The Last Tribe

by Brad Manuel, narrated by Scott Brick

I just finished reading The Last Tribe. I enjoyed the story but I found all the Biblical parallels trite. They were so blatant. The disease that killed the world was called "The Rapture." The pandemic paralleled Noah's flood story and in the end the survivors and their bull, cows, goats, pigs and chickens boarded an airplane and flew off to paradise to start repopulating the earth. At least the story was not preachy.The trite stuff aside, I did enjoy the story. It was not depressing. It was not a question of how many survivors can we kill off with as much gory detail as possible. This is not saying that there was no gore at all but that it was, shall we say, tastefully done. This not saying that there were no bad guys either because there were a few who got what they deserved, as should all bad guys who aren't willing to change their ways. 

 It was good people doing what they had to do when they had to do it and doing it without whining and complaining. I actually enjoyed the details of what they did to survive and to get themselves to the rendezvous point. The book was  thought-provoking. What would you do were you in a similar situation? Would you have the skills to survive? Could you find the inner-strength to carry on?  

Three stars for telling a readable post-apocalyptic story that was a bit more believable than zombies, aliens and rampaging hordes. Four and a half stars to narrator Scott Brick, who was nominated for a Audie award for this book.

The New Reality, The Non-pandemic Edition

How little I could have imagined just how much my life would change since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and just how little of it would have anything to with the virus and the attempts to stop its spread.

Yes, the virus completely changed our much anticipated travel plans in celebration of our 45^th anniversary but it does not change the fact that we have been together for more than 45 years and have gotten through some pretty tough times. So what if we could not celebrate the big day with a big trip or a fancy dinner out or even a relaxing Sunday brunch with our children. We are together and that whats counts.

The pandemic, however, has nothing to do with the other surprising changes in my life over the past few months.

A number of years ago, I started taking watercolor class at the local Art Museum. Over dinner one night, while talking about a photography class I was taking, my new neighbor Peg said she always wanted to try watercolor. I said, “Let's do it!” and we signed up. While it didn't quite grab Peg the way she had hoped, I was hooked. My teacher, Bill, took a bit of getting used to. His flowery language was not in the least politically correct but it did not take me long to learn that his technical understanding of color and technique, his firm grounding in art history, his ability to understand that he was teaching hobbyists who just liked spending time painting made him the perfect teacher for me. I have often said that I paint for my own amazement. Classes were good for me. I got out of the house. I talked with people.

In January, Bill, whose health is not the greatest, had a fall in his apartment and he was unable to teach. A substitute was found and the class continued but she was not very good working with gray haired hobbyists after her years of college students and future possible professionals. Half the class quit and those of us who stayed basically ignored her; she was just the babysitter so that we could spend three hours in the studio. She wasn't very good at watercolor techniques and did not understand color the way Bill did. She did want to talk to us about “painting what you see.” She could not get past the fact that some of us were content to trace our work onto the paper; Bill never cared one way or another how we prepped for starting a painting. He just wanted us to get to the painting part.

Over the month or so that the class actually met, it became obvious that to all of us that we must prepare for painting without Bill; that we must open ourselves up to the idea that we would have to get used to a new teachers. Then Covid-19 became pandemic and the world shut down. Art classes were canceled and while WAM did start offering classes online, the idea did not grab me and I have not signed up for classes; maybe if Bill had been one of the teachers, I would have. I am waiting for studio classes to resume and then hoping that I can find a new watercolor guru or maybe taking some drawing classes.

In the meantime, I have tried to paint on my own but it hasn't worked very well. The classroom gives me discipline and structure –and it gets me out of the house and among people. At this point, there is no painting in my life and I don't know if there will be once studio classes resume. But I will try.

Another big part of my life is reading. A few years ago I found a website called GoodReads, where I could catalog my books, write reviews and chat with other members about books. It was so-so and people could be nasty. My reading tastes are eclectic and it was hard to find people who were talking about the authors I enjoyed reading. Then they were sold to Amazon and the atmosphere changed even more; it was time to find a new home. I found BookLikes, a start up based in Poland, and it has been my bookish home for the past 6 or 7 years. I have made bookish friends. We play bookish games. We read books together. We read each other's blogs and comment on them. It has been a very kind and supportive community (something GR was not; perhaps because it was too big). However, around 2016 the owners of the website stopped managing the website. One of them became ill and they could not devote the needed time to the website. In the intervening years, the website has been falling apart slowly but surely. While the volunteer librarians could take care of certain functions, they could not fix software problems and they could not manage membership. The website has now become a home for spammers. Web-pages don't load properly and they take forever when they do. Sometimes the spammer activity is so high that legitimate members cannot even connect to the website.

There has been some attempt among the members to relocate the community but there is no bookish website that offers the same features that have allowed us to create the community in the first place. While I have not shared the comment with my bookish buddies, I remember my father talking about chaos theory and entropy and that you can never re-create the exact same circumstances. You can't make America great again; you can only make it great in a different way. The same with the BookLikes experience. It is not portable; chaos theory says it isn't. The new Booklikes, perforce, will be different.

I have spent the past few months preparing for the BL-pocalypse (and blogging about it while I did). I moved my book catalog to LibraryThing and my audiobook catalog to a spreadsheet. I copied the contents of my BL blog to a doc file. I have started a freestanding bookish blog. I have found the BL Outposts on GoodReads and LibraryThing and started following the conversations there but it is not the same. I have friended my BL friends and where possible set up RSS feeds for their blogs; following the websites that cannot be followed by RSS will take some effort. When BookLikes grinds to halt – and grind it will, probably in the very near future -- I will be ready for it. I won't be very happy about it but I will be ready. I won't stop reading but I will miss my bookish friends and the community and the fun and games.