Becoming

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Reading this book is like sitting down across a cozy cafe table from the nicest, smartest, most focused, most driven, most interesting person, and listening to her tell stories.  I learned a lot about recent history.  Recommended!

My mom liked to read biographies.  I bet she'd have enjoyed this one.


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September 28, 2018

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Charming all-pic/no-words story about friendly cooperative interaction.

If you need a break from reality, this is a good one.

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April 2, 2018

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Positive stories about historical women artists (almost all painters) who managed to make art despite all the obstacles in their way.  It is striking how much controlling fertility makes it more possible for a woman to have a life.  One of those things we take for granted here and now, but which is a *really* recent innovation not available to all.....

I recommend this book.  I hope her next book will include a greater variety of media.

My monthly postcards to Debbie, Debbie, Gary, Elizabeth, and Bernie.  (Closeup below.)

Drexel's natural history museum was closing out some of its older postcards.  I helped them with that.

Hmm.  Wondering if all viviparous quadrupeds in North America were/are mammals, and if so, why not just say "mammals"............  I am not aware of any non-mammals in these parts who are viviparous quadrupeds, but I do not reject the hypothesis that they exist............

Lots of telephone poles at the entrance to a park.  Hooray for upgrading the grid!

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Sidewalk Flowers

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“I must have flowers, always, and always.” ― Claude Monet



This is a really sweet book.  All pictures, no words.  Definitely recommended for adults; decide for yourself if it's ok for a kid you may know.

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Inside of a Dog

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If you love dogs, and/or are curious about dogs and how they differ from people (or wolves), and/or wonder what it might be like to be a dog, you will probably enjoy Inside of a Dog.

Alexandra Horowitz is a dog lover, and a cognitive scientist, and she has paid attention to dogs (including serious scientific attention) for many years.

She writes engagingly about dogs, and about how they are (and are not) like us (or like wolves).

Your concept of "dog" will change, once you are exposed to the concepts and ideas and thoughts in this book.

I recommend it.

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We must remember.....

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Last night I read Maira Kalman's And the Pursuit of Happiness.  Maira is a thinker and an artist.  I believe that, at least in part, she thinks by painting.  She certainly expresses her thoughts in paintings.

This book is about our country, our aspirations, our despair, our hopes, our leaders, our predecessors, ourselves, our neighbors, our past, present, and future.

She visited many places around the country.

She quotes many notables.

I was struck by several quotes, including this one, which she found on a sign over the men's room in the Capitol Building:

"We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred is a wedge designed to attack our civilization."  -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt



Yes, please, let's remember this, and amend our behavior accordingly.

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Follow Your Gut

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You may recall that I took a class called Gut Check, which was about the microbes that live in and on us (primarily those in our guts).

It was a really good class, packed with fascinating cutting-edge info.

When I saw this book at the library, by Rob Knight (who taught the class), I had to check it out.

It is a fun and light and humorous read.  Highly recommended to anyone who is curious about what is going on, unseen, and, for millenia unsuspected, inside our guts.

(And yes, there is evidence that our gut microbes not only assist with digestion, but also may affect our immunity, sleep, weight, mood, and likelihood of suffering from myriad unpleasant diseases and conditions.)


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Six-Word Memoirs

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Not long ago I talked about Six Words of Advice.

Of course there is a Six-Word Memoirs....

Mostly I found it disconcerting.  So many of them were about today, or else about being completely clogged by something that happened years (decades?) ago..............

We are not defined by what happened to us years ago.  Shaped, yes, to some degree.  Defined?  No.  Just.  No.  Move on, people.  Affect the shape of your own destiny...............



My favorite one in the book was "Well, I thought it was funny." -- Stephen Colbert.


Here's mine:  Questioned everything.  Thought for myself.  Breathed.


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Best Advice in Six Words

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An interesting idea -- give advice in six words.  I found a few that I thought were useful.

Of course I had to give it a shot.  My serious one is "Value your time.  It is finite."

My first frivolous one is "You can't have too many ziplocs."


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February 13

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Breakfast at Zingerman's Next Door.

Bostok.  Mmmmmmmmm........

Pecan pie.  Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.................

Glass mugs on a reflective table top.

With Iron Goddess tea.

This has to be one of the best book titles ever.  Terse, clever, to the point........  I love the image, too.

Hooray for grocery-store (wheat) grass on a cold and snowy winter day.

And for grocery-store flowers.

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The Uncommon Reader

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I hadn't finished a work of fiction by a new-to-me author in a LONG time.  Every book by a new-to-me author I've picked up (and I pick up a lot) I have closed with disgust, having read less than a quarter of the book, for months and months and months.

We visit the library every week.  I keep bringing novels home; I keep reading a smidgen; I keep closing them and sending them back.

Finally, last Saturday, my streak of losers was broken.

I wish I remembered where I got the recommendation for The Uncommon Reader; I'd be glad to read something else recommended by the same source.

It's small, light, lightweight, but with comfortably serious undertones.  It made me laugh out loud several times.

The premise is that the Queen of England, who has always been too busy to read very much, stumbles across reading, and becomes a voracious reader.  Which leads her to think more, in different ways, about what she knows, and what is going on around her, and about her place in the world........

I enjoyed it.  I thought the ending rather abrupt, but not enough so to put me off the book.

Recommended.


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reserved-book surprises

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My point doesn't show up in this pic very well, alas. 

Remember, not too long ago, I collected two of the books I'd put on hold at the library, and one was a small handful and the other was too big to carry home if walking?  You never know what size things are going to be, when you've put them on hold.  On the library's website, all the pics of the covers are the same size..................

The small handful of items above (on top of a "regular-size hardcover novel," as an attempt at scale) were another surprise.  That's five (5!) items (including two CDs of music) that bulk no more than the one novel.  This made me laugh.

In general, I do not like surprises.  But given that I now pick up my "on reserve" books with a car, it's only amusing when I find out how big they are.  Or are not.....  I wasn't expecting my two CDs of music (nor the DVD of tv programs) to be large, but that my two books should be as small as they were struck my funny bone.  Especially in contrast to my last library-reserve surprise, which was truly huge.  (About which, more, tomorrow.)


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November 20

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Walking.  That redbud at the bottom of the hill.  These new varieties of redbuds have some fancy leaves!

Sprig of Bradford pear.

The skies were excellent on the 20th.........

There are still a few flowers blooming, here and there..............  Coneflower.

I think this is chamomile.

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yay for books, and yay for public art

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And when you can get books and public art in the same place, even better!

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September 26

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Bostok, from Zingerman's Bakehouse.  If you like almond flavor, I predict you will love this. 

Running the Saturday errands.  Looking west-southwest from the sidewalk beside the Pittsfield branch of the library.

Looking south.

I put a lot of books on hold at the library.  I used to put them on hold, in olden times, when I wanted somthing that wasn't on the shelf, but I put WAY more books on hold now.

Any time I'm on the web and someone talks about an interesting book, or I'm taking a class that is full of chefs talking about what they do, and I'm intrigued.............  I click on over to the library, and reserve the book(s).  And if my library doesn't have them, because they would rather be purchasing foreign-language novels than books requested by actual tax-payers, perhaps I can get the books through the Michigan inter-library loan..............

One of Life's Little Surprises is what shows up when you put books on reserve.  You never know, for example, whether you actually want to check a book out until you've had a chance to look at it (or, at least, *I* don't....). 

And you never know how big the book is going to be. 

Look at this!  !!!  This is one of the biggest books I've ever seen!  It's enormous, and it's really heavy, too!  Definitely in the "must have car to take home" category!

The pictures are A M A Z I N G.  Sort of like the difference between seeing a movie at home on tv, or at an IMAX theater.  !!!  If you have any interest in photography, or food, see if you can lay your hands on a copy of The Photography of Modernist Cuisine.  And you might want to bring a forklift when you pick it up........


Grocery-store flowers.

On football days, locals carefully choreograph their excursions.  "Leave home shortly after the game begins...."

Many businesses and home-owners relatively near the stadium let people park on their lawns.  For a fee. This is a church with a lot of football-goers' cars.  $$$...............

Pioneer high school's property used to belong to the university.  When the U sold it to the school district, it came with the understanding that football traffic would be allowed to park there in perpetuity.  For a fee (which goes to the district).

This next image was taken from 7th, just south of Stadium.

A much closer crop of the above.  Pioneer is kitty-corner from the stadium; you can see the scoreboard in this image....

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using Overdrive to get the audiobooks that are available from your library

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I had an inkling one could check audiobooks out of one's library, but had no idea how it worked..........................

How cool.

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quote from David Hume Kennerly On the iPhone

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David Hume Kennerly is a professional photographer.  He's won the Pulitzer Prize.

He challenged himself to take at least one good picture (according to his standards) with his iPhone, every day for a year.  Here's something he says in On the iPhone:

"Great pictures are about the eye, not about the gear."


I love it when people at the top of their field agree with something I've been thinking right along......


The book shows a lot of the pics.  He writes about what he was thinking, and what he was working toward as he took the pics.

This is another book from the library.  I'm enjoying it.



Here is a post to his blog about working on the book, with some of the pics he took that year.

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Chihuly

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Here's a book I checked out of the library.  I'm not crazy about the cover (nor about the work on the cover), but there is a lot of eye candy in the book.  If you love color, and/or you enjoy Chihuly's work, check it out of your library, and enjoy......

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Carousel Seas

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I'm enjoying Sharon Lee's Archer's beach series.  Set in current times on the Maine coast, it's a fantasy novel.  Interesting characters with interesting abilities.  Good guys and bad guys.  Happy endings.  Yay.

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excellent bookstores

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An article from Smithsonian about excellent bookstores around the world....

Love that Portuguese one!  Wow.

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