100 Days!

I managed to stick with my Duolingo German lessons for 100 days. 

I do better on some days than others but it did start to feel more like fun than just something I had to cross off my list, probably around Day 75. 

I'll probably stick with it for a while, but I'm not sure I'll be so conscientious about doing it daily. That owl is persistent in his reminders so I may not be able to resist his persuasive powers. 

And I would miss important German sentences like these where the bear tells me about his clothing preferences.

These will surely be important if I ever go to Germany and speak with clothes-wearing bears. 

Ryan told me that he hopes the next unit is more useful for real life. Depending on the election outcome, I could learn how to say, "Help, my country is a dumpster fire," and "Excuse me, I would like to apply for political asylum."  In German, these are "Hilfe, mein Land ist ein Müllcontainerfeuer" and "Entschuldigung, ich würde gerne politisches Asyl beantragen." I'm going to be practicing!

A Gathering of Poetry: October 2024

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry.

We started cleaning up the garden so I've been thinking about the marvel of the compost pile. I was pleasantly surprised to find a poem about it, and I enjoyed how eloquently Andrew Hudgins wrote about "the opulence of everything that rots". I hope you can appreciate the beauty of your own compost heap.

Compost: An Ode
by Andrew Hudgins

Who can bring a clean thing

out of an unclean?

— JOB 14-4

The beauty of the compost heap is not

the eye’s delight.

Eyes see too much.
They see

blood-colored worms

and bugs so white they seem
to feed off ghosts. Eyes
do not see the heat
that simmers in
the moist heart of decay–
in its unmaking,

making fire,

just hot

enough to burn
itself. In summer, the heap
burns like a stove. It can — almost — hurt you.

I’ve held my hand inside the fire and counted

one, two, three,
four,
I cannot hold it there.

Give it to me, the heat insists. It’s mine.

I yank it back and wipe it on my jeans

as if
I’d really heard the words.

And eyes
cannot appreciate
sweet vegetable rot,
how good it smells
as everything dissolves,
dispersing
back from thing

into idea.
From our own table we are feeding it

what we don’t eat. Orange rind and apple core,

corn husks,
and odds and ends the children smear
across their plates — we feed them all into the slow,

damp furnace of decay. Leaves curl at edges,

buckle,
collapsing down into their centers,
as everything turns loose its living shape

and blackens, gives up

what it once was
to become dirt. The table scraps

and leafage join,
indistinguishable,
the way that death insists it’s all the same,

while life
must do a million things at once.
The compost heap is both — life, death — a slow

simmer,
a leisurely collapsing of
the thing
into its possibilities —
both bean and hollyhock, potato, zinnia, squash:

the opulence
of everything that rots.

====

Hudgins, Andrew. "Compost: An Ode". Poetry Magazine, October 1985. 

You can read more about the poet here. 

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Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Unraveled Wednesday: 10/16/24

I'm joining Kat and the Unravelers today with a completed hat. There's no official linkup today because Kat is enjoying Presque Isle but it's still Unraveled Wednesday in my mind. The hat (Ravelry link) took me a while considering it's just a hat, but I really like the pattern. It looks more like downward-facing arrows when it's being worn on a head and the cables are stretched out a bit, but I had a few problems. 

I'm a bit concerned that the hat isn't deep enough to fit Justin very well. It only measures 7.25" in depth to the bottom of the folded ribbing, and Justin works outside and wears hats to keep his ears warm. I don't use Ravelry nearly as much as I used to, but it was helpful in telling me that the hats I've previously knit for him were 9-10" deep. I plan on knitting this hat again, repeating part of the pattern a second time to hopefully make it another couple of inches longer. Also, the pattern calls for ending the hat with 27 stitches, threading the yarn tail through those 27 stitches, and pulling tight to close the hole. Twenty-seven stitches seemed like an awful lot to close up, so I did a second round out K3tog to make the hole smaller. Nine stitches looked a lot better than 27. 

Ravelry was also useful in telling me that I still had several skeins of Madeline Tosh Vintage in my stash, so I dug through and was happy to find three skeins in Moorland. It's a nice green that I've used for hats for Justin before, so I'm winding yarn this afternoon and knitting him a second (hopefully improved and better-fitting) Christmas hat. 

I didn't finish any books this week but I'm listening to Intermezzo and reading an ARC of Awake in the Floating City on my Kindle. I'm enjoying both of them, much more than I was when I first started them. 

What are you making and reading this week?

I'm Brave!

I'm not sure that's true, but I was brave enough to get my flu and covid shots at the same time last week. I was admiring all the cute stickers that CVS had for kids, and the pharmacist gave me a bunch of them. 

So if a turtle, unicorn, owl, and narwhal have all documented my bravery, then maybe I really am. 

If I was really brave I would get my pneumonia, RSV, and shingles shots, but I think I'll be brave for those shots another day. 

Are You Resilient?

 I'm not, or I think I could be more resilient, so I took some action after reading this on NPR. 

NPR is doing a series of newsletters over five weeks that they say will provide "powerful tools and strategies that have been shown to help people reduce anxiety and improve feelings of well-being". I've only received the first newsletter, and it has the usual advice that we've all probably read (and maybe practiced) before, like breathing exercises.

More interesting (to me, anyway) is this: NPR is collaborating with Northwestern University to bring an online stress-reduction course and research study to their audience. This free course is based on the work of Judith Moskowitz, a research psychologist at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine. It teaches eight skills to boost positive feelings.

The course is based on her 20-plus years of research studying people who have experienced difficult situations, such as being diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and people who are caregivers for loved ones with Alzheimer's. Her peer-reviewed studies point to benefits. They are recruiting 20,000 participants for an online, self-guided, positive emotions study. The course will teach eight science-backed stress reduction skills over 5 weeks, with the 6th week being a practice and review period (the entire length of the study will be 12 weeks).

I signed up for the course/study and I can see how this may be beneficial. I'm only in the first week, but there are readings about the skills (Positive Events, Savoring, and Gratitude this week) and home practice (basically just writing about positive events and gratitude on a discussion board like many of you already do in a gratitude journal). I've failed at journaling and documenting things plenty of times before but this format works better for me with everything all in one place and a personal "Dashboard" so I can see what I've done and what I still have to do. It's not overwhelming and I think consistency and practice are important for me. Other skills that will be covered include:

• Daily Mindfulness
• Positive Reappraisal 
• Self-Compassion
• Personal Strength 
• Attainable Goals

If any of this sounds like it might be useful to you or just something you'd like to try, here are the sign-up links:

NPR Stress Less newsletter sign up here.

The Resilience Challenge Course/Study registration information sign up here. 

Here's to being more resilient!

Unraveled Wednesday: 10/9/24

I'm joining Kat and the Unravelers today with the same hat, still in progress, and just one book. 

I may be too used to knitting Hitchhikers somewhat mindlessly as I find myself making careless mistakes on the hat and having to tink back. But it's a good lesson in paying attention to what I'm doing, like crossing cables correctly and actually counting the numbers of knits and purls correctly. Things go better when I do that and don't try to do something else that takes some of my attention (such as answering John's questions about how many bags of mulch he should get or what Medicare Part D program I have). Those questions can wait but he seems to only ask me things when I'm counting.

I requested The Ideological Brain from NetGalley because it sounded like it might help me better understand how people become radicalized and believe in rigid ideologies, especially during this polarized political season in the US. In a combination of psychology, politics, and philosophy, the author argues that some people are biologically predisposed to rigid ways of thinking. Belief in strict ideologies has long been attributed to social forces but Zmigrod's research looks at this in terms of neural and cognitive principles. The book is written in a scholarly manner and can honestly be a little dry to this non-academic reader, but it has at least shown me that there may be reasons for political beliefs that I see as bordering on crazy. She also describes what an open and flexible thinker looks like. Three and a half stars rounded up.

Thank you to Henry Holt and Co. for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on April 25, 2025.

I do have two new ARCs that I'm reading now. Three Days in June is a new novel from Anne Tyler and Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan. I loved Kat's review of the latter so much last week that I wanted to read it (and I'm not even a big fan of dystopian novels)!

What are you making and reading this week?

Read With Us: It's A New Book

Our leaves here are mainly dry and brown and if John saw me sitting in them reading he would probably yell that it was time to get back to raking, but never mind that. It's time to announce our Fall Read With Us book. 

Simply put, it is a novel about two Irish-Slovak brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek, who are grieving the death of their father. It explores grief and the ways it is manifested at different times in different people, sibling relationships, and love, familial and otherwise. When I was searching for themes in this book, I especially loved this one: "The novel explores themes such as the fear of being seen as ridiculous." Haven't we all experienced that? (I know I have!)

Our new book is Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. 

The word intermezzo means a short connecting instrumental movement in an opera or other musical work, or a light dramatic, musical, or other performance inserted between the acts of a play. It has a special meaning in chess, where it is also known as a zwischenzug or "in-between move". It's a chess tactic where a player makes an unexpected move in the middle of a combination to disrupt their opponent's plans. I've only read a few chapters so far but something tells me that this may be the more appropriate meaning. 

Intermezzo is available in hardcover, on Kindle, and in audiobook format from Amazon or better yet, your local bookstore. You can place a hold at your library, and I know the hold queues are long, but hopefully, your library will acquire enough copies to keep the line moving. 

Kym, Carole, and I will be talking about the book, giving additional information, and doing promotional posts throughout November. Discussion day for Intermezzo is scheduled for Tuesday, January 7, 2025, at 7:00 pm Eastern time, so mark your calendars. We'll ask questions on our blogs that day and then host the always fun, educational, and entertaining Zoom discussion.

I do hope you'll Read With Us. Intermezzo may have messy and imperfect relationships, an unlikeable character or two, and sometimes questionable prose, but there is also love of all sorts. 

Quilts and Dreams

One of the things we did when we were visiting my SiL was go to the Quilt Show put together by the Mountain Laurel Quilt Guild. I've been once before and this one was just as impressive. There were small decorative quilts, like the one below,

and Challenge quilts, like these.

The challenge involved turning to page 25 in any magazine and interpreting what was on page 25 into a small quilt. 

There were large quilts,

and medium quilts. 

This one was made of tiny triangles

and this one was inspired by a photograph of the maker's father.

This one was made from selvedges,

this one was made from the maker's father's ties,

and this one was inspired by the Pokey Little Puppy. 

I was entranced by these small quilts for some reason, maybe the tininess of the pieces? Whatever the reason, I stood in front of them for quite a while and even dreamed about cutting out tiny blue pieces that night. 

The only quilting I've done is making some place mats so it would be nice if I could get further inspired by these quilts with tiny pieces and maybe even make one of my own. 

Unraveled Wednesday: 10/2/24

I'm joining Kat and the Unravelers today with a new hat on the needles (for the second time) and a book or two.

After taking a closer look at the hat I showed you last week, I thought that the circumference around the bottom looked a bit large and the ribbing seemed floppy. When I measured it, it was 28 inches. My kids have big heads but not that big! Then I took a closer look at the needle I was using and after squinting at it in bright light, found that I was using a size 8 instead of a 6. It was a rookie mistake, and there was nothing to do but unravel and start over again. I worked on the ribbing while spending time in the car and even managed to do a few cables in the car. So the hat is moving forward, albeit slowly. But the yarn is so nice I'm knitting it twice. 

Last week Sarah reviewed Happening, and I decided to give it a try. It is a non-fiction recounting of the author's abortion in France when she was 23 years old. There is evidence of Ernaux's relative immaturity at age 23 (alternately worrying about getting rid of her pregnancy and almost ignoring it) but since abortion was illegal in France at the time it is also horrifying. The author states that she is recreating this event decades later based on her diaries and she has trouble recalling feelings and moods. Reconstructing material procedures was awful enough but I wish the author could have included more of what she thought and felt at the time. Three and a half stars rounded up.

I also read Small Rain by Garth Greenwell. Brilliant, evocative, and vivid are words that come to me when trying to describe Small Rain. This is a novel about a poet who experiences sudden debilitating pain and eventually ends up in the ICU. It is about medicine and the dysfunctional American healthcare system but also much more - meditations on art, beauty, memory, poetry, and introducing his literature students to a poem by George Oppen. His poem "Westyrn Wynds" gives the novel its title. Greenwell's narrator has quite a bit of time to muse while in his hospital bed, and his thoughts veer off into interesting tangents like his childhood, his life with L., and their disastrous home renovations. I appreciated the contrast between the narrator's literary mind and the clinical logic of medicine. The author narrated the audiobook and his voice added to this marvelous book. Four and a half stars rounded up.

“My ignorance was an indictment of something, me, my education, the public schools where I was raised, that I could be so helpless when it came to anything useful, that the only technologies I knew anything about were antiquated, unnecessary technologies: iambic pentameter, functional harmony, the ablative absolute. They were the embellishments of life, accoutrements of civilization, never the necessary core—though they were necessary to me.”

What are you making and reading this week?

One Vote and Counting ...

I got my Vote by Mail ballot on Monday and I returned it on Tuesday. 

I thought about taking it to the Board of Elections and handing it directly to a person, but there are twelve of these special drop boxes located throughout our county, so I walked a block to the nearest one and dropped it off there. 

The ballots are collected every day and the drop boxes are under video surveillance so I made sure to wave to whoever might be checking the video. I think the black or white thing on the wall might house the video? I live in NJ so I don't worry too much about my vote not being counted; I'm pretty sure that Harris will get our 14 electoral votes as NJ has voted Democratic since 1992. It's those other swing states (like PA, MI, GA, NC, WI, and AZ) that are my biggest cause for concern. 

I'm on my way to visit my SiL so I'll be back here next week. See you then!

Unraveled Wednesday: 9/25/24

I'm joining Kat and the Unravelers today with a new hat on the needles and a book or two. After perusing Ravelry, I decided that Justin might like a Rows and Arrows hat (Rav link). He is an avid bowhunter and the cables look enough like arrows that he'll see them and I really like the design (especially the crown). I usually knit hats for Justin with dark green or camouflage yarn so he can wear them in the woods, but I decided that this blue Rios was too beautiful to pass up. He once told me that he wished his truck was bright blue (it's white) so I felt okay with choosing blue. It's a wild life and I'm living it. :-)

It doesn't look like much now, but I think it will look great with the second batch of cables and the crown decreases. I really enjoy knitting this hat, so I might knit a green one with the leftovers from the Washington Beanie but we'll see. I probably shouldn't count my cables before they're crossed.

I wasn't quite sure what The Safekeep was about before I started reading it, and I'm not sure I know now after finishing it. Another reviewer called it "a novel of post-war Holland that isn't quite sure what it wants to be," and I think that is the most accurate description. Isabel, a Dutch woman, feels fiercely protective over her home and is quite disturbed when she's forced to host her brother's girlfriend Eva for a few weeks. Eva has ulterior motives which are even more unnerving to Isabel. I may be a reader who needs a more straightforward type of book rather than one that hides its message with dissemblance. This three-star book just wasn't my cup of tea. 

I believe firmly in reproductive care for all women, and I'm Sorry For My Loss: An Urgent Examination of Reproductive Care in America explores that from all aspects. As the subtitle says, this is an urgent examination and one that I wish everyone passing policy in state and federal governments would read and heed. The authors cover the piecemeal medical rules, insurance policies, and laws governing what choices women can make, and more importantly, what lack of treatment they are subjected to due to their inability to make medical choices that are right for them and their situations. The language we use suffers from inadequacy, implying that all kept pregnancies are wanted, and can also serve to make women feel that they are somehow to blame for miscarriages. Post-Roe America is a scary place for women, and the statistics that Little and Long present are sobering. Twenty-five percent of women have had an abortion and the current US maternal deaths is awful at 32.9 per 100,000. The maternal death rate for Black women in the US is terrifying at 69.9 per 100,000. Reproductive care is not simply an abortion issue, but rather how the United States views women's health. This book is necessary and heartfelt.

Thanks to Sourcebooks and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on September 24, 2024.

What are you making and reading this week?

Read With Us: The Ministry of Time Followup

Last Tuesday we had the Zoom discussion for our Read With Us Summer Book, The Ministry of Time. It was a full house with 16 people attending, but it was a great group with a lot to contribute. 

Kym opened up the discussion by asking whether we liked the book or not, and why. Most people liked the book, there were several of us who liked it with reservations, and there were at least a couple of people who were not big fans. Things that people liked were the beauty of the author's language, that it was a fun read, and they enjoyed reading about the ex-pats and their adjustments to modern life. Some people questioned the plausibility and wondered about the pairings of the ex-pats and their bridges. Some people wished that the more minor ex-pats had been developed more. 

Carole asked her questions about genre, why we tend to put books in boxes, and how did people feel about the multiple genres in The Ministry of Time. Some people felt that science fiction should be based on actual science and facts. Several people agreed that the mix of genres was part of the fun, but there was a point where too many things had been included and there were too many loose ends that were dropped and not developed. Someone wondered how Kaliane Bradley chose the eras that she picked the ex-pats from, and she also loved how Gore's dialogue was written. 

My question was about how we interpreted the ending and what the future held for the characters. It seemed that most people thought that the ending felt rushed and chaotic, but Kym pointed out that that is often the norm for thrillers. Many plot points converge, suspense develops, and then there is a resolution. Someone brought up that there were so many plot points, such as feminism, cannibalism, climate change, homosexuality, colonialism, etc., and most of us felt that some of them had been abandoned and many details were left wanting. Carole did like the ending, the way two timelines were brought together for a hopeful ending. 

I have come to rely on our Read With Us discussions to clarify ideas and participants often bring up points that I have not considered. It's a valuable thing for me, and Kym pointed out afterward that this was our 20th book! I think we've come a long way since the beginning when Kym first proposed this online book group and none of us were quite sure what it might look like. I think our group has really come together and I'd like to thank all of you for reading and participating. You've made us what we have come to be and I hope our group continues to grow, read, and discuss in the future. 

We'll be announcing our 21st book on October 8th, so be sure to check back then!

A Gathering of Poetry: September 2024

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry. After the debate, I had a discussion with my neighbor and said I would be on tenterhooks until after Election Day. He looked at me quizzically, asked what tenterhooks were, and said he thought the word was "tender hooks". He's an educated man, so I thought he might be right and came in to look it up myself. During my search I came across this poem and it was too good not to share. 

On Tender Hooks 
by Brian Bilston 

Let me cut to the cheese:
every time you open your mouth,
I’m on tender hooks.

You charge at the English language
like a bowl in a china shop.
Please nip it in the butt.

On the spurt of the moment,
the phrases tumble out.
It’s time you gave up the goat.

Curve your enthusiasm.  
Don’t give them free range.
The chickens will come home to roast.

Now you are in high dungeon.
You think me a damp squid:
on your phrases I shouldn’t impose.

But they spread like wildflowers
in a doggy-dog world,
and your spear of influence grows.

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Bilston, Brian. “On Tender Hooks a Poem by Brian Bilston.” Pan Macmillan, www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/literary/brian-bilston-friday-poem-on-tender-hooks. Accessed 12 Sept. 2024.

You can read more about the poet here.

(The photo at the top is a bowl in a china shop in case you were wondering.)

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Thank you for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. You are more than welcome to add your link below if you would like to share one of your favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Unraveled Wednesday: 9/18/24

I'm joining Kat and the Unravelers today for a look at unraveling, a couple of potholders, and a couple of books. I've unraveled what I had knit on the Washington Beanie for Justin and have officially moved on to something else. Once I wind the new yarn I ordered, I'll give you more details about the something else(s) I decided on.

I wove another potholder for Ryan. This is the smaller seven-inch size and the pattern is called Square Spiral. Like some of the other spiral/maze ones I've woven, the back looks different from the front. I can't give you a good, weaving-based explanation why this happens other than some sort of potholder magic. 

I wove a larger 10-inch one for my SiL. It's just a collection of somewhat random colors that I liked with no special pattern. We're going up to visit them next week and when I sent her a photo of the first one I wove, she said it was "a damn fine potholder." Clearly, she deserves one of her own. 

I finished two NetGalley books last week, one fiction and one poetry. I often judge books by their covers, but in the case of Shy Creatures the badger on the cover was a good sign. Clare Chambers has written a book with an interesting plot, and believable characters, complete with lovely prose. It is based on a real event but Chambers has given the main character, William, a slightly nicer life. Set in the mid-1960s, Helen Hansford is an art therapist in a British psychiatric hospital. There she meets William Tapping who has been admitted after an altercation in a nearby crumbling mansion. He is mute, with waist-length hair and beard, and after he shows an interest in art, Helen digs into his past to find out he ended up this way. The author is an acute observer of the human condition, and with this book, she raises questions of love and protection vs. control and wants and needs vs. what is in a person's best interests. This four-star novel was emotional without being overwrought, humorous at times, hopeful, and compassionate, with a moving ending. It will be published on November 12, 2024.

I was going to say that Water, Water is Billy Collins' best poetry collection to date, but I don't know if I've actually read any of his other books. I've certainly read other poems of his, and these rank right up there with the best of them. In this book of 60 new poems, I found only four or so that didn't speak to me. The author can write about Elsie the Cow, wondering who wove the daisy garland around her neck, figuring it was probably a little girl, and where she is now. One that I liked the most was about spying a cardinal and its mate and vowing not to tell his wife about them. "Indeed, I would take the two cardinals to my grave." I'll let you read this book of accessible poetry yourself to find out all that Collins told his wife (or not), in addition to the many other relatable poems in this collection full of beauty, humor, and satisfaction. It will be published on November 19, 2024.

What are you making and reading this week?

Read With Us: The Ministry of Time Discussion

STOP HERE!

That's kind of an odd way to begin a blog post, but you might recall that last week Kym mentioned a "new and more coordinated question-posing strategy". We had a Zoom pre-discussion discussion about The Ministry of Time last week and while we were puzzling about what questions to ask, it dawned on us that the questions under consideration flowed logically from one to another and might make a bit more sense if we asked them in order. This is less complicated than I'm making it sound so if you haven't visited Kym's blog already, head there first to answer her question. Next, go to Carole's blog, and then back here for the final question. 

FIRST: Kym's blog

SECOND: Carole's blog

THIRD: My blog for the last question

Nothing awful will happen if you answer the questions out of order; we just wanted to inject as much logic into our questions about a book that seems to defy logic. 

====

So if you're reading this, I'm going to assume you've visited Kym and Carole and are back here for the final question about our current Read With Us book, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. 

I found this book intriguing and interesting reading but for me, the ending felt rushed, confused, and confusing, with things happening all over. I've reread some of the ending and looked up many different interpretations of what exactly was going on, but my question to you is this: How do you interpret the ending of the novel, and what does the future hold for the characters? How did you feel about the ending and would you have preferred that the book end differently? 

I have some thoughts about this question myself, but this space is for you to share your ideas. There are no wrong opinions and I look forward to reading your thoughts.

The in-person Zoom discussion will be at 7:00 pm Eastern this evening. If you haven't RSVP'd already you can send me an email (the email address is in the upper right) and I will make sure you get an invitation with the Zoom link. I hope to see you there! Books are often better if they are discussed, and I think that is definitely the case for The Ministry of Time!