out by way of real-estate sales, happening all over the globe. That’s what our newspaperman hero had to confront. The oddly-smelling others – who look and walk just like men – are simply using our laws, social codes, and currency system against us.

The protagonist isn’t whip-smart or condescending, like so many unbelievable heroes of today’s action novels. He blunders about, makes mistakes, and just barely figures out his path forward. You’ll be hanging on to every word, cheering him on.

Books · Gratitude · religion

The book that begins it all

AuntGem4 Comments

Reading through Genesis

My favorite book genres are varied and eclectic: mysteries, cozy mysteries, history, historical fiction, biographies, and especially thrillers. I can dash through a Kindle thriller in just a few hours – witness what I did with “The Attack” and one I bought just this weekend. Sadly, my reading through the Bible is much more slowly paced. And I’ve had one devotional book on the end table by my couch for the better part of a year.

My Ladies’ Bible Study has been tackling the book of Genesis for the last six months. Our leader wrote the guides herself, and we completed Part 1, Chapters 1-15, in the Fall of 2023. Now we’re working through Part 2, Chapters 16-through 50, this spring. And the way she is teaching this huge section has whet my appetite for this important book.

I can’t possibly describe the sweep and breadth of this wonderful book in one 800-word post. What I would like to share is the method by which we’re reading it, and the things I’ve discovered, that I either never paid attention to before, or had forgotten, in the story. Too often I equate reading the Bible with the slow, measured reading of just a few verses or section in a chapter.

An Adventure Story

To my shame, often I wonder how little I can read to satisfy my daily devotional. Now I am reading this fascinating and yet foreign book, of people who lived thousands of years ago in lands I can barely imagine, with fresh perspective. It’s all due to the way our leader instructed us to read the book in the two weeks we have before our next session:

Here is the assignment – on days 1-6, read through Genesis 16-50 as if it were a novel. …. Read without taking notes or use an audio version…. Enter into the hearts, minds, and world of the patriarchs. Their stories will resonate with your own. To emotionally connect with the book will increase our appetite to understand it.

Genesis, Part II – Lisa Wheeler

This way of the reading Genesis is a revelation. I haven’t censored my own thoughts about what I’m reading. I’m mentally commenting on the action as I would an action-packed novel by Lee Child, Vince Flynn, or Kyle Mills. What I’ve discovered so far:

  • Rebekah. Rebekah agreed to far away to be Isaac’s wife – of her own free will. At first I was thinking of the lack of agency women had in who they married – but Rebekah’s family left the choice to her. She is recorded in Scripture as saying, yes, I will go. However – the women who accompanied her – her nursemaid and others – didn’t have that choice. Sadly, that was the state of servanthood and slavery as it existed then, throughout the world.
  • Hagar. When Sarai sent the pregnant Hagar away, God looked after her. Hagar, an Egyptian, didn’t even know the God of the Jews, but He knew her. And He spoke to Hagar, reassuring her that she would be fine even returning to live in Sarai’s household, but that her offspring would be “wild” – meaning that child would not be a slave or servant.
  • Ishmael. Just as God took care of Ishmael’s mother Hagar, so he took care of Ishmael. For 12 years he was the son of Abraham. Then he was sent away with Hagar – but God intervened to provide. And God once again reassured the two that Ishmael would found a nation, with twelve sons who were called princes.
  • Isaac and Ishmael. Whenever I read the story, I always thought of Ishmael exiting stage left, and that was it for him. But at the end of Abraham’s life – both his sons buried him (Gen. 25:9.) That means to me that the two brothers had some sort of relationship. Were they close? Did they communicate over the decades? Or did Isaac reach out to Ishmael as Abraham grew weaker? I prefer to think that they stayed in touch. It’s something I never considered before.
  • Esau and Jacob. We all know the story of how Esau sold his birthright for a “mess of pottage.” (As a Southerner I love that phrase.) And Esau went far away from Jacob to other lands. But just like Isaac and Ishmael – there’s one line that surprised me. After Isaac died, we see in Gen 35:29b: “And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.” They had to have some kind of relationship, then, and that pleases me.

So much action

I make the mistake of thinking of the Old Testament as dry, recitations of ‘begats’ and names. But reading Genesis as a novel made me realize how much action there is: dysfunctional family drama, loyalty, betrayal, intended murder, sex scenes (that Potiphar’s wife was a hussy!), prostitution – yep, check out chapter 38 – dream interpretation, family, aristocracy and monarchy, drunken feasts and misunderstandings, a heartwarming family reunion, and at the end, blessings upon all the sons of Jacob.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good….

Genesis 50:20a
Books

An Attack on Us

AuntGem2 Comments

Is it possible the United States could face the same kind of danger here at home that many countries have experienced? What if Israel’s 10/7 happened here? Most importantly, is that plausible?

Kurt Schlichter thinks so. This author, attorney and commentator released a short novel on Jan. 8 that says yes, it could happen here, all too easily. “The Attack” takes the current national security weak points that everyone knows about and yet no one does anything about, the porous border and an ineffectual government response, and draws the tale out to a logical conclusion. If there is no real border, and thousands of undocumented, unverified, *unvetted* people are moving across each day, hundreds of jihadi could be slowly positioning themselves for an attack. With one phone call they could be activated to strike at once. As Kurt points out in his novel, it’s quite an enhancement when the leaders don’t have to do any command. Jihadis eager to kill as many and welcoming death will cause significant chaos without any fancy plans or leadership.

The novel suggests an event that spreads to touch nearly all Americans. During 9/11, most of the country was untouched physically. Imagine an attack designed to be so vast that no one section of the country could look on in horror, and reassure themselves, that kind of thing happens only in New York or Washington. I remember during 9/11 reassuring my roommate that terrorists weren’t coming to our small town – and being fairly certain I was right. In the novel, one statistician estimated that 84% of Americans knew someone personally who had been killed. Ninety-eight (98)% knew someone who knew someone who was killed. That impact is the kind which remakes country.

Kurt wrote “The Attack” in just three short months after the October 7 attack in Israel. The man is known for turning out a novel each year in his Kelly Turnbull series, on top of his regular day job, but this is impressive even for him. A publishing house approached him about doing a non-fiction work, but another friend persuaded him to turn it into fiction.

The story takes the form of an oral history, with “The Author” interviewing witnesses and participants in the attack five years later. Kurt structures the interviews into before, during each of the three days of the attack, and after. Each story is a short chapter. The “interviewees” range from those cartel members who facilitated the transfer of jihadis and weapons, housewives and mothers who survived attacks on their families, orphans who saw their families killed in front of them, to historians cataloguing the events. It is hard to read, but the story is so fascinating you are compelled to read on.

And it is all too possible. Pray that such an event never happens here.

New hope for the New Year
Accentuate the Positive! · Gratitude · holiday

New hope for the New Year

AuntGemLeave a comment

My friends asked me to do a devotion for the New Year at our community New Year’s Eve party. Here it is.

For the past few day, I’ve been searching for the perfect verse to illustrate a devotion. One that talks about hope, and plans. Of course, I thought about Jeremiah 29:11, and Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. Somehow, though, nothing gelled.

Then on Sunday, December 31, I found the passage – by listening in church. One of the things I love about my church is that it uses a lectionary, a prescribed series of readings for every day of the year, and especially Sundays. If you follow it, you’ll read through the whole Bible in two years. What’s nice about it is that 1) Anglicans all over the world are studying those verses the same day and 2) it forces you to read parts of the Bible you’d otherwise skip. We always have an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a New Testament reading, and a reading from one of the Gospels. Sunday’s gospel passage, one of my favorites, spoke to me. I want to share it with you.

The reading is from the Gospel of John, starting in Chapter 1, verse 1, continuing through verse 18.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

John 1:1-18

There’s so much in that passage we could just meditate on it all day! But as I listened to it, and read it and pondered it later, I realized that this passage covers so many of the themes we associate with the New Year.

Hope

Verse 5 tells us that the “Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” That is a major reason for hope there.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Security

When I start to think about this new year before us, I can get pretty wound-up thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Will the election go off smoothly? Will we have riots this summer like we did in 2020? Will the wars going on now intensify?

But then I read verse 3: “All things were made through him and without him was not any thing that was made.” I realize – the creator of the Universe is still with us, and He’s got this. We can be confident of his love for us, because after all, as verse 14 tells us: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God loved us so much he became man by sending us his son, Jesus. No matter what the year throws at us, we can have His peace.

Most importantly, verse 12 reminds us that anyone who believes in His name is given the right to become a child of God. How amazing! What’s even better – we don’t have to earn that right. In fact, we cannot earn it. Verse 13 goes on to say that these children were “born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of men, but of God.” We don’t do anything. We receive a gift.

Peace

Knowing that anyone who receives Jesus, who believes in His name, has salvation, is the key to peace. That takes away my anxieties when I remember that. Let’s remind ourselves often this year, that whatever we face, we face as children of the Living God, who came to Earth to be with us, and who loves us so much that “from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” This is how we can be happy in 2024!

Cooking · just plain fun · Keto · Uncategorized

Fresh for 2024!

AuntGem1 Comment

Changes coming …

Everyone, welcome to the new year! Can you believe it? 2024 - where are the flying cars and jetpacks?

I’ve decided to make a few changes to this website. As many of you know, each year I either continue the diet I’m on or start a new one. This year, I’m going to be keeping a record of my journey – but on my new Substack newsletter – Lighthearted by Jennifer.

Why a Substack? That will give me the opportunity to tailor the content for a special group of readers. In my newsletter, I’m going to share my thoughts on my weight loss (35+ pounds so far) what’s working and what isn’t. And I’ll pen a few posts on how I’m keeping my sense of humor through it all.

Lighthearted by Jennifer is where I’ll write about Keto, cooking, nutrition, and exercise. Here at Notes from Aunt Gem I’ll post my book reviews and miscellaneous essays. Who knows – maybe this year I’ll make the garden bloom!

I’ll post once a week on my health journey at my new spot. For the select few – those who elect to become paid subscribers – I’ll send at least one more post per week, and that one will have:

  • My actual measurements
  • My actual weight – the good, the bad, the ugly!
  • More info on what I’m finding that works

Come join the Lighthearted crew and lose weight with us!