Window Thinking
I don’t know why or when I started my sort-of-tradition, but Ebenezer Scrooge and his ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future pretty regularly show up on my December reading lists. I’m a big fan of Jim Dale (thanks to his marvelous narration of the Harry Potter series) and I usually listen to Jim Dale …
I first learned of Katharine Hayhoe several years ago when I participated in the Creation Care group at the church we were attending. One of the fellow group members was excited that Hayhoe was coming to Anchorage and we would had opportunity to hear her speak. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend any of her …
Circling back to a book I read last month….In the final pages of The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, author Helene Hanff includes a story that I keep thinking about. The book is an account of Hanff’s trip to London – a place she imagined and interacted with throughout her 20 year pen pal relationship with …
It was 4F degrees when the dog and I went out for a walk this morning at 8a, still an hour before the sunrise. Before stepping out the door, I pulled on layers of warmth – these Alaska years have taught us many variations according to conditions, and it always cracks us up that as …
Tomorrow is Ryan’s birthday which has become a marking point during our Alaska years – will we get our Anchorage winter snow pack started by his birthday? This year, it seems we have. (and right on schedule) Most afternoons lately I have been hanging out with our chickens – ever since a hawk swooped down …
A mellow sun hangs low this afternoon and autumn is fading out. (I took this photo on the 18th, but I got distracted while looking for 17 beats. Thus, the delay in posting.)
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. (from Wikipedia) Realizing that I tend to like epistolary novels, I’ve been on the lookout for them and recently I found this clever book by Caroline Preston. Preston assembles real newspaper clippings, photos, and other period …
On our routine walk the dog the other night, David and I stepped beneath some of my favorite neighborhood lights, through the gate, and onto the field at the school down the street. As soon as we were through the gate though, we realized something big was moving to our right. As our eyes adjusted …
If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much. I have no idea why I have only just got around to reading this delightful book. I love bookstores and epistolary tales and this is a wonderful collection of letters sent back and forth across the …
The setting sun cast an irresistible glow through our windows tonight and it pulled me straight out the front door and down the street to the edge of town. The mountains were out. Sleeping Lady, covered in a blanket of snow. And beyond her, the magnificent Alaska Range. A little to the north, I could …
The greenhouse is cleaned out and the yard is pretty much put to bed. Our garbage service recently sent a note to say they’ll stop picking up the yard debris can at the end of the month and won’t start up again till May. That is six months from now. The sun rises at 8:45 …
The sun showed up this afternoon and pushed some clouds apart. Patches of blue sky became backdrop for great flocks of geese flying south, loudly honking their goodbyes. Rays of sun have even managed to make it to my face still warm as I sit out in the backyard, drinking tea with an ever present …
September 1, 2012. The sky was flat grey as our moving caravan crossed the Canada/U.S. border and in just a few miles more, the rain began to fall. Welcome to Alaska. We’d left Oregon in 80 degree summer sunshine, but here we had driven deep into the heart of fall. Bright flecks of gold sparked …
Richard’s entire body is a costume discarded, the party over….His limbs are petulant children, unreachable through begging, bribery, ultimatums, or sweet talk.He tries to imagine the war beneath his skin; the invaded countries of his neurons and muscles overwhelmed, decimated; the neutral territories of bone, ligament, and tendon rendered useless by the horrific destruction surrounding …
A chicken knows only what it can see. A chicken’s life is full of magic. Lo and behold. A fictional story that read rather like a memoir, this short novel held so many wonderful, accurate descriptions of backyard chickens. And I loved it. Because…..backyard chickens!!! The author used caring for these feathered friends to serve …
When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what’s left to us? What do I have, what do you have, what do any of us have left except the overpowering temptation to rail against God and to blame him for the dark night into which he’s led us, to blame him for our misery, to blame …
I just ran across this picture I snapped right before I flew to Oregon and then forgot to post. Back when the view out my window was bare and brown with little dirty piles of snow littered around, I worked this puzzle and it was good!
I’ve been on a Lisa Genova trail since I re-read Still Alice a couple months ago. I appreciate Genova’s ability to lean into her training and experience as as a neuroscientist and center a neurological condition within a compelling, insightful story. This was yet another easy to read, engaging story that I have come to …
I wrote a short piece for the members of my congregation in the church newsletter. By accident I learned that the piece was being used in homiletic classes in my seminary in St. Louis. Well, if it was good enough for theologians, it should be good enough for a wider public. Therefore I reused the …
One of my boys noticed when I tucked a few puzzles into my luggage while packing for my recent weekend trip to Portland and he asked if I was going to work on a puzzle with Pa (my dad) while I was there. “Not enough time,” I said, but I was planning on a puzzle …
I bought a couple new puzzles this month. My selection of this, the first, was no doubt inspired by the fact that I was reading Rebecca Stead’s Liar & Spy. I wasn’t sure how the pointillism would go in the puzzling, but it turned out to be a remarkably pleasant project.
All the long afternoon they sang, and talked, and ate, and Dicey didn’t think about her boats, the ones she was working on or the ones she was dreaming about, except once, when they came to the line in Momma’s old song that said “bring me a boat will carry two.” She could see that …
Our brains are wired differently, and we have to figure out how to make them work. A car accident. A brain injury. And the hard work to recover a life. Or rather, the hard work to learn a new way of being in the world. Revisiting Still Alice started me on a Lisa Genova reading …
Every child of a parent with HD has a 50 percent chance of inheriting the mutated gene. The discovery of this mutation made genetic testing possible for anyone living at risk. The test definitively determines genetic status. A positive test result means the person has the mutation and will develop HD. To date, 90 percent …