History – Page 3 – …on the B.L.

Wild and Crazy Guys by Nick de Semlyen

July 20, 2019July 20, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth A Read Most Definitely
Length 336
Quick Review The 80s saw a comedic revolution, and there were several men at the center of that revolution.

Reading Wild and Crazy Guys by Nick de Semlyen on a gravel road in Old Town Spring, Texas| Skirt Set | Purse | Fringe | Shoes | Watch

I grew up on 80s comedies. Steve Martin’s SNL skits were performed by a twelve year old me in the hallways of my church for a captive audience of my peers who were less educated on comedy of years past. I was introduced to Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, The Jerk, Coming to America, National Lampoon’s Family Vacation, and a plethora of other classic comedies long before I understood most of the jokes. None-the-less, I grew up laughing to the humor of Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Martin Short, and the other comics gracing the pages of Nick de Semlyen’s Wild and Crazy Guys.

If you don’t know anything about the comedy scene or the people inhabiting it during the 80s, look no further than Wild and Crazy Guys. Nick de Semlyen peeks into the revolutionarily funny period that gave the world movies, like Stripes and Animal House.

I was literally laughing out loud reading this. It’s such a great look into the backstory of some of the most influential movies in my life. I don’t know if I should be proud how much these men and movies influenced me, but they did. Thanks, Dad.

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Wild and Crazy Guys starts with an iconic but not for laughs fight in the SNL dressing room between Murray and Chase. It sets the tone of how funny these men were while also reminding people how serious, driven, and a little crazy they were about comedy and their careers. de Semlyen goes into great detail about the things going on in the comics personal lives and the behind the scenes of the movies and shows. I appreciate how well researched the book was and included anecdotes, quotes, experiences, reviews, and more from contemporaries and historians.

For as funny as these men and their movies are, there is a dark side to fame and comedy. de Semlyen does not shy away from talking about drugs, alcohol, partying, and fame, including John Belushi’s overdose and Doug Kenney’s controversial death.

I can’t suggest Wild and Crazy Guys by Nick de Semlyen more. It is definitely not for everyone. If comedy is your jam, pick this one up. You won’t regret it. I promise.

Memorable Quotes
“…Candy argue passionately that it should be cut entirely, believing it was sexist and designed to make him look like a pig in a sty.” About the wrestling with topless women scene in Stripes.
“…since Murray believed all good things came from difficult conditions.”

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Title: Wild and Crazy Guys
Author: Nick de Semlyen
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9781984826640

In My Own Words, Lifestyle

Happy Fourth

July 4, 2019 RaeAnna

Beau’s Shirt | My Shirt | Undershirt | Shorts | Shoes

Happy Fourth of July from Beau and I to you!

For the non-Americans, the Fourth of July is when the United States celebrates its freedom, and it is also known as Independence Day.

In 1776, the United States was actually a British colony. On July 2, 1776, we declared independence from the British Empire. Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It wasn’t until August 2, 1776 that the Declaration was signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in Independence Hall. Today, Americans like to celebrate with a day off, food, fireworks, and time spent with family and friends. Fireworks are mandatory in my book.

This is my first Fourth in Texas. I’ve lived in Texas for two and a half years. The first year, I was on vacation in San Diego. Last year, I was in Chicago. This year, I am celebrating with friends and Beau. We’ll find out if Beau is scared of fireworks…

I have mixed feelings about the Fourth of July. Many Americans like to taut the U.S. as the best country in the world. I do love this country despite the human cesspool currently in office. There are lots of things to love, and a whole bunch of things leading to disappointment and anger.

Like many countries, America’s history is fraught with racism, oppression, destruction, ignorance, slavery, and so much more. We are a great country with some truly wonderful people and things to offer the world, but there are some equally frightening aspects of who we are.

Our present is precarious. We are stripping women of their autonomy and rights. We’re holding children and adults at borders in horrifying conditions so much so people are dying. We elected a terrible person to the highest office in this country. A rapist is sitting on the Supreme Court. Racism is rampant. Flint’s water is still dangerous. College is overpriced. People think vaccines are a scam. Insurance is not for everyone. Oh my God, the list goes on and on and on and on. My heart hurts, and anger is an understatement.

I don’t understand how we could possibly be the greatest country in the world when there are so many people suffering and so many things are going wrong. We are a country full of potential to be great, but we’re not there yet.

Happy Fourth of July. Have fun! Celebrate. Enjoy the day. I will. But don’t let the fanfare make you forget all the things we have done wrong historically and presently.

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Books, NonFiction

Transgender History by Susan Stryker

June 23, 2019June 23, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth a Read Yes
Length 320
Quick Review An overview of the transgender people’s history in the United States from about WWII to present day.

201906161373761393911192186 — Transgender History by Susan Stryker | Red Dress Dress | Straw Purse | Bracelets | Bow | Belt

I’m always hesitant about nonfiction books written by people who don’t personally understand what they are writing about, which is why I picked up Transgender History so enthusiastically. Susan Stryker is a scholar and a transsexual woman. The book is full of insight and history and emotional depth. At the root of this often politically charged topic are people. So often that fact is forgotten. Transgender PEOPLE live lives as full and complicated and emotional as anyone else.

It would be almost impossible to discuss trans* history and rights without having an understanding of key terms and phrases. Stryker takes 45 pages to define many important terms. This sounds super boring, but it was actually very interesting. Some terms are well known but many are not.

Transgender History by Susan Stryker | Red Dress Dress | Belt | Purse | Bow | Bracelets

There is so much information packed into 320 pages. Some of the highlights are the discussions about riots throughout American history and their impact on society and culture. Notably Cooper D-Nuts, Dewey’s, and Compton’s were huge points when several factors came together to create change on some level. The inclusion of excerpts from articles, letters, testimonies, research, and books helps to capture the spirit of the time, provide information from other experts, and give personal stories.

I had always wondered why I heard more about trans women than trans men. Transgender History gave me the answer. Trans men could often disappear into society living as they wanted to. Known as passing. Trans women did not share the same abilities and have been at a higher risk of violence. I also wondered where the unfortunate idea trans people are rapists came from. Sadly, that idea originated at a feminist convention with the trans woman Beth Elliott. As a feminist, this saddens me greatly. I still don’t understand why there are types of feminism which are exclusionary. (Mine is not.)

Transgender History by Susan Stryker | Dress | Purse | Belt | Bracelets | Bow

Fun facts I didn’t know but should have:

Ames was one of a handful of American cities and counties with trans anti-discrimination protections in 2016. Ames is my home town; so proud!
The DSM didn’t depathologize transgender people until the DSM V in 2013
HIV is common in poverty stricken trans communities because of sharing hormone needles.

So many notable trans people are mentioned throughout the pages. Sarah McBride, author of Tomorrow Will Be Different, is mentioned as the first trans person to speak at a televised national convention. Reed Erickson, a transgender male, did so much to further research and science for trans people.

Transgender History is misunderstood if it’s understood at all. There is so much I didn’t know and still don’t know. Stryker does an amazing job educating the reader without making them feel guilty or uneducated. If you are interested in learning about a deeply oppressed community, I highly suggest reading this book.

Memorable Quotes
“When people struggling against an injustice have no hope that anything will ever change, they use their strength to survive; when they think that their actions matter, that same strength becomes a force for positive change.”

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Title: Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution
Author: Susan Stryker
Publisher: Seal Press (Hachette Book Group)
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9781580056908

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Experiences, Travel

Oak Alley Plantation

May 17, 2019September 8, 2019 RaeAnna

I’ve been lazy. I haven’t been keeping up with blog posts like I intend to. So this is about three months after I visited Oak Alley, but better late than never. Also it’s super old. Things don’t change that quickly. The grass has probably been cut, and that’s about it.

Walking in the grass at Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana. | Dress

Roots of a live oak and the big house at Oak Alley Plantation.

Oak Alley is just one of those places. It is absolutely stunning; so much so, it has become iconic. The grounds are an hour outside of New Orleans in Vacherie. Driving between NOLA and Vacherie gives you a good idea of what rural Louisiana looks like. What used to be a running plantation is now a museum with a restaurant and inn serving as a reminder of the American South’s unfortunate history.

Standing in between the rows of live oaks at Oak Alley Plantation. | Dress | Jean Jacket | Sandals

I remember driving passed Oak Alley at fourteen. My family was visiting relatives after Katrina, and we spent a day driving around the countryside outside of New Orleans. It was dusk when we drove by stopping just outside the front gate. The house was lit up from the outside at the end of a path lined by ancient live oak trees. It was magnificent, and a vision I will never forget. It wasn’t until I was in New Orleans for a bachelorette party a few years ago that I actually toured the plantation. The house is beautiful, but the grounds are the truly wonderful aspect. The plantation earned its name from the twenty-eight live oaks lining a walkway up to the front door of the house. It features a guided tour of the “Big House,” a slavery exhibit, a sugar cane exhibit, and more. There is a restaurant and inn on the grounds. The restaurant has some seriously amazing bread pudding. The gift shop also has some amazing pralines. If you’re lucky, you can have some warm and fresh.

View of the big house and the live oaks at Oak Alley Plantation.

Some of the oak trees are almost three hundred years old. The larger branches extend and drop to the ground. The roots are knotty and huge. Spanish moss grows on the trees. When the light hits them just right, it’s what bayou dreams are made of. Movies and pictures will never do it justice.

Roots and live oaks at Oak Alley Plantation.

Oak Alley was a sugar cane plantation built on the suffering of slaves. Sugar cane was known as white gold because of how much it was worth. Growing, harvesting, and refining was back breaking and dangerous. Slaves were bought and sold, so people could have their sugar. In those days, there was rich, then there was sugar cane rich. Oak Alley was the latter. The history goes back almost 200 years, but the live oak trees are even older than that. Walking the grounds is simultaneously enchanting and haunting. It’s difficult to think about how one place can be home to so much beauty and misery. All history is fraught with abuse, but it should never be overlooked. Remembering what really happened is an important part of embracing history.

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Books, NonFiction

Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia

May 5, 2019May 5, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth A Read Hell Yes
Length 544
Quick Review An intense look into the challenges of emmigrating during the mass exodus from Shanghai in the midst of the communist revolution in China of 1949.

Reading the book Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia | Asos Dress

Chinese history – and Asian history for that matter – is so basically covered in the United States. If you want to know about non-white history, you have to educate yourself. It’s Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month; coincidentally, I’ve been reading a lot of books by and about Chinese/Chinese-Americans. Great timing. Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia is a beautiful tribute to the men, women, and children who lived through the exodus from Shanghai.

People were leaving Shanghai in droves during the ‘40s as a reaction to the turmoil going on within the country after the Japanese occupation and the rise of Mao and the communist party. Zia focuses on four people’s lives before, during, and after the exodus in Last Boat Out of Shanghai. Benny, Ho, Bing, and Annua lived very different lives, but they were all affected. Benny was the son of an affluent comprador family. Ho grew up well-off in a large extended family compound. Bing was abandoned, adopted, abandoned, and adopted all during the uproar in China. Annuo grew up with two highly educated and revolutionary parents. Each of these people have their own very interesting tale about struggle and survival. Zia gives them each their own spotlight while intertwining their stories.

Reading Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia in Houston | Asos Dress

I have so much to say about this book, but I would be giving the story away. I have a particular affinity for Annuo because she spent time in Ames, Iowa, and her brother earned a PhD from Iowa State University. Last Boat Out of Shanghai gives an emotional depth to the intense era. China was recovering and reacting from years of difficulty and occupation. Trying to find its way and identity to an ever changing world. Zia begins each person’s story before the communist revolution in their childhoods and follows them through their adolescence and adulthoods after fleeing Shanghai. Their lives began and ended differently, but they all went through the struggle.

I completely consumed this book. I have always had a love for history and the individuals who live and create it. These four people show their extraordinary resilience by surviving. Helen Zia is able to bring a humanity to the stories and history found in Last Boat Out of Shanghai, which was the General Gordon by the way.

Memorable Quotes
A message was sent via a photo “If he was standing, all was well. If he was sitting, things were bad. When he finally sent them a picture, he was lying down.”

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Title: Last Boat Out of Shanghai
Author: Helen Zia
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 9780345522320

Books, NonFiction

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

March 31, 2019 RaeAnna

Worth a Read YES
Length 400
Quick Review Eight pieces previously written by Ta-Nehisi Coates are combined with observations and opinions he has looking back while We Were Eight Years in Power.

*We Were Eight Years in Power* at Oak Alley Plantation | Shirt | Jeans | Shoes | Sunglasses

I am ashamed to say I had not read a Ta-Nehisi Coates book until We Were Eight Years in Power. From the very first page, I was hooked. The majority of Coates’ writing has focused on race in the U.S, and he has become known as a “black writer” for better or worse. Over the course of Obama’s presidency, Coates wrote a great deal. Looking back over that time, he chose eight pieces to document those eight years. Before each, he included addendums, thoughts, opinions, hopes, and more.

From the very first page, I was a little in love with Coates’ style. There is some tongue-in-cheek phrasing throughout We Were Eight Years in Power to subversively emphasize the all too present hypocrisy, blindness, and iniquity within American society. I love reading simultaneously intelligent and accessible works. Coates is like your favorite professor who is really smart but also swears a little. He has a truly remarkable knowledge base spanning classics, science, pop culture references – I absolutely looked up 96.92% of the latter – and everything in between. Reading this was overwhelmingly stimulating in the best kind of way.

One of the most fascinating pieces was “The Case For Reparations.” It was amazing and chilling. Coates brings a light to the haunting realities black Americans live with on a daily basis. Americans (read that as white Americans) need to read it. We cannot be a country divided. To survive, we need to face history. Ruins are not just in Rome, they are all around us. We live in the ruins we created centuries ago. Chicago comes up a great deal throughout We Were Eight Years in Power for good reason. It is a prime example of what we have yet to overcome, “Today Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the country, a fact that reflects assiduous planning.” If we refuse to even acknowledge the reality of Chicago, how can we possibly move forward?

*We Were Eight Years in Power* by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Obama was the first black president. The progress was followed by a giant side step/fall/catastrophe. Trump won the presidency. (Sadly.) Coates is a realist, but there is an optimist underneath. Like many others, Coates did not believe it was possible for Trump to win, but win he did. Coates was wrong. (Sadly.) The optimist helped him believe in America, even though his career has focused on the stubborn and insidious white supremacy rooted in American tradition, society, and legal institutions. Hope helped so many believe Trump was impossible. Fear made it possible.

I love We Were Eight Years in Power. Ta-Nehisi Coates is a master of words and insight. They say the pen is mightier than the sword. His pen is not a sword. It’s a scalpel cutting precisely to dissect society and humanity to see the reality our country faces. As I was reading Coates’ words, I wondered if he ever reads his writing and thinks ‘damn, I am a magician with words.’

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*By the way, I decided to take the pictures for this book in front of slaves’ quarters at Oak Alley Plantation. Our history and current success is due to the thousands and thousands of people who were never considered people at all. They were stolen from their homes, owned, beaten, raped, murdered, and more. America needs to start recognizing history as it happened not how it has been taught or recorded for generations.

Memorable Quotes
“All my life I had watched women support the dreams of men, hand over their own dreams to men, only to wonder, in later years, whether it was all worth it.”
“America had a biography, and in that biography, the shackling of black people – slaves and free – featured prominently.”
“White people are, in some profound way, trapped; it took generations to make them white, and it will take more to unmake them.”
“I would like to believe in God. I simply can’t.”
“The essence of American racism is disrespect.”

Title: We Were Eight Years in Power; An American Tragedy
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Publisher: One World (Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9780399590573