Windy weather

I was out walking on Thursday because it was a "nice day," when I felt a shove like someone trying to push me away -- hard.  Then the wind tried to grab my Rollator, which I quickly pushed off the sidewalk onto the grass.  The wind, shoving me like an asalaint, then tried to blow the contents out of the basket on the Rollator seat.  While I shoved downward with my hands, that wind actually tried to take the whole basket.  I hurried home as fast as the wind would let me, and I literally have not left the building since then.  It was awful!  (By the way, those trees above are not like our trees, but they show a strong wind blowing wherever they are.)

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis ~ by J. D. Vance, 2018, memoir, 264 pages

I wrote about this book HERE, when J.D. was nominated to run as Trump's VP, and tt originally got only one comment.  Helen said, "How did I not put together that the author and the VP candidate are the same person? I'm so embarrassed. I thought the book was good but not great."  It's technically "good" (as in college-level words and writing), but I am struggling to keep going.

Here's what I have posted this week:

1. On Monday, I mused about a book set in the Smithsonian, HERE.
2. On Tuesday, I showed two views of the Mona Lisa, HERE.
3. Wednesday I wrote about Unicorn Day, HERE.
4. On Thursday, I was thinking about birds on our feeder, HERE.
5. On Friday, my book beginning was from a book about planning ahead for your own death, HERE.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Let's begin by imagining something

Beginning

Right now:  imagine dying.  Make it what you want.  You could be in your bedroom, on a lonesome hill, or in a beautiful hotel.  Whatever you want.  What is the season?  What time of day is it?  Perhaps you want to lie in sweet summer grass and watch the sun rise over the ocean.  Imagine that.  Perhaps you want to be cuddled in a soft bed, listening to Mozart -- or Beyonce.  Do you want to be alone?  Is there a particular hand you want to hold?  Do you smell the faint scent of baking bread -- or Chanel No. 19?  Close your eyes.  Feel the grass.  The silk sheets.  The skin of the loving hand.  Hear the long-held note.  Dance a little.  Smell the bread.  Imagine that.

Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying ~ by Sallie Tisdale, 2018, planning, 242 pages

Sallie Tisdale offers a perspective on death and dying that is informed by her many years working as a nurse with more than a decade in palliative care.  From the sublime (the faint sound of Mozart as you take your last breath) to the ridiculous (lessons on how to close the sagging jaw of a corpse), she leads us through the peaks and troughs of death with a calm, wise, and humorous hand.  This is more than a how-to manual or a spiritual bible: it is a graceful compilation of honest and intimate anecdotes based on the deaths she has witnessed, as well as stories from cultures, traditions, and literature around the world, including:

What does it mean to die “a good death”?  Can there be more than one kind of good death?  What can I do to make my death, or the deaths of my loved ones, good?  What to say and not to say, what to ask, and when, from the dying, loved ones, doctors, and more.  What you might expect, physically and emotionally, including the limitations, freedoms, pain, and joy of this unique time.  What happens to a body after death?  What options are available to me after my death, and how do I choose — and make sure my wishes are followed?  In other words, she offers the resources and reassurance that we all need for planning for the end.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Thinking about birds today

I've downloaded the Bird Buddy app so I could see the birds who use the bird feeder on our patio here at the Crown Center.  Now I have to figure out how it works.  This week has been busy as I got some paperwork finished and turned in, so I have not read nearly as much as I usually do and this is a very short post.

Added on Friday:  I deleted that app, because it will only show me the birds landing on a bird feeder I buy myself.  So I can watch the birds that come here, but not on my phone.

Unicorn Day

I just noticed that today is International Unicorn Day.  While looking for an illustration, I learned it is also National Unicorn Day.  Wow, people must really be fascinated by unicorns!  I've always associated the word with children's toys.

Word of the Day

u·ni·corn = /ˈyo͞onəˌkôrn / noun = 1.  a mythical animal typically represented as a horse with a single straight horn projecting from its forehead.  2.  something that is highly desirable but difficult to find or obtain.  Example = "An album like this is something of a unicorn."

Two views of the Mona Lisa

I just learned that "umop apisdn" is "upside down" spelled upside down with different letters of the alphabet.  While looking for an example, I noticed pictures of the Mona Lisa upside down.  Yes, she's recognizable even upside down.  Then I was surprised that one "upside down" Mona Lisa has an upside down mouth.  What?!?  Yeah, take a look at the original article, HERE.  I turned these pictures upside down and back again a few times.  Her mood may have changed, but it made me smile.

Have you visited the Smithsonian?

The Smithsonian Institution ~ by Gore Vidal, 1998, historical fiction, 260 pg

A teenage math and physics prodigy is summoned to a secret laboratoy in the Smithsonian in 1939 to help work on bombs for the coming war.  Once there, he discovers that parts of the Smithsonian enable him to move through time, that the exhibits come to life after hours, and that he is doomed to die in combat if the US enters WWII.  As he brainstorms with Robert Oppenheimer, he gets a glimpse of the coming war.

Working in secret to avert the war while working with the laboratory to help win it, he is helped along the way by a cast of characters from around the museum and US history including a pottery-obsessed President Lincoln, the bored and amorous wife of Grover Cleveland, soldiers and citizens from history, and the mysterious James Smithson himself, the founder of the museum.

Protesting in 2025 and marching in 1918

My friend Jane was among a group protesting on a nearby overpass Saturday.  She called this "the smaller group."  I called and thanked her for doing it, since there's no way I can do that sort of thing anymore.  The book I'm reading is about an earlier protest, so these two subjects are perfect together for my post.  Click HERE to read about other protests in all fifty states.

The Women's March: A Novel of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession ~ by Jennifer Chiaverini, 2021, historical fiction, 352 pages

Twenty-five-year-old Alice Paul returns to her native New Jersey after several years on the front lines of the suffrage movement in Great Britain.  Weakened from imprisonment and hunger strikes, she is nevertheless determined to invigorate the stagnant suffrage movement in her homeland.  Nine states have already granted women voting rights, but only a constitutional amendment will secure the vote for all.

To inspire support for the campaign, Alice organizes a magnificent procession down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. on the day before the inauguration of President-elect Woodrow Wilson, a firm antisuffragist.  Joining the march is thirty-nine-year-old New Yorker Maud Malone, librarian and advocate for women’s and workers’ rights.  The daughter of Irish immigrants, Maud has acquired a reputation — and a criminal record — for interrupting politicians’ speeches with pointed questions they’d rather ignore.

Civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett resolves that women of color must also be included in the march — and the proposed amendment.  Born into slavery in Mississippi, Ida worries that white suffragists may exclude Black women if it serves their own interests.

On March 3, 1913, the glorious march commences, but negligent police allow vast crowds of belligerent men to block the parade route — jeering, shouting threats, assaulting the marchers, and possibly endangering not only the success of the demonstration, but the women’s very lives.

Here's what I have posted this week:

1. On Monday, I mused about walking, HERE.
2. On Tuesday, I posted about things (and people) I'm grateful for, HERE.
3. On Tuesday, I also posted the Active April calendar from the Action for Happiness folks, HERE.
4. Wednesday was National Walking Day, HERE.
5. On Thursday, I wrote about everyone being welcome (or not), HERE.
6. On Friday, my book beginning was from the book by the woman who rescued Anne Frank's family, HERE.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Beginning ~ in dark and terrible times

Beginning

I am not a hero.  I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more — much more — during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of us who bear witness.  Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then.

Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family ~ by Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold, 1987, World War Two history, 272 pages, 10/10

For more than two years, Miep Gies and her husband helped hide the Franks from the Nazis.  Like thousands of unsung heroes of the Holocaust, they risked their lives each day to bring food, news, and emotional support to the victims.  She found the diary and brought the world a message of love and hope.  From her own remarkable childhood as a World War I refugee to the moment she places a small, red-orange, checkered diary — Anne’​s legacy — into Otto Frank’s hands, Miep Gies remembers her days with simple honesty and shattering clarity. Each page rings with courage and heartbreaking beauty.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Eat dessert first

Have you heard the saying "Eat dessert first"?  One day I ate Greek yogurt for breakfast, along with what was left of a blueberry muffin from our Café.  Both taste sweet, and I remember thinking, "I'm eating dessert for my first food of the day today."  But Greek yogurt is supposed to be healthy with those probiotics.

How can a school classroom being welcoming of all of its students be a violation of district policy?  Anne at My Head Is Full of Books shared a controversy (and a video) about a poster like this one (saying that EVERYONE is welcome) that has gotten a school teacher in trouble.  People are asking, "What kind of country are we living in?"  Click HERE (or HERE) to see an interview with the teacher.

National Walking Day

National Walking Day is every year on the first Wednesday in April.  That's today, so here is a question for you to ponder while you walk:  Would you rather walk through a city or through the woods exploring nature?  I'd have to see whether the sun is shining or it's raining.  I enjoy walking outside when there is not too much pollen in the air.  I use a Rollator, so I no longer walk in the woods, as I once enjoyed.  Just keep walking to stay as healthy as you can.

It's April again

Although I haven't been posting these monthly calendars in a long time, I'm still receiving the daily Action for Happiness texts on my phone and monthly calendas like this on my computer.  Today, I decided to share it again, so here it is.  Click to enlarge it, so you can read what it suggests we do each day.  You can find previous monthly calendar suggestions by clicking HERE.

A book and a dozen things I'm grateful for

Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks ~ by Diana Butler Bass, 2019, sociology, 256 pages

We know that gratitude is good, but somefind it hard to sustain a life of gratefulness.  Bass takes on this “gratitude gap” and offers up surprising, relevant, and powerful insights to practice gratitude.  She explores the transformative power of gratitude for our personal lives and in communities, showing how we can make change in our own lives and in the world.  She says gratitude as a path to greater connection with others.  It’s time to embrace a more radical practice of gratitude — the virtue that heals us and helps us thrive.

What am I grateful for today?

1. I'm grateful for my friends.
2. I'm grateful that my eyes are not as itchy as they were recently.
3. I'm grateful that I can walk to our Café without going outside at all.
4. I'm grateful for sunshine.
5. I'm grateful for blue skies, when they come.
6. I'm grateful for the Clean Speech St. Louis booklet, which this year trained our brains to be grateful.  It's why I ordered the book above.
7. I'm grateful that I can read and explore the world of ideas.
8. I'm grateful for the friend who forgot to meet me for lunch in the Café yesterday, wondering if and when she'll remember.
9. I'm grateful for my bed when I want to nap mid-day.
10. I'm grateful for my easy chair in the corner, where I can blog or read while sitting beside my window.
11. I'm grateful for that window, where I can see the world go by, as people walk or jog or carry home bags of groceries.
12. I'm grateful that I can close my door and be alone.  (I am an introvert, though some don't quite believe me because I'm friendly.)

Musing on Monday

This is obviously NOT my own phone, since it cannot take a photo of itself.  It shows how I count my steps each day.  Even though I'll be 85 in a few days, I've walked about 1.5 miles a day this year and slightly more last year.

How did it get to be Sunday again, already?

The Stranger ~ by Albert Camus, translated from French by Matthew Ward, 1989 (first published in 1942), literary fiction, xxxvi pages of introductory information + 117 pages

This is the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach.  Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life.  I have read this several times, but I'm ready to read it again.

Here's what I have posted this week:

1. On Monday, I posted about names of places, HERE.
2. On Thursday, I wrote about my dream of words, repeated over and over, HERE.
3. On Friday, my book beginning was a repeat of a book I now hope to actually finish reading, HERE.

Well, it appears I haven't done much blogging this week, doesn't it?  Maybe in the coming week, I'll do more blogging.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Beginning again

Beginning

"Letter to a Daughter at Thirteen"

Here's a secret you should know about mothers.  We spy.  Yes, on our kids.  It starts at birth.  In those first months we spend twenty-three hours a day trying to get you to sleep, grateful you aren't yet verbal because at some point we run out of lyrics to the lullabies and start singing "Hush little baby, don't be contrary,/ Mama's gonna have a coro-nary."  And then you finally doze off, and what do you think we do?  Go read a book?  No, we stand over your cradle and stare, thinking, God, those little fingernails.  Those eyelashes.  Where did this perfect creature come from?

Small Wonder ~ by Barbara Kingsolver, 2002, literary essays, xvi + 269 pages

I have already shared the first lines of the first essay in this book a few months ago, HERE.  But I never got around to actually reading the whole book.  So this time, I opened the book in the middle to an essay entitled "Letter to a Daughter at Thirteen" and used that one.  I'll read it first and then the rest of the book, which has twenty-two essays about nature, family, literature, and the joys of everyday life while taking a look at wars, violence, and poverty in our world.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Dream thoughts

As I woke up this morning, even before opening my eyes, I realized that I was repeating, "who, what, when, where, why, and how."  Yes, in this order, slightly different from the illustration I found online.  It was like a mantra.  I just lay there, without rolling over or anything, repeating it in my head:  "Who, what, when, where, why, and how."  Like a song.  And no, my sing-songy words did NOT have a question mark at the end.  Simply "who, what, when, where, why, and how."  Well, I knew I was a word person, but a dream about half a dozen words repeated over and over?  That's a new one for me, the wordsmith.

Toponymy or what's in a name?

to·pon·y·my /təˈpänəmē/ noun = the study of place names.  For example, some places are derived from topigraphical features:

1. Montana means "mountains" in Spanish.
2. Mississippi means "big river" in Chippewa.
3. Moccasin Bend describes the Cherokee name for where the Tennessee River is foot-shaped, and they wore moccasins on their feet.

Below are moccasins like I'm wearing right now.

First, a coincidence

I've already shared this card from my sister, HERE, but today I'm sharing it again because of a coincidence.  I found it under a pile of books yesterday, on the day that just happened to be my sister's birthday.  Here's the story behind it:

It's a birthday card from my sister Ann, who died in 2016.  There's no date on it, but it was ironic that I found it on March 22nd, HER birthday.  A week ago, the online cards I use reminded me to "send a card" to her, and I told someone that I'm not convinced they know how to contact the dead.

On the front it says:  "Perhaps you know why women over fifty don't have babies."  Printed inside:  "They would put them down somewhere and forget where they left them.  I can't even remember why I'm sending you this card."  My sister added:  "But I do remember that I Love You!  Ann."  The amazing coincidence, to me, is that I happened across it on HER birthday.  It's like she's sharing another laugh with me, even though she died almost a decade ago.

Five Equations That Changed the World: The Power and Poetry of Mathematics ~ by Michael Guillen, 1995, mathematics history, 288 pages

Dr. Guillen shares simple stories of five fascinating people who were able to harness the power of electricity, fly in airplanes, land astronauts on the moon, build a nuclear bomb, and understand the mortality of all life on earth.  He was ABC's Science Editor and an instructor at Harvard University.

Here's what I have posted this week:

1. On Monday, I posted an Irish proverb, HERE.
2. On Tuesday, I wrote about wearing green and "the luck of the Irish," HERE.
3. Wednesday's word was "rankle," HERE.
4. On Thursday, I wrote about happiness and kind words, HERE.
5. Book Beginnings on Friday's subject was the winner of the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012, HERE.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Beginning ~ with the house's foundation

Beginning

Small trees had attacked my parents' house at the foundation.  They were just seedlings with one or two rigid, healthy leaves.  Neverthe-less, the stalky shoots had managed to squeeze through knife cracks in the decorative brown shingles covering the cement blocks.  They had grown into the unseen wall and it was difficult to pry them loose.  My father wiped his palm across his forehead and damned their toughness.

The Round House ~ by Louise Erdrich, 2012, literary fiction, 357 pages

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked.  The details of the crime are slow to surface because Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe.  In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed.  He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude.  Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.

While his father, a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own.  Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe.  And this is only the beginning.

The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece — at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.  And it won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Are you happy?

March 20 is International Day of Happiness, and it also happens to be the first day of Spring.  After a rough winter, I imagine lots of folks are happy to see the arrival of spring.

I have a copy of Clean Speech St. Louis, Volume 4.  It encourages us to speak words of kindness during the month of March this year.  Each year has a slightly different focus.  It reminds us (daily during March) that what we say makes a difference.

I noticed some trees between me and the highway are turning white.  I wonder if they are dogwoods.  I would go check, but my spring allergies say "no" to that.