Brianna Lind
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Days, Years, and Millenia: Organizing Layers of History Into a Single Narrative

8/29/2020

1 Comment

 
Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David
By Lawrence Wright
​368 pp. Knopf, 2014
Picture
The Carter Presidential Library is only a few minutes from downtown Atlanta, yet feels a world away from the bustling metropolitan area. The museum is situated on thirty acres of manicured lawns, colorful flowerbeds and tree-lined walkways. There is a fountain, a duck pond, winding paths, and benches tucked under trees. I visited the museum in the summer of 2015, shortly after I finished reading Lawrence Wright’s Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David.

As you wander through the museum, you pass a series of exhibits on everything from the Panama Canal Treaty to the Carter White House’s diplomatic relationship with China. (If you can't make it to Atlanta, you can still take a virtual tour inside the Carter Presidential Museum.) And then, just past a sparkly silver dress of First Lady Rosalynn Carter’s, the blue carpet shifts to a hardwood floor, the passage narrows, and the ambient colors become bright and woodsy. The greens and browns dramatically contrast with a large blue Star of David that takes up much of the left wall. Across from it is the large outline of a rustic cabin. You have entered Camp David.
​Photos line the walls of the twisty narrow exhibit, showing the president and first lady with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, their wives, and various aids and advisors—shaking hands, relaxing on a deck in wooden lawn chairs, playing chess, deep in though late at night, walking along wooded paths, and with feet up on coffee tables. They called it “cabin-to-cabin diplomacy.” Despite many obstacles, stand-stills, and disagreements, and several threats of failure, Jimmy Carter’s long-dreamed peace talks between Egypt and Israel succeeded. Although they obviously did not solve all the region’s problems, the tenuous peace signed on 17 September 1978 still holds. It was the first agreement between Israel and an Arab state, and it resulted in Nobel Peace Prizes for Sadat and Begin (but not for Carter).

Read More
1 Comment

How to Art if You Have Never Arted Before

3/21/2020

2 Comments

 
In 2015, when my first daughter was born, I made the choice to become a stay-at-home parent. In 2017, I had twins. Five years later, my oldest was in her final year of preschool and my twins had just started preschool. I optimistically and with great hope and excitement launched this website and blog. My lifelong goal to be a full-time parent who was also a freelance writer and independent historian was finally happening. Then, about a month later: COVID-19.

I set my nascent work aside, and I’m back to being a stay-at-home parent for the foreseeable future. Like all of you, I feel like I’ve been swept off my feet. I feel frustrated and cheated and exhausted. But unlike many of you, I have five years of experience as a full-time stay-at-home parent to fall back on. My kids and I have a routine we were able to slip back into without them really noticing any difference at all. I realize my privilege to not have to juggle a full-time job with full-time childcare. I realize my privilege to not feel completely overwhelmed by having to figure out how to take care of my kids all day long with no warning and no choice. So for now, I am back to being home with these three little goofballs.
Picture
A couple of days ago, a friend who is finding herself home with her kids for the first time sent out a plea via Facebook for what art supplies she should get for her preschooler. And I realized I could help. So I sent her an email with some supplies and ideas for projects that I’ve found work well for the 2-5ish-year-old crowd. She posted to Facebook that I should share that list more broadly, as many “daycare parents” like her were “caught in the headlights.” There were comments from some of her other Facebook friends asking me for that list, as well.

I can’t help everyone with much right now, but I can help parents of young kids who feel helpless and overwhelmed know what art supplies they should order and from where. I can help them with some simple project ideas. And I can help them with scheduling tricks to survive the day. I have always loved doing arts with my kids, and it turns out I have lots of idea, photos, and projects stocked up that I can pass on to my friends.
Picture

Read More
2 Comments

"Mommy, are any dinosaurs still around?"

2/7/2020

2 Comments

 
My kids love to watch "Elmo’s World." In one of their favorite episodes a little girl visits the American Museum of Natural History to look at the dinosaurs. She explains that "scientists called 'paleontologists' dig up the fossils of dinosaur bones and they put together skeletons which show how big they were!" The little girl plays with a toy skeleton, which she puts together "just like PALEONTOLOGISTS do!" She grins up to her mom, "Maybe I’ll be a paleontologist someday!" Fuzzy red Elmo comes back to wonder, "Where can Elmo learn more about paleontologists?" Why, the Dinosaur Channel of course!

I let my kids watch cartoons while I cook dinner, and this was the point in the episode when one day I let the food sizzle and popped my head into their field of vision. "Did you know I was—am—a paleontologist?" I asked. Oh the look of confused disenchantment on their sweet little faces! Paleontologists are supposed to be cool and exciting and amazing, but I’m just… their mom!

"Did you study dinosaurs?" Marie asked.

"Nope, I studied tiny little animals that live in the ocean, so small you need a microscope to see them! They’re called foraminifera. Can you say that?"

"For. A. Min. If. Era," three little voices dutifully piped back.
​
Unimpressed, they asked me to turn Elmo back on.
Thad Zajdowicz, 2009. Sue the T. Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Ernst Haeckel, 1904. Illustration of foraminifera.
But the information must have settled somewhere in Marie’s brain because a few weeks later she asked me what the little animals were called, the ones that lived in the ocean and you needed a periscope to see.

"Microscope?"

"Yes. What are they called?"

"Foraminifera. But we call them forams for short."

"Did they also die at the same time as the dinosaurs?"

"Well, some did. Some died a long time before the dinosaurs, and some are still around."

"Mommy, are there still some dinosaurs around?"

This is the question I have been waiting for! For Christmas I got Nick a t-shirt that’s a riff on the classic monkey-to-man image, but this shirt shows evolution from a Tyrannosaurus Rex to a chicken. Yes it’s true: birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Read More
2 Comments

Big Fish in a Big Pond: Why We Should All Care About the Great Lakes

1/20/2020

0 Comments

 
​Book Review
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes
By Dan Egan
384 pp. W.W. Norton & Company, 2017
Picture
​In 2012, journalist Dan Egan, his wife, and their four children moved to New York City for a year so he could pursue a fellowship at Columbia University. Part of the program was to write a book proposal. "There were sixteen students in the classroom," he recalled several years later. "I don't think any of them were from the Great Lakes Basin. There was a lot of discussion about what we were pursuing, and every time I started telling Great Lakes stories, they just became rapt. It was really eye-opening to me, because of what we take for granted here [in the midwest]—the story of the Great Lakes."

​By that point he had been reporting on the Great Lakes for nearly a decade for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He imagined his various stories, on everything from invasive species to algal blooms, and "they seemed to stack up like chapters." He hadn't planned to actually write the book—just fulfill his course requirement—but he got good feedback from his peers and professors. "Basically," Egan said, his professor told him he would be "crazy not to harvest a decade's worth of reporting and put it all between two covers. It was good advice."

​A lifetime of fishing on the lakes—and fifteen years reporting on the lakes—makes Egan a knowledgeable and passionate guide to a wondrous and complex fresh-water system. He grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and lives in Milwaukee. As a child he vacationed with his grandparents on the Door Peninsula, swimming in the clean waters north of industrialized Green Bay. His expertise runs far beyond childhood fancy, however. His work on the Great Lakes has made him a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting, first in 2010 for writing on how invasive species have disrupted the ecosystem and economy of the Great Lakes, and again in 2013 for reporting on efforts to keep new invasive species—especially Asian carp—out of the lakes. Both of these topics make up the bulk of his book. Egan's knowledge of the subject is apparent in the clarity with which he explains the various environmental, economic, social, political, and historic factors at play.


Read More
0 Comments

My Favorite Books of 2019

1/6/2020

1 Comment

 
At the beginning of 2020, the twins turned 3 and Marie turned 5. I feel as though I'm finally coming out of the tunnel I've been in ever since the midwife said, "wait a second, I think it might be twins?" My mind has woken up and I am hungry for all the books! Here are my favorite books I read in 2019. All the books link to an assortment of independent bookstores around the United States.
1 Comment

    Archives

    February 2020
    January 2020

    Categories

    All
    Book Reviews
    Questions From My Kids

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.