Day #2 of the 60 Days of Gratitude Meme

The prompt is What Technology are you most grateful for?

The computer that I'm typing on at the moment.

History of Computers - a Brief Timeline

( timeline of the computers up to the Macbook Pro )

My uncle John was involved in the creation of the first computers and the early internet in the 1950s through 1980s.

I'm thankful for:

1. Spellcheck - since I suck at spelling
2. Connections with others who'd I'd never have met
3. Easy access to fans of shows and things I've enjoyed over the years
4. The ability to work remotely from home during a pandemic
5. The ability to write, edit and self-publish a novel remotely
6. Email
7. Ability to order things online
8. Ability to apply for an absentee ballot and have it sent to me, and have its progress tracked.
9. Ability to chat and do zoom worship services and bible study along with MS Teams meetings, without having to meet in person
10. The ability to watch videos, read webcomics, check the weather and have access to information around the world.

Rest of the days are HERE.

Day #6 of the 30 Day Book Challenge

The prompt is A book published by someone under 30 . [It was either that or a book published this year (note not read this year - published this year.)]

You can do either one I don't care.

Mine?

The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu. The novel was published in 2012, when the author was 25 years of age.

The Author:
Shani Boianjiu was born in Jerusalem in 1987 and grew up in the Galilee. She served in the Israeli Defense Forces for two years. She graduated from Harvard in 2011. Her debut novel has been published or will soon be published in 23 countries. It has been longlisted for the UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and selected as one of the ten best fiction titles of 2012 by the Wall Street Journal. She is the youngest recipient ever of the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35 award. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Zoetrope, Vice, the Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, Dazed and Confused, the Guardian and NPR.Com. She lives in Israel.

Synopsis of the book:

Yael, Avishag, and Lea grow up together in a tiny, dusty Israeli village, attending a high school made up of caravan classrooms, passing notes to each other to alleviate the universal boredom of teenage life. When they are conscripted into the army, their lives change in unpredictable ways, influencing the women they become and the friendship that they struggle to sustain. Yael trains marksmen and flirts with boys. Avishag stands guard, watching refugees throw themselves at barbed-wire fences. Lea, posted at a checkpoint, imagines the stories behind the familiar faces that pass by her day after day. They gossip about boys and whisper of an ever more violent world just beyond view. They drill, constantly, for a moment that may never come. They live inside that single, intense second just before danger erupts.
In a relentlessly energetic and arresting voice marked by humor and fierce intelligence, Shani Boianjiu creates an unforgettably intense world, capturing that unique time in a young woman's life when a single moment can change everything.

The book gives an inside account of what it is to be constantly at war, to be in constant conflict. The boredom and the devastation of it. It haunted me long after I read it in 2013.