Diamond Ruby

Sometimes a reader just finds a great book. When this happens to me, I handle it with care, savour the words, the pages, the chapters. I don't read too quickly, even though I want to know what happens. I hold off that final page as long as I can. Joseph Wallace's Diamond Ruby is such a book. It is the story of a young girl in early 1900's New York City whose life ends as she knows it. No, she doesn't die, but her family is torn to bits with the flu epidemic and a subway disaster.

She is the only one to care for her very young nieces and she is just thirteen. Wallace weaves Ruby's personal coming of age into the growth of the city through the twenties. Organized crime, gangsters, and weak-willed adults are juxtaposed to the better side of Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, as well as a blind girl who lost her great diving career along with her sight. Diamond Ruby can pitch like no one else. Her odd arms which have earned her the 'monkey-girl' moniker prove her salvation and that of her nieces.
Apparently Wallace has only written non-fiction before but he writes this story, based on a real person, Jackie Mitchell, like a pro. I was enthralled from the get-go, feeling my eyes stretch wider and wider from the first pages. I especially liked the amazing plot details in the first part of the book. Not for Wallace working towards crisis after crisis until, finally, the climax. He catches the reader immediately through Ruby's 7-year-old point of view of excruciating world events. I will be looking for this author's next fiction book.

Impulsive Actions

Today I am thinking about following impulses and what might be the results of doing that. We are mostly programmed to follow the rules, do what we're told, and take the road most traveled. But what might be the results of listening to our inner voices?

Well I know my inner voice sometimes tells me to eat fattening things and I have no trouble listening to that! I can step out of my plan quite easily and eat a few Neilsen's rosebuds or a chocolate chip yogurt cone. That circulating e-mail about the 80-year-old woman who orders dessert every time she eats out really resonates with me. I mean, what if this was my last day and I passed on something really scrumptious, like Belgian truffles?

If I can have that attitude towards food, the question arises, why not toward exciting and interesting things to do in my life? So for today I am going to dream and dream and then go one step further--let those dreams seep into real life. I'm going to listen to my impulses and read them like a roadmap. They will be like my Tom-Tom lady's voice telling me the next turn and recalculating when I make a mistake or go down the wrong road. Oh, wait a minute. There is no wrong road. She just redirects me. For today that's what my inner voice will do. Oops, she's calling me to get up and leave my computer......

How Cute Are These?

I am feeling lonely for my little granddaughter, Chelsea, so Beth is good at sending pictures and calling often. Chelsea got new sandals and loves them so much she even wanted to wear them to bed for her nap! I guess I'll be learning about Dora now, eh?


Hopefully Beth's family will get east here soon as we're missing them all. I'm sending secret messages out to the universe to hurry up the process.