Year: 2026

I don’t like politics, but …

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By Ande Jacobson

I don’t like politics, but I have voted in every election since I turned 18 because I see it as my civic duty as an American to not only vote, but do so responsibly.

I don’t like politics, but I study the issues to understand how they affect us all and where our representation stands.

I don’t like politics, but I studied US history and civics in high school when they were still required courses, so I understand how our government is supposed to work. I even went through the citizenship study questions for fun to test my knowledge. Sadly, the vast majority of native-born adults couldn’t pass the citizenship test today which randomly draws 20 US history and civics questions from the 128 study questions. A score of 60% (12/20) or better is required to pass. Our government’s political structure is there to truly make a positive difference for the country and the world if we work together to make it happen. Continue reading →

Taxes are not a bad thing

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By Ande Jacobson

There’s a serious misconception driven by decades of GOP propaganda regarding taxes. While there is a group of pro-business/anti-regulation Republicans who see tax cuts as the cure all solution to what ails us, the vast majority of Americans don’t see tax cuts and elimination of all regulations (or protections) as a positive thing. People understand that the government services they need have costs that we all must share. What upsets the vast majority of people is that the morbidly wealthy and corporations keep finding ways to avoid paying their fair share. Additionally, the Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump administrations have seriously hurt the vast majority of Americans with their blatant market manipulation and tax cuts while at the same time creating the most extreme wealth gap in American history. It’s not that the country lacks wealth. It’s that under modern Republican administrations wealth has been systematically been moved from the lower 90% of the population and concentrated at the top 1% at the expense of the services that we all need since around 1981. The result has been the destruction of the middle class and the creation of a small group of billionaires who have benefited. Continue reading →

Quiet can be deceptive

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By Ande Jacobson

Sworn to Silence is the first book in Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series and was first released in 2009. Kate is the chief of police in the quaint, fictional Ohio town of Painters Mill, a small, rural community. About a third of the town’s residents are Amish, and the rest are what the Amish refer to as English, or non-Amish. They had coexisted for centuries until a series of brutal murders occurred. Since that time, the Amish and the police suffer from mutual suspicion. The killer wasn’t caught, but eventually life went on, until, sixteen years later at the time of the current story the killings begin anew with the same signature. A lot changed in that time. For one thing, Kate lived through the first killing spree and has since harbored a secret. Although most Amish children commit to their church and community when they reach 18, Kate took a different path. Continue reading →

Nobody should have to settle for being less than

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By Ande Jacobson

I had a disturbing discussion with a good friend the other day. We got into a discussion about gay and trans rights. While neither of us are gay or trans, we know and love people who are and support a person’s right to be who they are. That said, my friend talked about the past when people who were gay or trans lived their lives as they could and kept their views and actions that went counter to what was considered mainstream private. My friend asserted that before things became so contentious, people who were apart from the mainstream didn’t and shouldn’t make their differences public and lamented that it wasn’t still the case. My friend claimed to understand how some people might see somebody living a lifestyle counter to the mainstream as a threat, particularly in religious communities, and their concerns needed to be taken into account in the law and in allowed public behavior. Continue reading →

Surviving and thriving despite family challenges

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By Ande Jacobson

Teri Kanefield has had multiple careers from teaching, to practicing law as an appellate attorney, to entertaining and informing through her writing. There is some overlap in all of it as she’s pursued her writing from many perspectives. She’s written numerous books across a wide spectrum from detailed biographies of various icons from American history, to entertaining and informative novels, to children’s books. And of course there were her appellate briefs that also told serious, factual stories and in doing so had to capture the attention of and persuade her intended audience – the judges and justices sitting in judgement. More recently, she’s also taken her writing to the internet through her blog and social media as she entertains and informs her audience.

When Kanefield releases a new work, it’s always worth reading, and she’s releasing a new novel entitled The Family Liar at the end of March 2026. The story is riveting and tough to put down. It’s a coming of age story that takes readers on quite a journey. Despite the challenges that Natalie faces at home and in life overall she perseveres and ultimately thrives. Her humble and tortured beginnings are more than a little disturbing. Her family is dysfunctional. It’s led by her mother, Lenora, who is clearly a disturbed individual. Lenora also has difficult beginnings which undoubtedly inform her later dysfunction. Kanefield begins with Lenora’s background in her Prelude chapter. She then picks up the main story which follows Natalie’s life from her troubled childhood through her eventual emergence as a well-rounded, highly educated force for good in the world. Continue reading →

Musical ensembles are like family

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By Ande Jacobson

Aja Gabel’s debut novel, The Ensemble, is a masterwork combining her early training as a musician with her prowess as a writer. She follows Jana, Brit, Henry, and Daniel from their first meeting as graduate students at the San Francisco Conservatory through the twists and turns of their lives as musicians playing together in a tight string quartet. Of course the closeness the ensemble requires tightly intertwines their personal and professional lives. Gabel injects her thorough knowledge of music and the idiosyncrasies of the instruments involved given her experience as a violinist and cellist into the story. She alternates voices between the members of the quartet by chapter focusing on each individual’s point of view. Continue reading →

A complicated gift

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By Ande Jacobson

Imagine that you could read another person’s thoughts seeing what they see or have seen. In Nora Roberts’ 2024 book, Mind Games, Thea Fox has such a gift. It’s a gift that runs in her maternal line. While her mother also had the gift, it scared her, so she chose not to use it. Thea’s grandmother, on the other hand, recognized that the gift wasn’t something she asked for, but it was something that she had, and as such she wasn’t afraid of it. Instead, she treasured it, but didn’t abuse it. She knew its power, and chose to use it to help others. Continue reading →

Our national trauma

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By Ande Jacobson

Everyone experiences trauma of one sort or another during their lifetime, often more than once. For some, it’s part of the normal cycle of life such as losing an elderly grandparent who was dear to them. It’s still traumatic, but it’s also not unexpected. For others, it might be a physical injury that takes time to heal. For still others it’s a childhood trauma that takes years or even a lifetime to absorb and process such as losing a parent through a tragic accident as a child. That’s harder to deal with. When the trauma involves violence, it’s even more difficult to process and cope with the aftermath. What’s happening in the US under the current administration (or regime) is inflicting trauma at a national level. For adults who have lived a good portion of their lives before this era, it’s a painful and scary turn. For children who haven’t known any different, it’s even worse. Their entire life experience is one of fear caused by a government that’s supposed to working for everyone but instead is showing these young people that the federal government is something to be feared. Continue reading →

What became of Soap Lake?

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By Ande Jacobson

Matthew Sullivan’s second book, Midnight in Soap Lake, was released in early 2025 and is another windy mystery. Like his first book, this is a standalone story even though its title is similar to Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. This story takes place in a real Washington town, Soap Lake, where Sullivan and his family lived for a time. There are a few aspects of the story that are real. The town of Soap Lake is named for its lake of the same name, and it’s a special kind of lake. Soap Lake is meromictic, i.e., the water is effectively stratified so that the water at the bottom stays at the bottom, and the water higher up stays higher up in various layers. This allows for different ecosystems and the appearance of extremophiles, special microbes specifically adapted to the unique conditions of the portion of the lake they inhabit and not seen anywhere else. As in the story Sullivan weaves, various limnologists have studied the lake over the years, and it even served as a sort of healing spa for a time. A giant lava lamp also figures in both reality and fiction, and in neither telling does it come to fruition. Finally like in the story, Soap Lake is a rather isolated small town in the middle of the desert northwest in eastern Washington state. After that, reality and story part ways. Continue reading →

Save the BookFrogs

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By Ande Jacobson

Matthew Sullivan, previously known for his short stories, burst onto the book scene in June 2017 with his debut novel, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. With shades of O. Henry in its twists and turns and a surprise ending, Sullivan gives readers puzzles within puzzles to solve as he leads them through parallel mysteries from the present and a harrowing past. Lydia is a bookseller who is more comfortable with the books she sells than with people, and yet she’s a favorite of the BookFrogs, the dejected loners from multiple walks of life who find solace in the Bright Ideas Bookstore. One young BookFrog, Joey Molina, a troubled fellow with a past and a secret takes a shine to Lydia. She’s his favorite bookseller, and she’s kind to him. One night when she finds Joey in the store’s upper room hanging from a self-fashioned noose, her life changes forever. She too has a past seeping with violence that she’d rather forget but can’t, and now she is caught in the present with a mystery she must solve. Why did Joey kill himself? And, after finding out that he’d left her all of his earthly possessions, she discovers a disturbing yet tantalizing puzzle going beyond that single event. Continue reading →