A Viewing Recommendation

Netflix’s has a new "series" entitled Famous Last Words. It's based on a Danish series and consists of an interview with a notable figure, but it is not released until after the interviewee's death. In the US, it begins with a powerful, honest episode - an interview with Jane Goodall that was recorded in March of this year and has just been released after her death on October 1. I watched it twice this weekend and found it to be a unique and brave format. It's not merely a tribute, but a living testament to what it means to reflect, reckon, and speak truth as your time on earth winds down. Here's why I found this episode to be exceptional and why I think others' lives will be enriched by watching it. 

• The Power of the Format

One of the most compelling aspects of Famous Last Words is its premise: the interview is conducted while the subject is still alive, but is only made public after their passing. This gives the subject freedom to speak candidly, unburdened by the fear of backlash or revisionism. Out of this raw honesty emerges something deeply intimate: a chance to let someone frame their own legacy, unfiltered.

In Goodall’s case, she approaches the interview with her full humanity, not just as a legend, but as the person who loved, doubted, fought, and hoped. Because of the format, viewers are offered a rare gift: we get to hear her final reflection, on her own terms.

• A Portrait of Integrity, Courage & Vulnerability

Goodall never shied away from speaking truth - about conservation, politics, or humanity. This final interview is no exception. She’s playful, serious, expressive, and unafraid to critique global leaders. Yet she is also vulnerable: she discusses regrets, doubts, love, mortality. That blend of strength and softness makes her even more human and more inspiring if that's possible. 

• Reflective, Not Sensationalist

Rather than sensationalizing the “last words” angle, the show gives space for reflection. The host, Brad Falchuk, frames gentle but probing questions. In the later moments, he leaves the stage entirely so Jane can have a final, uninterrupted address to the audience. It’s a quiet, deliberate choice, and it gives weight to her closing remarks.

• Wisdom Drawn from a Life of Curiosity

Goodall doesn’t offer only sweeping statements. She recounts her childhood, her early days in Africa, her relationship with nature, and small personal stories that ground her worldview in lived experience. She reminds us that a life of curiosity, of caring, of paying attention, is a life well lived.

• A Call to Action & Hope

Despite the gravity of the topic, Goodall’s outlook is not despairing. She emphasizes that every life matters and that we all have a role to play, even when challenges like climate change and species loss loom large. Her final speech is a plea to not give up, to do what we can while on this earth. It’s moving, earnest, and dignified, exactly the tonal balance that turns introspection into motivation.

Famous Last Words: Dr. Jane Goodall is not a conventional documentary, nor a sanitized biopic. It’s more like a final letter, layered, honest, intimate, and deeply human. For fans of Jane Goodall, conservation, or human stories in general, this episode offers something rare: the chance to hear her voice one last time, full of passion, humor, clarity, and hope.

I believe many will walk away from it changed, more reflective, more inspired, more resolved and hopeful. It’s a tribute, a farewell, and a challenge all in one, and I hope you get a chance to watch. 

Red Sky At Morning ...

Sailors take warning! 

Okay, it's pink, but I'm calling it red and hope it means more rain for us this weekend. There is some predicted for Sunday and Monday and I'm keeping my fingers crossed. 

 

Here's hoping you have a wonderful weekend no matter what the weather! 

Unraveled Wednesday: 10/8/25

I’m happily joining Kat and the Unravelers today with one finished sock and a good start on the second. I still need to kitchener the toe on the first one, but I’ll wait until both are done. I’ve finished the heel flap on sock #2 and just need a few quiet minutes to turn the heel.

I snapped a few “sock in the wild” photos at Ryan’s house. His hydrangeas and sedum are blooming, and they made a nicer backdrop than my own parched lawn.  

I’m also still working on the rainbow scarf, but I made myself focus on the socks this week. Otherwise, I'm afraid they’d never get finished.

I did finish a book this week and it was a good one. So Far Gone by Jess Walter is an absorbing, funny, and surprisingly tender novel about one man’s reluctant reentry into a world he thought he’d left behind for good. Rhys Kinnick, once a journalist and now a near-hermit in the Pacific Northwest, finds his solitude upended when his two grandchildren appear on his doorstep, fleeing a father who’s fallen in with a Christian Nationalist militia. When the kids are kidnapped, Rhys, helped by a retired detective and a sharp-tongued ex, has no choice but to face both his past and the fractured country he’s been avoiding.

The setup could easily veer into bleakness or satire, but somehow Walter walks a real tightrope here. The book is very much about Our Present Moment, with political division, disinformation, and despair, without getting you so steeped in the terrors of the far right that it feels more like stress than storytelling. There are moments when it's laugh-out-loud funny, but it never feels like Walter treats his subjects too lightly.

Rhys is a man who can be saved, a man whose ideals and disappointments are equally large, whose disillusionment extends not just to society but to his own moral failings. Walter treats him (and the broken country he mirrors) with empathy and wit. The result is a story that’s humane, sharply observed, and unexpectedly hopeful.

If Beautiful Ruins was Walter’s elegy for ambition, So Far Gone is his meditation on retreat and return, and it proves that running from the world is never the same as healing from it. This one was a solid four stars for me. 

What are you making and reading this week?

 

It's a New Book!

We’re thrilled to announce the Read With Us fall selection: The Antidote by Karen Russell. 

 

 

This truly original book is a Dust Bowl epic from the author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Russell’s fiction has balanced the mythic and the human, and this newest novel promises both a sweeping historical story, magical realism, and an unsettling mirror of the present.

 

ETA: And now it's also a National Book Award finalist!  

Set in the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska, The Antidote begins on Black Sunday, when one of the most catastrophic dust storms in American history descends upon the Great Plains. But the real storm, Russell suggests, has been gathering for generations. The town is already sinking under the weight of drought, economic despair, and the darker inheritance of its own violent past.

The book follows five unforgettable characters:

• A Prairie Witch whose body serves as a vault for other people’s memories,

• A Polish wheat farmer whose good fortune sours into something sinister,

• His orphaned niece, a basketball prodigy and apprentice witch who is running from her grief,

• A talkative scarecrow with unsettling wisdom, and

• A New Deal photographer whose mysterious, time-bending camera threatens to expose the town’s secrets.

As their stories intertwine, Russell explores what it means for a nation to forget - its history, its sins, and its connections to the land and what it might take to remember. It’s also a novel that feels fiercely relevant, confronting the legacies of environmental collapse and collective denial. In an interview with BookPage, Karen Russell said she wanted to write a story where an apocalyptic future for us isn’t a foregone conclusion. “You can’t imagine a viable future, a world that’s kinder and more just than what we’ve got going today, without returning to the past,” Russell says. This sounds like a book for me.

The hardcover, Kindle, and audio versions of the book are all available from my library without much of a wait, so hopefully we'll all have plenty of time to place a hold, get the book, and read it. The Kindle and paperback versions are priced reasonably from Amazon and the audio version is narrated beautifully by Elena Ray and six others. I'm sure your local bookseller could order a copy for you if you're lucky enough to have a local bookseller. Personally, this sounds like one that I might need to eye-read.

Kym, Carole, and I will be talking about the book, giving additional information, and doing promotional posts throughout November. Discussion day for The Antidote is scheduled for Tuesday, January 6, 2026 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.

Whether you're new to Karen Russell or already a fan, we hope you'll Read With Us and discover (or revisit since I know some of you have already read it) this amazingly creative novel. 

 

Sometimes Monday ...

 ... is when I hope to start feeling better. 

 

A couple of weeks ago, when I went to CVS for my flu and COVID vaccines, the pharmacist cheerfully suggested I should also make appointments for shingles, pneumonia, RSV, and a Tdap booster. That sounded like an awful lot of poking for one person, but I decided I’d better at least start with the shingles shot while vaccines are still available.

So on Thursday, I got my first shingles vaccine and a Tdap booster. I felt fine until Friday afternoon, when I suddenly needed a three-hour nap and still went to bed at 8:00 p.m. By Saturday I was feeling better, doing laundry, folding clothes, making baked ziti, baking muffins, and paying bills like a responsible adult again.

Then came Sunday. At 5:00 a.m., I woke up with one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had plus a fever. I alternated ibuprofen and Tylenol until things started to ease up a bit, and I managed the rest of the day pretty well, as long as I remembered to keep taking ibuprofen every six hours.

According to GlaxoSmithKline, the shingles vaccine can cause pain, redness, swelling, muscle aches, tiredness, headache, shivering, fever, and an upset stomach. Lucky me, I checked every single box! Still, I’d much rather deal with a few rough days than go through shingles. My mom and sister have both had it, and they were miserable.

So today, I’m determined to start feeling better, maybe with a little help from one last dose of ibuprofen. I’ll have to work up the courage to go back for that second shingles shot (not until December, thankfully), but I will. Otherwise, all this feeling lousy will have been for nothing!

Here’s hoping your Monday is off to a good and healthy start!

 

Please Don't Make Me Drive to Newark Again

On Monday, I was grumbling about having to pick up Justin and John late Tuesday night (well, late for me) at Newark airport. That trip actually went fine and we were home by 1:00 am. But what I didn’t know when I wrote that post was what Monday night itself would hold. 

Jess, who works at a vet’s office, had been told she absolutely had to be at work Tuesday for surgery day. That meant she was flying home from Montana on Monday. She had a friend lined up to pick her up, so all I needed to do was stay awake long enough to hand her the car keys; her car had been parked in our driveway since I dropped her at the airport back on September 20th).

Easy, right?

Well, the first sign of trouble was a text from Jess in Chicago saying her flight was delayed. Cue hours of updates: more delays, more waiting. Eventually, her flight left three hours late, which meant she landed at Newark at 12:45 am. By then, her friend had bailed on the pickup.

She checked Uber and it would have been about $200 for the ride. Beyond the cost, I couldn’t imagine having to climb into a stranger’s car in the middle of the night. So I did what any mom/aunt/friend with a semi-decent sense of responsibility would do and drove to Newark to pick her up. By 1:00 am, Jess and her luggage were in my car, and by 2:00 am, we were home. She still had a 45-minute drive back to her own house, but I went straight to bed because I had to turn around and go back to Newark the very next night.

All told, I made four round trips to Newark in two weeks (each about 110 miles), with the last two trips happening less than 24 hours apart.

The silver lining? I snapped this odd but kind of wonderful photo. I can’t tell exactly what’s happening in it beyond headlights and taillights, I think, but I like it.  

 

Still, I suspect the next time someone asks me to make an airport run, I’ll have no trouble saying no. 

 

Here's hoping you have a lovely, restful weekend! 

 

 

Unraveled Wednesday: 10/1/25

I’m happily joining Kat and the Unravelers today, still plugging away on the sock and adding some length to the rainbow scarf. Inspired by Carole’s “sock in the wild” photo from Monday, I decided to take one of my own while I was checking in on Nugget. 

Nugget, however, had some strong opinions. She felt the first photo was too sock-heavy and far too Nugget-light. (She’s not wrong.) So we tried again, this time featuring Her Highness lounging regally on her pillow in the bow window, supervising the neighborhood and patiently waiting for me to get inside and pay the proper tribute in treats. 

 

As for the knitting itself: I did make a little progress on the sock after Monday’s photo, but the toe still remains to be done (and the second sock). Meanwhile, I measured the scarf and discovered I’ve got a good 24" left to knit. So, I cheerfully joined the third skein and will just keep rainbow-ing along!

 

 

I read two books this week. The Salt Stones was recommended by both Jane and Sarah, and I found it to be a beautifully written meditation on what it means to live in relationships with land, animals, and family. Helen Whybrow’s prose is both lyrical and grounded, weaving together the visceral details of farm life, like birthing lambs in the cold of late winter, battling predators, shearing sheep, and harvesting blueberries, with reflections on stewardship, resilience, and belonging.

What struck me most is the balance between the daily grit of farm work and the larger sense of rhythm and meaning that Whybrow finds in the cycles of life and death. The book doesn’t romanticize shepherding or land stewardship; it acknowledges the exhaustion, the heartbreak, and the constant need to adapt. Yet at the same time, there’s a deep tenderness in the way she connects her care for the sheep and the farm with her love for her family and her responsibility to future generations.

This is not a fast-paced book. it moves in seasons rather than chapters, and its power lies in its quiet accumulation of moments. At times the meditative tone can feel a little heavy, but the writing is gorgeous and the reflections are well worth lingering over.

For readers who enjoy memoirs rooted in place, nature writing that doesn’t shy away from difficulty, and thoughtful explorations of what it means to truly belong to a landscape, The Salt Stones will be a rewarding read. 

Patrick Ryan’s Buckeye is an ambitious, multi-generational story set in Bonhomie, Ohio, beginning in the shadow of World War II and stretching into the postwar boom years. It starts with a single fateful encounter between Cal Jenkins, haunted not by combat but by his inability to serve, and Margaret Salt, a woman with secrets of her own. Around them swirl characters marked by grief, longing, and resilience: Cal’s wife, Becky, whose gift as a seer allows her to bridge the living and the dead, and Margaret’s husband, Felix, whose absence at sea casts a long shadow.

Ryan writes with warmth and empathy, particularly when exploring the ways ordinary people carry extraordinary burdens. The setting feels textured and true, and the novel shines when it zeroes in on the small-town dynamics of Bonhomie, where everyone’s business eventually comes to light. The consequences of one “stolen moment” ripple through the next generation, reminding us how personal choices can shape entire families.

The book’s scope sometimes works against it. The narrative spans decades and multiple perspectives, which occasionally left me wishing for more depth in certain storylines rather than breadth. A few of the characters’ motivations felt underdeveloped, and the pacing sagged in places. Still, there’s no denying the poignancy of Ryan’s themes - loss, love, and the uneasy reconciliation between who we are and who we hoped to be.

Buckeye doesn’t fully deliver on its sweeping ambitions, but it offers a moving and often thought-provoking portrait of ordinary lives intersecting with history. Readers who enjoy family sagas with a touch of mystery and spirituality will likely find it worth the read. 

What are you making and reading this week?