A cold, cold Caturday

Clawdia has a new litter box with high sides.  An apartment has no good place to clean a litter box, and I have no yard with a handy hose.  I am not willing to wash it in my tub, so I use a wet cloth to clean it periodically.  I replaced the covered one we had, thinking it may be easier to clean an open box.  This news may not excite you, but I hope it makes Clawdia happy.  

She was not happy a couple of days ago, with a drippy nose and mucus on her whiskers.  She wanted food and was obviously hungry, but nothing suited her.  My guess is that she couldn't smell it.  She's eating again now, but pray for her, please.

Cold, cold Caturday

Dang, it's cold!  At 8:00 a.m., it was snowing and 4°F, but it felt like -13°F according to the weather report.  Tomorrow and Monday are supposed to be even colder.

Galentine's Day ~ one year ago today

Can you believe it's been only a year since this gathering of "women celebrating women" on Galentine's Day 2020?  Of the people I can identify in the photos from last year, at least one has died, a couple have moved away, and we haven't been sitting together at the Café tables like this since last March.

It seems like ages ago that I posted this invitation saying, "Let's party on Thursday," and we gathered in the Circle@Crown Café.  I was going to simply link this to last year's photo album, but then decided to post all the pictures here.  You can click to enlarge the photos and have fun identifying people you may know.  Yeah, we could see whole faces back then and now have trouble recognizing each other, with only eyes and hair color to help us figure out who that is behind the mask, who now has hair down to her shoulders.

Notice that the Café was open and other customers were there, too.  Some of us brought a friend or a caregiver, so you may not recognize every person in these photos.

And this is what Galentine's Day is all about on February 13th every year, even when we have to "meet" online or by phone.

I first heard about Galentine's Day in 2018, when Barbara and Sandy and Donna helped me get a few invitations out to friends.  I miss my friend Barbara, who died before these photos were taken.

Not just for coffee

Coffee filters, even the large ones, cost almost nothing for a thousand of them at dollar stores.  Here are two dozen ways you could use them, aside from filtering coffee:

1. Coffee filters make excellent covers for bowls or dishes when cooking in the microwave.
2. Coffee filters are lint-free, so clean windows, mirrors, and chrome with them.  They'll leave windows sparkling.
3. Protect your good china by putting a coffee filter between each dish.
4. If you break the cork when opening a wine bottle, filter out the broken cork by pouring the wine through a coffee filter.
5. Protect your cast-iron skillet by placing a coffee filter in the skillet to absorb moisture and prevent rust.
6. Ball up a lint-free coffee filter to apply shoe polish.
7. Recycle frying oil by straining the oil through a sieve lined with a coffee filter.
8. Weigh chopped foods by placing the chopped ingredients in a coffee filter on a kitchen scale.
9. Coffee filters make convenient wrappers for messy foods, like tacos.
10. Stop soil from leaking out through the drainage holes by lining the pot with a coffee filter.
11. Prevent a popsicle from dripping by poking a hole in a coffee filter.
12. Put a few coffee filters on a plate when you fry bacon, French fries, or chicken fingers to soak up all the grease.
13. Keep in the bathroom for razor nick fixers.
14. Use a filter as an easy-to-tear-off backing when you are embroidering or appliquéing soft fabrics.
15. Put baking soda into a coffee filter which you can insert into shoes (or just put in your closet) to absorb or prevent odors.
16. Use filters to strain soup stock — and to tie fresh herbs in — to put in soups and stews.
17. Use a coffee filter to prevent spilling when you add fluids to your car.
18. Use a coffee filter as a spoon rest while cooking and also to clean up small counter spills.
19. Using a filter to hold dry ingredients when baking or when cutting fruits or veggies will save having extra bowls to wash.
20. Use the filters to wrap Christmas ornaments for storage.
21. Use them to remove fingernail polish when out of cotton balls.
22. Use them to sprout seeds by dampening a coffee filter, placing seeds inside, folding it, and putting it in a plastic baggie until they sprout.
23. Use coffee filters as blotting paper for pressed flowers by placing flowers between two coffee filters and putting the filters in a thick book (like a phone book).
24. Use the filters as disposable "snack bowls" for popcorn, chips, and other snacks.

I found these suggestions and the photo on Facebook (and edited for clarity), and then I discovered a lot of people online have suggested uses.  Two lists that I found are 37 Brilliant Uses for Coffee Filters and 18 Surprising Ways to Use Coffee Filters.  Several also suggested using the filters for children's projects.

Beginning ~ with one twin coming home

The morning one of the lost twins returned to Mallard, Lou LeBon ran to the diner to break the news, and even now, many years later, everyone remembers the shock of sweaty Lou pushing through the glass doors, chest heaving, neck-line darkened with his own effort.

The Vanishing Half ~ by Brit Bennett, 2020, fiction

This is a riveting, emotional family story and an exploration of the American history of passing.  The Vignes twin sisters grew up in a small black community in the South and ran away together at age sixteen.  Many years later, one twin lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she tried to escape.  The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past.  What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Mister Linky.

Then and now ~ in the hills and in an apartment

My latest library books were delivered this afternoon.   Here they are, with the bag they came in and with a free resource guide included.  I finished The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson (fiction about Kentucky published in 2019) and planned to write about it this week.  Today's delivery made something click in my thoughts.  I suddenly realized how similar my "home delivery service" (see on the bag) is to what the Book Woman was doing in Kentucky.

• The people in the Kentucky hills were isolated from the rest of the world, and I'm isolated from folks because of a pandemic with suggestions that people my age (80) should avoid going anywhere that's not essential.
• Book Woman rode into the hills to bring reading materials so folks would could "escape" into books or learn something new, and my escape into novels about other people's lives is absolutely similar.
• She brought them old newspapers, which rarely got returned because the patrons used them to paper their walls; though I am connected to friends by phone and internet, they've sent me that 234-page resource for seniors to keep me informed.

I wrote about Hands Up, Don't Shoot a few days ago, but my new book club won't discuss The One by John Marrs until mid-March.  I'll tell you more about that book closer to that date.

Now back to The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek.  I rated the book 9.5 of 10 because it held my attention and kept pulling me in, but I didn't give it a ten because I didn't expect so much violence.  I'm warning you that parts of it are hard to read.  But there are also heart-warming stories, too, like taking time from her deliveries to read to those who didn't know how.  As I was looking for online photos, I found this one with an article The Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky, which gives a good history of the WPA program.  I also found some children's books and put two on hold at my library.

That Book Woman ~ by Heather Hensen, illustrated by David Small, 2008, children's fiction (ages 4-8).  This book is read in its entirety by different people on several YouTube videos.  Listen to one here and another here.  They are only 6-7 minutes long.

Down Cut Shin Creek: The Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky ~ by Kathi Appelt and Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer, 2001, children's history (ages 8-12).  Here's a book trailer on YouTube that shows a lot of black-and-white photos.  If you were a child in the 1930s in the rugged mountains of eastern Kentucky, you would recognize the pack horse librarian immediately as she came up the trail.  Her saddlebags would be filled with books, one of which might be for you.  Your heart would race, and you'd be so happy that you'd shout, "The book woman's comin'!  She's coming down the creek!"

Book we'll discuss next week

The Vanishing Half ~ by Brit Bennett, 2020, fiction

A story about the bonds of sisterhood and just how strong they are, even at their weakest.  The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical.  But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything:  their families, their communities, their racial identities.  Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape.  The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past.  Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined.  What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing.  Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

I was 88 of 101 on the waiting list at my library for this book, which I wanted to read so I could join an online book club discussion coming up a week from today.  I joined this book club a couple of weeks ago and don't know any of the people in it, but they sent me the list of members and books chosen for the next few months.  I had resigned myself to listening to others discuss this book until an email to all the members (including newbies) arrived yesterday:

"Anyone needing this book?  I am done with my library copy.  Let me know if you want to borrow."

Yay!  I wrote back that I'd like to have it, and now the book is in my hands!  I'll start as soon as I post this.  Thank you so very much, new friend!

Salon ~ noticing, reading, listening, and watching

Noticing ~ Clawdia under a chair in the hall last night.  That's as far as she wanted to go when we went for our late evening walk.  We turned around and went home.

Reading ~ The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek ~ by Kim Michele Richardson, 2019, fiction (Kentucky).

The hardscrabble folks of Troublesome Creek have to scrap for everything — everything except books, that is.  Thanks to Roosevelt's Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, Troublesome's got its very own traveling librarian, Cussy Mary Carter.  Cussy's not only a book woman, however, she's also the last of her kind, her skin a shade of blue unlike most anyone else.  Not everyone is keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and a Blue is often blamed for any whiff of trouble.  If Cussy wants to bring the joy of books to the hill folks, she's going to have to confront prejudice as old as the Appalachians and suspicion as deep as the holler.

Listening ~ to YouTube videos.  Christopher Plummer (1929-2021) died this past week, so I found this link to him singing Edelweiss from "The Sound of Music"  To my surprise, the next video showed the real Maria von Trapp teaching Julie Andrews to yodel.  Wow, it was fun!  So I'm sharing it with you.

Watching ~ a flock of robins.  I happened to glance out my window today as a flock of robins swooped down to rest in the bare trees below my window.  I stood watching them come and go, and Clawdia came to see what I was doing.  I tried to direct her attention out the window, but she kept watching ME and my pointing finger.  An hour later, she noticed the birds on her own, so I went back to see that — yes — birds were still arriving and sitting on the branches below.  This shows only a few, and they are almost too tiny to see.  Sorry.

By the way, it only got up to 16°F today, with a low of 6°F.