{"id":330,"date":"2009-01-10T17:38:56","date_gmt":"2009-01-10T23:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/?p=330"},"modified":"2009-01-10T18:46:47","modified_gmt":"2009-01-11T00:46:47","slug":"visiting-with-the-laughing-ladies-book-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/?p=330","title":{"rendered":"Visiting with the Laughing Ladies Book Club"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;\">On Wednesday I had the great pleasure of joining the Laughing Ladies Book Club as they discussed <em style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal;\">8 State Hurricane Kate<\/em> in St. Paul. It was fun to hear their discussion and answer their questions about the book. One question that momentarily stumped me was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What are the main lessons that you learned from your experiences?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d After thinking for a moment, I decided that one main lesson was that <strong style=\"mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;\">if you are strongly called to do something, find a way to do it<\/strong>.<!--more-->\u00c2\u00a0I felt compelled to go to Louisiana to help care for rescued animals after Hurricane Katrina, but I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find anyone to go with me. I ended up going by myself, and making many wonderful friends there who had the same compulsion and share the same convictions. When I think today about how different my life would be if I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t taken the opportunity to follow that compulsion, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very grateful for the journey, for knowing Kate, for my new friends and for all that I learned along the way. If I had not made that decision to go to Louisiana, just because I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find anyone to go with me, I would have missed all this. It was my calling and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad that I followed it. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let fear of the unknown keep you from following your calling. Remember, you can drive all the way across the country in the dark if you have headlights that illuminate the few feet in front of you. But if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take your foot off the brake, you won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go anywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial;\">Another lesson that I learned was <strong style=\"mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;\">how to ask for help when I needed it<\/strong>. I learned how many caring people across the country and even the world were following Kate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story, and I learned the power of a caring network of people. When each one contributes something, together we can accomplish great things. That network of people continues to help dogs that are in trouble today, mainly via the AuCaDo Rescue Forum.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;\">Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a photo of the Book Club at Trotter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Caf\u00c3\u00a9 in St. Paul.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;\">Soon I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll post some audio clips from our discussion.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/january-2009-laughing-ladies-book-club.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-331\" title=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/january-2009-laughing-ladies-book-club.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"275\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/january-2009-laughing-ladies-book-club.jpg 1704w, https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/january-2009-laughing-ladies-book-club-300x165.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Wednesday I had the great pleasure of joining the Laughing Ladies Book Club as they discussed 8 State Hurricane Kate in St. Paul. It was fun to hear their discussion and answer their questions about the book. One question that momentarily stumped me was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What are the main lessons that you learned from your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.8statekate.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}