The Foreign Service Journal, November 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2014 61 number of projects using Trinket continues to grow, and this book is an introduction to some of the possibilities. The book steps through basic projects, working up to more challenging circuits and code. All of the code for the examples is supplied in the book and online. Familiar- ity with electronics and project assembly is helpful but not required for later projects. Diagrams illustrate point-to-point wiring of electrical circuits and use of a solderless breadboard makes the project easy to complete. An engineer, maker and innovator, Mike Barela is a member of the Senior Foreign Service with the Department of State. A gradu- ate of both Whitman College and the California Institute of Tech- nology in electrical engineering, he worked at Hewlett-Packard, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Boeing before joining the Foreign Service. Barela has traveled the world providing security to American embassies, and is currently division director of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s Countermeasures Program. tion, this book is the culmination of about as perfect a match of author and content as comes along in the publishing world.” Marjorie Ransom joined the Foreign Service in 1962 and resigned in 1965, according to regulations of the day, to marry FSO David Ransom. The couple’s first post was Yemen. She rejoined the Foreign Service in 1974, when the rules about mar- riage changed, and the couple was posted to Yemen from 1975 to 1978, the first State Department tandem in the Arab world. Mrs. Ransom was nominated as ambassador to Yemen in 1999, but was one of 26 FSOs denied a confirmation hearing by Jesse Helms, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Commit- tee. She retired from the Foreign Service in 2000. Princess Bella’s Special Summer: The Summer Mommy Had Cancer Shannon D. Behaj and Isabella Behaj, CreateSpace, 2013, $14.99, paperback, 29 pages. “Princess Bella is a sweet little girl. She likes to play, sing, dance and whirl.” But one summer, she is confronted with an extraordinary challenge: her mother is diagnosed with cancer. This book does not explain the disease or its treatment. Instead, it traces Bella’s experience with vivid illustrations, capturing the memorable moments shared among a family struggling through a serious illness in a simple, straight- forward way that is readily accessible to young children. “Sometimes it is helpful to see ourselves and our loved ones reflected in the stories we read,” notes author Shannon Behaj, who wrote and illustrated the book with her 6-year-old daughter. “No jargon, no explanations, no reasons, and no deeper meaning … simply an awareness that we are not alone on these difficult paths.” Because they found so few inspiring, nonclinical books to help their own daughter in such obviously difficult circum- stances, Shannon and Isabella have written the story for others: “We hope this book brings you the rare smiles it brought to us during those emotional times, when we needed it most and found it was waiting to be written.” Shannon D. Behaj is a member of the U.S. Foreign Service. Getting Started with Adafruit Trinket: 15 Projects with the Low-Cost AVR ATtiny85 Board Michael J. Barela, Maker Media, Inc., 2014, $26.99/paperback, $9.99/Kindle, 273 pages. The Trinket microcontroller offers designers custom program- mability in a size and price range suited to modern projects. The