I so agree about the sad button. Am i have thought over and over for those literally trapped in the houses, apartments, and all other shelters with their abusers.
Breaks my heart. I have heard far too many horrific stories from women you'd never dreamed who went home from nice, even prestigious jobs to home situations of absolute horror and abuse for theirselves and their children from abusers with access to young students as well. Made me sick then.
Now, i shudder to even think about how much of all kinds of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse continues without the escape or respite of outside lives the abused once had even for 8 hours a day.
Oh how i wish all of this could change in all ways on all sides both perpetrators and victims.
The better world i dream of always includes prayers for these above all others changes that need to come with top priority. Then adequate food, shelter etc.
But always please just may they all somehow have some moments of peace and someone in their lives that truly loves them, so there is always hope and strength in their hearts with the manifestation of change always possible.
@stargazer @herondreams @michele-b
Yes, it is very sad. Who knows if the lock down helped manifest his feelings or if it prevented him from acting earlier.
Very sad information is emerging from news accounts today.
Police say he went to Westgate and " intended on harming 10 people in an effort to 'gain some respect” because he felt he' had been bullied in his life." Police arrived within 5 minutes and found and disarmed him quickly.
Something else I noticed, "picked up" upon. There were accounts of employees baricading themselves in the stores they worked at, with lights out. Police went door to door checking on people and making sure there were no other shooters, then told them to stay sheltered in place. It reminded me of school lockdowns. I think school lockdowns have trained people for non-school active shooter situations. Locking a door, turning out the lights and hiding is what would happen in a school setting. Our kids who have grown up in a mass shooting world are now adults and they are taking the survival skills they have learned and applied them to their life situations.
Curious.
Has anyone had to travel by plane and stay in a hotel at sometime during the last 2 months? Especially in the past few weeks? What is it like? What are the challenges and surprises? What went well? I have a daughter who will be moving halfway across the country this summer She will need to take a quick plane flight out to find a place to live and to sign some paper work for a new job. So any current information and thoughts would be welcome.
A few years back I was anti large book stores like Barnes and Noble because they had wii[ed out the smaller independent booksellers. In recent years however, I have worried about Barnes and Nobel because of Amazon.
During this pandemic I have purchased 3 novels, one for myself and 2 for my daughter through Barnes and Nobel, did curbside pick-up for what my local store had in stock and had the rest shipped to my home. In the shipment I also bought a 2,000 piece puzzle which our family successfully completed in a week.
Every summer I support a small local bookstore in Colorado where we often vacation. I don't know what the cards hold for us this summer, but I will see if I can still support them in some way.
Who here has brought a book during the pandemic? Was it for pleasure or for learning purposes? Where did your make your purchase.
I should note that I also have about 6 books I have not yet read yet which need my attention from purchases I made over the past 2 years. Time to do some reading.
@lovendures Like you, I once considered Barnes & Noble as mega-big and off-putting as Amazon, but now they are the only local and "small" bookstore (West L.A.) for miles and miles. And so I have been buying books from them during the past couple months, picking them up curbside, as you have been. The Last Bookstore, a cool and funky independent bookstore in downtown L.A., is set to re-open soon via curbside delivery, so as soon as I feel ok about venturing that far away from "staying at home" I'll be supporting them. (I was supposed to leave yesterday for my annual month of hiking and biking in France, so I would have spent a couple hours today in one of my favorite little bookstores, Shakespeare & Company!)
I recently watched an interview with Daveed Diggs (Hamilton, upcoming Snowpiercer, etc.) and he turned me onto the idea of donating $$$ to Marcus Bookstore in Oakland, the oldest independent Black bookstore in the nation.
If you haven't already seen these two NYTimes articles, I think you'll enjoy them. The first is "What Do Famous People's Bookshelves Reveal" (In quarantine people are inadvertently exposing their reading habits--embarassing, surprising, and impressive). I'm clearly not the only one who's been paying as much, if not more, attention to scanning the books in the background of Zoom interviews than I have been to what's being discussed! The second, "Celeste Ng, Ann Patchett, Min Jin Lee and Others on the Books That Bring Them Comfort" (Looking for a respite from the news? You might find solace from reading), is also a fun source of new or re-newed book recommendations.
Enjoy!
Just seeing your post about the shooting. I know we all try to remain positive on here, but I grow more misanthropic by the day. I could do 2 more years of staying at home and not interacting in person with people I don't know with zero difficulty.
I agree many mass shootings were put on hold due to the lockdowns, but I worry about domestic abuse and wonder how many women and children are being murdered individually because they're trapped with their tormentors.
I've been trying to kick the Amazon habit by ordering from small bookstores.
During quarentine, I've bought a birthday gift (and some books for myself) from Kitchen Arts and Letters, which is an absolutely wonderful shop in New York City devoted to cookbooks and all things food-related.
I bought another birthday gift from the Twig Book Shop in San Antonio, for a family member who lives there. And a gift certificate for a colleague, who did something really kind for me, from Omnivore Books in San Francisco, another shop focused on cookbooks.
I've also tried out bookshop.org, which distributes ten percent of its profits to indie bookstores.
I've had great experiences with all of them.