Mary Ann Hastings

Fun Read, Deep Life Lessons Learned

Revisado: 01-26-25

Betsy Pepine’s smooth reading style makes this an easy, entertaining listen. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is just another formulaic “how to whatever the trending words are in five easy steps”.
Through sharing her own experiences of differing parental expectations, failed marriage, single parent child rearing and learning about her own “boxes”, Pepine provides useful insight and tools to understand labels and unsaid expectations so that we can break free of our own “boxes“ and live true to our authentic selves.

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Helpful in Individualizing Blindness

Revisado: 02-08-24

As a sighted person with the experience of having worked for 9 years with people who were bind, I most appreciated Leland’s approach to writing this book. He included both the pain and triumphs he experienced as someone who was progressively becoming more blind while also fully recounting the experiences and attitude changes other people who were blind had, as either “good” or “bad”, a “right” or “wrong” way of being blind.
I was also struck by how much blindness history I didn’t know I didn’t know. When I accepted the job as a case worker for a state blindness agency, I made a point of reading and watching films about every aspect of blindness I could get my hands on. Leland’s work, however, has pointed out to me that one never can know what one doesn’t know.
The book is enlightening, challenging and entertaining.

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Stunning description of the slave experience

Revisado: 07-16-23

The reach of the greed that drives man’s inhumanity to man is stunningly depicted in this book. Canada, the destination of the US Underground Railroad, was as culpable as American white man in its treatment of both blacks and indigenous peoples.
Within the context of the horror, Thomas brilliantly depicts the resilience and resourcefulness of people of color who have the reverence for the land and freedom that is so sorely lacking in white cultures.
Great job of all of the narrators in all aspects of the read. I’m glad I chose to listen to this book rather than to read it; truly an immersive experience.

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Worth the consideration

Revisado: 07-11-23

As someone who is not only not interested in fashion, but also quite turned off by all of its trappings, I would never have thought to read this book on my own. However, I caught the tail end of an interview of Aurora James on a Sunday morning NPR program.
I was intrigued by what Aurora said about the stereotyped ideas people had about doing business in Africa with African artists. My husband and I have faced similarly biased remarks about our work in the Yucatan with the Maya.
I was also delighted when I realized that I could listen to it on Audible. Although James’ voice isn’t stellar, her passion in her story’s telling and her quick mind more than make up for the lack of voice quality. I also appreciated the fiscal lessons I learned about scaling up a successful business.

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Reciprocity is a Circle not a Line

Revisado: 06-26-23

Kimmerer interweaves the complexities of science with a beautifully powerful story of the Potowatomi people. Without preaching or finger wagging, she demonstrates how our orientation to “dominion of the earth” and unbridled consumption has contributed to the destruction our planet. We've bought into the idea that somehow scientists know the workings of the natural world better than the peoples who lived in reciprocity with Grandmother Earth for thousands of years before the white man arrived. Kimmerer calls us to do better. Not just for the survival of our Mother Earth but for the restoration of our very souls and spirits. Her telling of the ways of her people as they communicated with wind, rain and yes, rocks, made for a such a powerful spiritual experience I felt I “had church” with each listen.

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Beautifully Nuancing Both Sides

Revisado: 06-11-23

In all of its twists and turns in storyline, The Seed Keeper” presents an unvarnished yet compassionate view of the tragic loss of family, community and homeland by the Dakota peoples at the hands of the white “settlers”.
Wilson exposes and explains the underlying resentment still underneath the surface of both groups in a way that I, as the reader, hadn’t heretofore thought much about.
The tough decisions with unknowable consequences made by farmers as chemical agra-businesses roll over small family farms with the same impunity with which the government and whites stole Indigenous lands provides a tensely moving backdrop for the Seed Keeper as she finds her way back to her people’s ways.

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Turned My World Upside Down Again

Revisado: 06-07-23

Prechtel turned my ideas of grief and praise upside down in much the same way Patty Krawec did in Becoming Kin when she talked about the tendency of the non-indigenous to want a system or means of quantifying that which is in quantifiable.
Coupled with the cadence with which he reads, it makes for a great meditative work. I had to stop over and over again and just sit with the power of his words.

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Thank you for turning my world upside down!

Revisado: 01-05-23

Without the least bit of self righteousness Krawec remarkably takes the listener on a journey of self-examination and discovery related to what it means to become kin and how to get there. The first step? Stop and listen.
Throughout my AP senior English class fifty years ago, we discussed “man’s inhumanity to man” as exemplified in The Grapes of Wrath, never touching on the inhumanity in the Joad family’s sense of entitlement to the land “because grandpa had killed Indians for it.” I will do better in my listening for ways in which I can do better.

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Bass puts words to my heart thoughts

Revisado: 01-01-23

The perspective of a horizontal rather than a vertical God and worship forms will likely resonate with many who have given up on organized religion but not on living into the meaning of “God with us”.
Listening to Grounded inspired me to write this poem going into the new year:
Happy Through The Years
T’was not just
a twist of fate
Nor was it
a moment too late
that into the earth rife with darkness and sin
The Light of the World
beamed right in.
Love with a face
Walking grace
Inviting all
into God’s embrace.
May I remember
beyond the confettied
end to December
Through the resolutions broken
that love is not
a one-and-done token.
Kind words just
to loved ones spoken
But to be lived into
all the year through.
For happy-all-my-days
in all my life’s ways
there’s the Big Ask
to love my enemies, too.
Loving my way into
2023 Year New
Hoping that you
in joy
will, too.

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Nice to have met you, Samuel Adams!

Revisado: 11-22-22

Great backstory to the American Revolution I never knew. I especially liked the glimpses of the character of Samuel Adam’s wife and many more women who played an important role in the course of action the men ultimately took.

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