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If everyone claims to be unique, what good is that? When everyone is unique then no one is unique, to paraphrase my favorite movie quote.

If you want to be unique, don’t claim to be unique, as that will just lump you into the crowd. Go accomplish something. No one ever got labeled as “unique” by doing nothing.

And these stick figures are not using the term “snowflake” in a pejorative sense that is common these days. It just happens to be the object that is most associated with uniqueness.

This review is of five books but in two series.

First up: The Great Peach Experiment series by Erin Soderberg Downing

This has two books:
When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Peach Pie and
The Peach Pit

The first book was okay. The second book was better in some ways and worse in others. To make my life easier, I’m just going to call the first book the Peach Pie book and the second book the Peach Pit book.

The Peach Pie book was a little slow. It was fun to see the small towns that the author put in the book, including some in my area. It’s not every day that a town you know gets put into a book like this. But other than that fun tidbit, it didn’t exactly capture my attention. It wasn’t bad, and nothing offensive, so there are worse ways to spend you time.

Which brings me to the Peach Pit book. There was a little more going on in this book, so it was a little better in that regard. But it has a nod to – how shall I say it – alternative lifestyles, so it is worse in that regard.

It seems my overall rating is going to be one sideways thumb.

Last up: The Storm Keeper’s Island series by Catherine Doyle

This has three books:
The Storm Keeper’s Island, The Lost Tide Warriors, and
The Storm Keeper’s Battle

The series was written as a series – i.e. when the first book ends it is not the end of the story so you can’t just enjoy the one book. In general, I dislike that trend, but I won’t count that too much against this series.

This series was certainly better for me than the Peach bilogy, but it didn’t capture my attention fully the way some books do. There was nothing bad or wrong with the books, although my kids did think it was a Harry Potter knockoff when I started describing the story to them.

Spoiler Alert
I told them it’s about a boy who doesn’t know he’s a wizard, and then he has to learn to become one and handle the magic he didn’t know was in him. And they asked a couple follow up questions, and for each one they asked, the answer could fit for either this book or Harry Potter. Sadly, I can’t remember any of them, and all the questions I could think of now in lieu of their questions do not apply to both sets of books.

End Spoiler Alert

Overall, I’d say one thumb’s up. If you need a fill a wintry weekend or something, you could do worse.

That’s it for this review. More book reviews coming up later this year.

Why does the woman change her last name when she marries? I in general like to see the big picture and how things all fit together and this is a case where that works.

People just blame traditional patriarchy, but there’s more to it than that. Let’s back up and look at more than just the people involved as husband and wife.

Big picture: what is marriage supposed to represent?

Marriage represents the relationship between God and the Church. The best example is in Ephesians chapter 5. Rather than trying to establish this statement, I’m just going to proceed as if we all agree that’s true – Jesus is the groom and the Church is the bride. Marriage is a physical representation of this spiritual concept.

If you look at what happens in the spiritual union, what happens when people believe? They then call themselves a Christian. In other words, they take the name of the groom. They are now identified as belonging to Him.

It also has implications for why marriage should not be anything other than one man and one woman. The spiritual meaning of two men would be saying that people are the same level as God, and the spiritual meaning of two women would be saying that there is no God.

Another thing: why does the man propose to the woman? I don’t know that it was meant to tie in spiritually, but it does fit in nicely, as God calls people to Him.

Last note on this topic: my belief is this also shows us that there is no life outside of Earth. Some people spend a lot of time and resources looking for intelligent life out in the universe, but that would not fit the picture that marriage shows of one God and one people.

With a variety of travels during this summer that recently concluded, I was able to read some books.

First up: The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly

This book was written about 100 years ago, and it’s interesting to note how the story seems simpler. I haven’t figured out if it’s the choice of words, the storyline itself, or what, but what would have been a middle-grade book 100 years ago now seems more suited to younger elementary. I couldn’t find anything definitive about the target audience, so I don’t know specifically that it was intended for a slightly older audience, but the subject matter leads me to believe that it was.

Also of note: the main characters are driven from their land in the Ukraine by Russian forces, so it’s a timely topic for today too. The setting is the 15th century, so it, sadly, seems like a story that’s always relevant.

The book is fine, I’d recommend it for whatever the book equivalent of a PG movie rating is.

Next up: Mighty Jack and Zita by Ben Hatke

I thought I had already mentioned these books in this blog before, but it seems that I have not. This is the 3rd book in the Mighty Jack series, but it’s a crossover that brings in the Zita the Spacegirl story, so it’s also the 4th book in the Zita the Spacegirl series.

I have read some of the Zita books and all the Might Jack books, and they’re good. They are graphic novels, so they go quickly. That’s actually the main downside – I wish they lasted longer. But the story is engaging and fun.

Last up: The Tales of Alvin Maker by Orson Scott Card

There are 6 books in this series, but I’m just showing the cover for the first one.

I found this series in a roundabout manner – I read the short story The Yazoo Queen and it piqued my interest enough that I checked out Seventh Son from the library.

Note that The Yazoo Queen takes place in the middle of the series, so if you don’t like spoilers then consider it book 5 and a half and read it then.

But this series suffers from the same thing I wrote about in my last review, and it’s a flaw that OSC shares with Ryan Reynolds – things are done well but they add just enough bad/risque/offensive material so that I can’t recommend it.

In the first book, there were just a couple sentences that were a problem. But the third book (Prentice Alvin) turned up the raunchiness. Why did he feel the need to have the plantation owner do that? And tell us all about it? It doesn’t get too graphic, but you definitely understand what the bad guy is doing bad.

Overall, well-written good story but with awkward parts about how badly men can behave. Some would argue that’s what life is like. But when I’m reading I want a story that’s better than life – it’s not a very good escape otherwise. There can be bad guys in the story, doing bad things, but it doesn’t have to bring down the story – it depends on both the nature of the immorality and how it’s presented. In this case, I felt it detracted from the story. Read at your own risk.

That’s it for this review. More book reviews coming up probably next year.

Summer is in full swing in Michigan, which for me means two things: black raspberries and fireflies.

First: Black Raspberries

The black raspberries that I associate with summer are the wild type. I don’t know that I’ve had a cultivated variety of black raspberry. But the kind that grow like weeds around here are what I grew up with.

The only problem with them is that they’re small and it takes a lot of picking to get not much of a serving.

But it is the taste of summer.

And second: Fireflies

The fireflies that I associate with summer are the wild type. I don’t know that I’ve seen a tamed variety of firefly. But the kind that grow around here are what I grew up with.

Even though they’re not tame, they don’t really care about people, so you can easily catch them.

But after a couple of seconds, they realize need to be flying again so they take off.

And here are some shots of fireflies in action. I couldn’t persuade my iPhone to keep the shutter open longer, so I had to click whenever I saw a firefly start to glow. Look for the brighter streaks in each photo, streaks because fireflies like to move upwards while they’re glowing.

Both good things, but it seems that the peak of black raspberry and firefly season is also the peak of mosquito season.

Based on recent events involving power tools in the barn not working because critters chewed on the cords, today I am listing for you the worst animals to have on your property.

These are listed in order, with the first animal being the worst (most annoying).

• Woodchuck : They seem to have a knack for knowing which items near them are the most important to humans and then damaging them. Such as ignoring the cheaper 25′ extension cord and chewing through only the 100′ extension cord. And digging under the concrete slab floor. And digging behind the car tire so the car gets stuck when I try to move it and I have to get another vehicle to pull it out of the very small ditch. And so on.
• Deer : Deer are very damaging, but only to plants. Especially fruit trees. They are high on this list because their physical range requires so much work to defend against. You can’t just put up any old fence, it has to be high and sturdy.
• Chipmunk : These little guys like to dig. Whether it’s under my brick walkway or through the flowers I just planted, they get just about everywhere. I expect about a 10% loss of any flowers planted because chipmunks can’t help but go through new dirt (they seem attracted to freshly-dug dirt) and they don’t put back any roots they may unearth in the process.
• Raccoon : These are not as annoying as chipmunks – although it was a close call – because they are easier to get. Chipmunks are too small and fast. Raccoons do damage property, but there are fewer of them and they are large and slow. If I kept animals, such as chickens, I would put raccoons above chipmunks, since I know they go after small farmyard animals.
• Canada Goose : Noisy and messy and mean. They don’t specifically damage property like the critters I’ve listed so far, but they could damage you if you let them get settled and they start feeling territorial.
• Mouse : Messy, and they chew holes in things. Not a big deal, except we have a corn stove. I have to keep a tight lid on the corn storage, otherwise we end up finding little stores of corn in weird places, like in someone’s hockey skate that apparently looked inviting to a mouse to use as his pantry.

Note that this list is tailored to the Midwest. I’m sure there are worse things to have milling about the grounds in other places, such as mountain lions or chimpanzees.

Also note that I do not mind having skunks around at all. They avoid people and stay away from my stuff. I’ve never had a problem with them. I’ve run into skunks 3 times in my life, and each time the skunk had skedaddled out of sight by the time I realized it was a skunk and not a large cat.

This is your annual reminder that the term “summer solstice” means “the solstice that occurs during summer”, not “the start of summer”.

It is an astronomical term having to do with the position of the sun relative to the earth, and while it does affect the seasons, it is incorrect to assign June 21 as the start of summer.

It has felt like summer for a few weeks already. What is summer? What is any season? A season is a grouping of days with similar weather features. For example, winter: temperatures are low, plants are dormant. And fall: temperatures decrease, plants lose their foliage. And spring: temperatures increase, plants grow their foliage. And summer: temperatures are high, plants are fruiting/seeding.

From the viewpoint of an observer with no calendar, how would he know when spring ends and summer begins? It’s a fairly slow transition with no defined border, so people have tried to assign that border. But the summer solstice is the wrong border.

The summer solstice has historically had a weather-related association. Think back to the time of Shakespeare. I would hope that you, dear reader, would recall the title of one of his plays (no expectation that you’ll know the plot or characters, just the title): A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When, historically, was the day of the year that was called “midsummer”? The day with the most daylight, of course. A lot of European countries still celebrate Midsummer in late June.

Anyway, my preferred time for summer is the 3-month block of June, July, and August. An acceptable alternative answer is Memorial Day to Labor Day, or perhaps from the first 80-degree day to the first 40-degree day after that, or perhaps from when the first rose bloom appears to when the chrysanthemums start blooming.