Hazelwood Food and Drink, Bloomington, Minnesota

Let me preface this by saying that when you are near either the Minneapolis airport or the Mall of America, you are not handed a lot of cute charming places to eat out. If you compound that by the fact that malls in general make me a little claustrophobic and dizzy (not a great combination to be sure), and so avoiding a place that requires you to traverse the biggest mall in the Midwest, your choices are even more limited. So I really enjoyed my meal here. I ate with someone who I really like and who I rarely see, and it was a good place to catch up and linger over the meal--we considered some ethnic food options, but that would have been harder to accomplish, and so not a consideration for everyone, but a plus for this place. I had the Minute Chicken (pictured here), which is a panko, herb, and aged parmesan crusted breast, served with angel hair pasta, wild mushrooms, shallots, capers, in a lemon butter sauce, and it was very good--simply prepared, enormous portion, and not so messy that you couldn't eat and talk. They have a nice cocktail menu, and I started there, and I would definitely come back if I was in the neighborhood again.

Ten Birds That Changed The World by Stephen Moss

The premise is that birds have, in various ways, led to “paradigm shifts” in human history. Had it not been for the Wild Turkey, for instance, the first Pilgrims to America, the English ones, would not, possibly, have survived, he says. And pigeons, with their uncanny homing instincts, have played heroic outsized roles in various of our human wars, including the First World War, where a bird named Cher Ami, shot and wounded in the chest, with the loss of the right leg and the sight in one eye, nevertheless made it home, and was credited with saving the lives of 194 Yanks – the “Lost Battalion.” The book is a grab-bag of facts about the ten birds, mostly culled from other works--do nothing earth shattering, but enjoyably stitched together. In his first chapter, on the Raven, Moss is an enthusiastic borrower from Bernd Heinrich’s classic The Mind of the Raven, and in chapter ten (about which more below) a good deal is sourced from a 2022 book, The Bald Eagle, by Jack E. Davis. The thing that is mostly left out is that man has irreparably altered avian life--mostly to their detriment, but that is for another book.

Love At First Sight (2023)

I spent most of six weeks on the road by myself for work and watched a string of romantic comedies that the rest of my family would blanch at watching, they are so formulaic and often badly written. This does fall into both of those pitfalls, and yet, in the end, I was glad that I watched it. There is so little of this, the understandable connection that people can make with each other when they are unexpectedly found sitting together for an enforced period of time--in this case, on a transatlantic flight--and then for whatever reason walk away, never to meet again. And to regret that they didn't do something to change that outcome. We first see Hadley racing through JFK Airport in New York to catch a plane to London. It is December 20, the peak of holiday travel, with over 193,000 passengers arriving and departing, causing an average of 23-minute delays at check-in and a peak wait time of 117 minutes at security. This explains why Hadley misses her plane by four minutes and has to wait for the next one when the only seat available is business class. It does give her time to look for a place to charge her cell phone, and that’s how she meets Oliver, who is studying, yes, statistics and data science at Yale. THey part ways, Hadley to attend her father's wedding and he to attend a party for his mother, and they do manage to cross paths, they find out that their lives are indeed more complex than they first appeared, and they have a chance to decide what to do about that.

Hard By A Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili

Today is Veteran's Day in the United States, where veterans are honored on the anniversary of the Armistice that ended WWI. It was the Great War, the War To End All Wars. It was not a great war, or even the worst war, and it did not end all wars, but a lot of people died needlessly and it is worth remembering that. This is a pretty harrowing book that depicts a lot of aspects of war that are hard to picture and get a handle on without these stories to guide us. There are events in the book that are based on history: The Georgian Civil War of 1991-1993 and the Russo-Georgian War of 2008. Even the absurdly comedic opening scenes, where the book’s hero arrives back in Tbilisi, a home he fled as a child, to find the city flooded and populated by roaming exotic wild animals. This serves to pinpoint the book’s first events to June 2015, when a flood actually did free most of the population of the Tbilisi Zoo, leading to pandemonium in the city. The rest of this is a story, but one that is inhabited with believable and mostly likable people. When Saba and his older brother, Sandro, came to London as children with their father, Irakli, in 1992, their mother had to stay behind in Georgia, where she died. Years later, Irakli returns to Georgia and two months later writes his sons, now young men, that he’s gone to the mountains and they should not look for him. Sandro flies to Georgia anyway, emailing Saba that he’s found a trail to Irakli. Then Sandro’s emails stop, so Saba, an insurance salesman, also heads to Georgia. Saba is obsessed with finding Sandro and Irakli but also obsessed with the past. Although he hires a guide, the beguiling taxi driver Nodar, he also follows a host of voices from dead relatives and friends offering advice and grievances. As he continually eludes the shadowy police authorities tracking him, his pursuit becomes an increasingly desperate cat-and-mouse mystery--the tension rises and it feels like the reader is just as caught up in it as Saba. An edge of your seat sort of read.

Automatic, Birmingham, Alabama

If you are in Birmingham for any reason and need to have lunch, I would recommend this restaurant. It is located in the building in the Lakeview neighborhood in cool old building that was once an automatic sprinkler facotry--the rennovation of the space is upscale, but leaves the shell of the old factory intact--it was a beautiful fall day when we ate there and we took advantage of an extensive outdoor patio to eat, because we come from northern climes and the days we have to eat outside are indeed numbered. The chef is Adam Evans, who won a James Beard Best Southern Chef Award in 2022, which seems well deserved based on my one visit. The menu is repleat with seafood that largely comes from the Gulf of Mexico, prepared in a straight-forwad, unfussy style that enhances the fresh flavors and doesn't mask the underlying quality of the ocean's bounty. My husband requires fresh oysters when on a coast and this met tht requirement very nicely, with a couple of good accompaniments. They claim to have some relationships with local fishermen who keep them supplied on a regular basis with whole fish that they can then do with as they please, ocean to restaurant without setting fin in a market, and it shows in the food.

Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt

I bought this as a second hand book at the library in South Pomfret, Vermont--which is quintessentially Vermont, in that it is a very cool building, it had books for sale scattered outside, inside in the lobby, at the top on the basement stairs and then all through the basement (which, it being a funky house of a certain age, was surprisingly dry and intact). I used to passionately browse through used books stores and find gems to bring home--now I have shelves that groan with decades of this behavior and at the same time so much is available electronically--and easily--that my drive to do so has waned somewhat, but every so often I make a discovery that makes me think again about easing up on that endeavor. This book won the Newberry Medal in 1967 and it really is a reflection on that rapidly changing time, when young women could look towards doing something for themselves, not simply serving the needs of others, not being a family's answer to whatever problem they might have that required a warm body to see it through, to be able to be smart, educated, and independent. It is a story of a young girl growing up, falling in love, and getting ready to go to college in the 1960's and I read it at a time when it appears that quite a few men want to go back to a time when they had control over women and children. You can see the attraction--for them--no matter what goes on in the outside world, they have a place to be a dictator. The Handmaids Tale come to life. That is the crux of the gulf in America, that there are people who want no part of that and there are others who want a white supremacist patriarchy to prevail. They call it Christian, but it isn't--Jesus is too woke for them, they are more aligned with Old Testament hell and damnation. There really is no bridging that divide, you are either for or against it and there is no middle ground to be had any more. This story is told at just the time when there is an awakening power for those who wanted to change the way things had always been, and this is a beautiful look back at what seems like a long time ago, and yet where some would have us return to. This is well worth seeking out.

Find Me Falling (2023)

I have been traveling almost non-stop these days and one of the many things I like to do when I am alone in a hotel room is to watch movies that the rest of my family would not care for--which includes movies like this and more broadly, silly romantic comedies this improbable situations and outcomes that require the suspension of belief. This is also a good example of a flawed IMDB rating. This is a pretty so-so movie that has a higher than expected audience rating (and I say that as someone with a weakness ofr this sort of fare). The setting is Cyprus, which is gorgeous--one up side of the movie is that a visit to the long-inhabited island moved up from a 'maybe' to a 'definite' on my "Must Visit" list of countries. The scenery as well as the window into the culture, which is both ancient and complicated, are the best part of the movie.Harry Connick Jr. is a bit of a wooden actor, but he plays an aging rock star who has returned to Cyprus at a point when his career has stalled and he is pulled back to a place when he last found love. He isn't quite ready to heal, and on top of that he finds some surprises that he left behind, and while people are wary of what his motives are, it all more or less works out.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

This book was long listed for the 2024 Booker Prize, which is how it came to my attention, and reading reviews it seems that the author is known for her succinct prose and for telling a story that is familiar, but told in a new and different way. That characterizes my reaction to this book, which is the 7th book of the long list that I have read--it is not my favorite to date, but it is well worth reading. The story grapples with climate change and what can one man (or woman, in this case) do? What are we going to do about global heating, about mass extinction, about our rivers? What ability do we have to change things when politicians and corporations do the opposite of nothing, they make it worse? The narrator of Stone Yard Devotional, who has been working in species conservation, chooses to chuck it all. She leaves her life and marriage in Sydney and checks into a religious sanctuary. She initially sticks her head in the sand, but eventually she joins in with the life of the convent – preparing food, cleaning, turning up to mass and the hours of office. There’s no great conversion moment, no sense of redemption, just women getting on with things. It is enough different from the usual response, in a novel or in real life, that it is worth consideration.

Heathers, Minneapolis, Minnesota

I was in (and have been in) Minneapolis for work, and the silver lining for that has been that I have been able to dine with some co-workers who I rarely get to see in real life. So the upside is huge, and it is less important exactly where wwe eat, but this was such a charming place it would have been fun to eat at even if I was by myself. The inside space is ecclectic and cool, with limited seating and would definitely recommend reservations for that. There is an ourside patio that is enormous and there were fleece blankets available to stave off the chill--later in the season they have heaters as well, but the night we were there I was just under dressed, but was quite confortable with the blanket. I had the Cuban sandwich with a side salad--I was tempted by the description of it which included: Roast Pork Loin, Ham, Gruyere,Pickled Onions, Pickled Jalepeno Peppers, Green Chilis, Sweet Mustard Sauce, on a French Roll--all the components that you would hope for and oh my, it was delicious. The pork was perfect, and all the accoutrements made it an excellent version of this classic sandwich. The bonus was that it was enormous, and I had the other half for lunch the next day. I accompanied it with a very nice white sangria and was very happy. My dining companion had the Teryaki Salmon Bowl, which included Edamame, Pickled Onions, Peppers and Onions, Avocado, Rice and Broccoli, which looked great as well. The source for the delicious pork in the Cuban is where they get their bacon, which I suspect is also delicious, and they do source locally, which I always appreciate--especially when you can taste the difference.

Enlightenment by Sarah Perry

The plot for this combines astronomy and a 19th-century mystery to propel a deeply thoughtful plot forward. Thomas Hart, a 50-year-old columnist for the Essex Chronicle in the small English town of Aldleigh and a dedicated star gazer, makes furtive trips to London for secret trists, even though he belongs to a Strict and Particular Baptist sect that basically forbids it. He might well have left his small town behind years ago except for his devotion to Grace Macaulay. Much like him, 17-year-old Grace also finds herself torn between her religion and her desires when she falls in love with Nathan, a local boy not a member of her church. Meanwhile, Thomas becomes intrigued by some letters found during the renovation of decrepit Lowlands House—and by James Bower, the handsome museum employee who calls them to his attention. The letters were written by Maria Văduva, who lived at Lowlands but vanished mysteriously sometime around 1887. An assignment to write about the Hale-Bopp comet passing overhead leads Thomas to figure out that Maria was an astronomer who may have made an important discovery, and Grace’s chance encounter with an enigmatic homeless man supplies an important missing piece of Maria’s puzzle. As they pursue a series of expertly dropped clues about Maria’s intent and ultimate fate, things go a bit asunder for the two, and while we have a pretty good idea about Maria, it is less clear where things will land between the two of them. This was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and as is true of many in that category, it is thoughtful, sensitive, and beautifully written.

Paper Crane, Iowa City, Iowa

Wow, wow, wow. There is just so much to love about this newly opened dining experience in Iowa City. First and foremost, I love the owners. They opened The Webster just as COVID was being tamed by a vaccine, which was both very brave and a much needed injection of excellence into the Iowa City dining scene. I love everything about their first restaurant--the small plates, the pastas, and the mains, all designed to share in a place that feels like a celebration each and every timne I walk in. This place is both different and lovely to behold, and it benefits from their attention to detail--the decor is lush, it immediately creates an atmosphere, but this one is more casual, more fun, but no less beautiful. The most important thing for me, though, is the food, and they knock that out of the park--days after my first meal I am dwelling on the dishes I had and thinking "Is it woo soon to go back?" and "I don't think it is possible to get enough of it". It is that good. There are two separate spaces with two different menus. You might have to do one of each. The ramen shop is spectacular--the ramen is perfect, both the broth and the noodles. Second to none. But on top of that there are small bites, meal options for someone who doesn't want ramen but wants to eat with you, and for me, the ability to have a good salad is such a plus. Then there is the cocktail lounge with its Japanese Izakaya cuisine--do not miss the grilled squid! You cannot take anything from one to the other, so you do have to choose, but the whole experience is fresh and fun and delicious, and the change is welcome--do not miss trying it all out and hope to see you there!

Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

I had a three 2024 Booker Prize long list nominee vacation over Labor Day and this was one of them. It did not make it to the shortlist, but as is so often the case for me, I am glad that I read it, I would not have been likely to find this one on my own, and I often like some of the long list more than those that make the cut to the short list. This is a short and ruthless story--apparently the author's first full length novel, and maybe it's sparseness is a result of a story teller who does so succinctly. What happens is that Donal's brother Cillian falls in with some drug smugglers to make a bit of cash on the side, and gets into trouble when his stash is below the water line and it literally dissolves away. To pressure him into paying them back, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, kidnap Donal and stash him in a gigantic loner's house. The Feria's are thuggish, unpredictable, prone to sudden bursts of rage and violence, and yet capable of tenderness and camaraderie between themselves. The story alternates between what is happening to Donal with the slow realization of his family as to what has become of him, leading up to a dramatic finale.

His Three Daughters (2023)

This is a bit of a departure from my usual solo travel work movie watching fare--it is a serious movie about a serious--and universal00life experience of having a parent die. True, some dodge it, but that is usually a tragedy of a different sort. The movie opens in a New York City apartment where we meet we meet Katie (Carrie Coon), Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne). The scene is painful to watch and yet as the movie rolls out over the next hour and a half, it also is a scene that doesn’t really capture who they are. Yes, they are sisters and daughters (and two are mothers). But in the days leading up to their father’s death, they’re reminded of the complexity of human emotion, behavior, and understanding. There is a lot that the daughters do not agree upon, and are left to grapple with as their father dwindles away, and it is a microcosm of the things that happen all too often for families that leave a lot unsaid and for whom there are misunderstandings, resentments, tensions, piled on top of the challenges of everyday life. When you don't communicate, you don't communicate and grappling with death does not make it any better. The script is pitch perfect, and while it was painful to watch, it felt very real. Grief tears down what we think of ourselves. It’s cruel. It’s harsh. It’s inevitable. It shatters the walls we put up around our personalities that so often reduce us to easy descriptions like sister, daughter, and mother, and none of that helps to get through to the place you need to get to move on.

Noise by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein

This is a book that takes a deep dive into unconscious bias, and tries on a number of different levels to point it out, and to help the reader to see that no one escapes this one, we all succumb to it to a greater or lesser extent, and the trick is to constantly be on the look out for it and to try to counterbalance it. This scattergun variability in judgments of all kinds, from court sentencing to insurance underwriting to medical diagnosis, is what the authors call, well, noise. Like its more famous cousin, bias, noise is an error in judgment. The authors distinguish between the two using a shooting-range metaphor. If all the shots land systematically off-target in the same direction, that’s bias; by contrast, noise is all over the place. Some of the shots might even be on target, because the issue here is not missing the target but a lack of consistency. Given the same facts, one criminal gets life and another who is equally guilty gets off. Which brings us to the other significant distinction between bias and noise: to detect bias, you have to know what the right answer is, or to use the book’s metaphor, you have to be standing at the front of the target, so you can see the bullseye. Noise requires no such particulars. It is detectable no matter which side of the target you’re standing on, since all you need to know is whether or not there is variability. One insurance company executive estimated the annual cost of noise in underwriting in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And you should want to detect noise, the authors argue, because it is not only unfair, it can be hugely costly--in money, in opportunity, and in human capital.

Happy Halloween! An estimated 67% of Americans will give out candy today, according to the National Retail Federation. Tomorrow is the day that those who celebrate will venerate their dead, followed by turning our clocks back an hour on Sunday, and voting on Tuesday, where hopefully we will not turn the damn country back a 100 years or more. 1. Election countdown With five days until Election Day, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris both have viable paths to the White House. Polls show the race is neck and neck — and could be decided by small numbers of voters in a single battleground state. The candidates are focusing on seven key states in their final campaign sprint: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia. Trump was in Wisconsin on Wednesday, where he broke out the props and seized on a garbled remark by President Joe Biden that seemed to insult Trump voters as “garbage.” Biden has denied calling Trump supporters “garbage,” saying his comment on a call Tuesday had been misinterpreted. 2. It's The Economy Several economists and officials have told CNN the economy has finally pulled off a soft landing, in which inflation is tamed without a recession — an exceptionally rare achievement. Gross domestic product, which measures all the goods and services produced in the economy, expanded at an annualized rate of 2.8% in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That’s a slightly weaker pace than the second quarter’s 3% rate and above the 2.6% rate economists projected in a FactSet poll. Wednesday’s report comes after earlier data showed the economy added a whopping 254,000 jobs in September, inflation is a whisper away from the Federal Reserve’s 2% target and consumer confidence jumped this month by the fastest clip since March of 2021 — all signs of a robust economy. The bad news is that this doesn't seem to sway voters, but it will make the initial path for the next president easier. 3. Extreme weather At least 95 people have been killed by severe flash floods in Spain, according to authorities on Wednesday, as emergency responders scramble to find dozens of missing people. In the worst-affected region of Valencia, 92 people were killed and around 1,200 are thought to still be trapped, local officials said. Separately, Taiwan’s largest storm since 1996 made landfall today with heavy rains and damaging winds equivalent to a Category 3 Atlantic hurricane. The storm, known as Typhoon Kong-rey, has killed at least one person and injured dozens of others. This will be a task for the next administration to face--will they be up to it? So have fun today because the next week gets very scary indeed.

Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich

This is a devastating book to read. It goes a long way to explaining why Russia invaded Ukraine, why Crimea just wasn't enough, and why even when Putin is gone the problem will remain. This is the first book that I have read by this author, but this is her fifth book about what it is to be Russian, the last in her series of investigations of the psychological make-up of the Soviet people, which she shows was conditioned by perpetual war. She has written about the Second World War as remembered by female veterans and by orphaned children, about the Afghanistan war, and about the traumatic Chernobyl disaster, combated in a war-like manner. The finale deals with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, inducing multiple civil wars in the former Soviet republics, military stand-offs in the constitutional crises of 1991 and 1993, and the war-like criminality and terrorist attacks of today. This book stands out for its wide historical scope: We hear the voices of people who survived the Stalinist labor camps of the 1930s, lived through the Second World War, and experienced postwar Soviet and then post-Soviet history, up to the present. Alexievich arranges this vast material so as to yield a unique insight into the failure of the post-Soviet democratization. shows that above all they were psychologically misguided. From 1985, under the auspices of glasnost’, the newspapers were abruptly filled with photographs of anonymous mass graves, vivid testimonies to the horrible crimes committed by the Soviet regime. The avalanche of historical revelations in the press was so jarringly at odds with official historiography that in 1988 my high school’s graduation exam in contemporary history was cancelled. No one knew any more how to evaluate and grade students’ knowledge of Soviet history. This is the backdrop against which modern Russia was crafted, and Ukraine is the first to suffer the consequences, but perhaps not the last.

A Family Affair (2023)

I have been trying to watch romantic comedies that have accomplished actors in them in order to sift through what might be acceptable and what might be painful, and the cast here includes two Academy Award winners (Nicole Kidman and Kathy Bates) as well as Zac Efron--so the acting is reasonable, but the script is weak, and the overall result is less than the sum of its parts. Kidman plays a successful writer who's husband dies years ago and she has not had a significant relationship since then. Her daughter, Zara, has creative aspirations, but is afraid of the shadow her mother's shadow casts, is working as a gopher for a successful but untalented actor who is emotionally immature and not at all nice. So when her mother and he start a pretty torrid affair, Zara has a lot of issues with it. That is essentially the plot, and it plays out more or less predictable across a 90 minute story line. My recommendation is to skip it, unless you really love one of the actors (I think Kidman is pretty spectacular, but even so, she really couldn't prop this up), or your bar for enjoyment of romantic comedies is very low (again, I think I fall int his category, and yet I struglled with this one).

The Fetishist by Katherine Min

I did not realize that the author had died before this book was published and that it was published posthumously. I hope she is happy with it as it turned out, a work of raging against the machine, a fantasy about striking back at the white patriarchy that takes what they want when they want it, and then spit it back out. The vision of control that JD Vance and his cohorts yearn to return to, where women stay at home, do as they are told, and are inevitably crushed under the weight of male ineptitude. There are three stories of three larger-than-life characters woven loosely together. Alma Soon Ja Lee is a woman of South Korean heritage and a world-renowned cellist, but when we meet her she is struggling with MS. She falls into a coma and in her coma relives her love story with her former fiancé Daniel Karmody. Daniel is a violinist and the fetishist of the novel who has damaged Alma and countless other Asian women through his objectification of them; when he re-experiences his love for Alma he also experiences deep regret for how badly he treated her. And finally there is Kyoko Tokugawa, a young Japanese-American punk rocker who blames Daniel for her mother Emi’s suicide and kidnaps him with the help of her partner Kornell; she plans on killing Daniel in her late mother’s basement by forcing him to eat the poisonous Japanese fish Fugu, or pufferfish. Well, it doesn't quite go that way, but a girl can dream.

Sandra Lee Design

I took a class with Sandra Lee Chandler at the Chaska Area Quilt Club's fall show this year, and I was very impressed with her as both an artist and as a teacher. Here is what she has to say about herself on her website Sandra Lee Designs: "With over 35 years of teaching experience and multiple accolades as a textile artist under my belt, including serving as a Bernina Ambassador, Aurifil Color Builder Designer, and appearing on The Quilt Show and Quilting Arts TV, I've learned the secret of happiness - there is no pre-written pattern to life! This realization, in conjunction with my strong passion for fiber art and teaching, propelled me to create Sandra Lee Design, a Creative space where makers can gather to experiment, collaborate, and inspire one another to push their creative boundaries. There is so much more to art than just the end product Art is vibrant and diverse, and it holds the power to serve as a reflection of what means the most to you." I took a class to make a jacket, but her identified specialty areas are making denim quilts and clothing and teaching the Sashiko and Boro methods of stitching. She is an avid upcycler who has a great eye and shares her thoughts and ideas freely. I would highly recommend taking a class with her, and I would travel again to do so myself.

Same As It Ever Was by Claire Lombardo

This is a somewhat deceptive book to read, with the text boldly stated and at times revolting, and then there is the subtext of "how did we get here?" that at least for me was harder to reach, but once I saw it, I saw the whole book in another light. And so it goes with the concept of "motherhood" as opposed to parenthood. There is a whole march on the right towards stripping women of every right they have, starting with autonomy over their bodies, and then moving on to losing all autonomy altogether--but wrapping it up as the gift of motherhood, that their destiny is not just to bear the children but once they are free of the womb an individuals that literally anyone could raise, that no, it is then up to them to bring them to adulthood. The idea is that it is their destiny, when in actuality it is just a way for men to exert control over women in all spheres of their lives without seeming like the angry controlling masters they wish to be. This is such a story, a woman who has a child she just isn't up to the task of raising on her own, what she does as a result of that, the mistakes that she makes, the unhappiness that she lives, and how hopelessly wrong it is for us to pursue such a path. It you see women in this light you will not be pleased with this book, and if you don't it might knock you off your axis for a bit. It is well worth reading and thinking about.

Made In Italy (2023)

Real life father and son Liam Neeson and Micheál Richardson play a father and son who finally force themselves to open up and grieve the loss of their wife/mother, who died in a car accident about two decades earlier. In real life, the actors suffered a similar tragedy when Neeson’s wife and Richardson’s mother, Natasha Richardson, died in a skiing accident in 2009. The parallel is inescapable, giving the movie an undercurrent of sorrow, despite the sun-dappled Tuscan scenery and the slightly contrived circumstances. The son is getting divorced and his soon to be ex-wife is aiming to hurt him--she is selling the gallery he manages out from uner him. He decides he is going to buy it, an act of clear desperation, and to raise the cash he convinces his father to sell their jointly owned house in Tuscany--the place where his mother is from. The house is a wreck, and the father is too, not having painted since his wife died and in the course of fixing it up they work on fixing themselves up as well. It is more of a dramedy than a rom com, to be sure, but as light movies watched while traveling go, I would recommend it.

Night Flyer by Tiya Miles

This is subtitled: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People. Harriet Tubman is one of the ten most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill (Andrew Jackson finally getting his comeuppance, the very antithesis of an American hero replaced by a woman born a slave). Tubman, who was indeed born into slavery as Araminta “Minty” Ross in Maryland, suffered a traumatic brain injury at the age of 12 or 13 at the hands of an overseer, which resulted in what sounds like a form of temporal lobe epilepsy. The injury may explain the dreams and visions she later experienced that, along with the sale of her sisters, were motivating factors for her later actions as a woman guided by God to bring her people to freedom. She changed her name upon marrying, at approximately 22 to a free Black man named John Tubman, taking his last name, and her mother’s first name, Harriet. Thus, Minty Ross, the slave, became Harriet Tubman the liberator. She was small, disabled, but a gifted outdoorswoman who was fearless. Harriet is credited with multiple round-trips along the underground railroad, conducting approximately 70 enslaved people to freedom, starting with family and friends, but her mission expanded, and she often talked about being guided and that she received messages about how and where to go to rescue people. During the Civil War, itself, she also functioned as a military scout and spy, and she proved essential in a June 1863 raid into Confederate territory that freed nearly 750 slaves. Even with the end of the war and slavery, she carried on her mission for God, managing a boarding house and assisted living center in her home in the north. Hers is an inspirational story and this version is a wonder to read.

O'Brien's Pub, Shakopee, Minnesota

I was in Shakopee for a work trip and we spent the day in the Shakopee Public Library. So first off, that is a beautiful public building, and we were able to really enjoy being there. It is just a couple of blocks from this restaurant, which looks very much like your usual bar, kind of dark inside, and not much to recommend it, other than that we were a group of about 15 and they happily seated us together, and provided us with seperate checks--with a QR code to pay by, so no having to wait for the whole crew of us to sort through our bills. You can pay traditionally, but this was a huge plus with a big crowd. But that is not why I am compelled to write this review--someone amongst us mentioned that they smoke their own meat, and so after having endures a very mediocre pastrami sandwich earlier in the week, I boldly ordered a corned beef sandwich on a pretzel roll and oh my goodness, it was perfect. The meat was delicious, replete with a deliciously smoky flavor but oh so moist. And with great mustard! I subbed out the fries for a wedge salad--which was enormous, almost a lunch in itself, and I would definitely go back.

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

This is a light romance novel of the modern variety, which I have come to really enjoy (in spite of thinking of myself as someone who does not read romance novels). When I read it, I could see where it was headed very early on, yet despite that, I had trouble putting it down. The plot gets off to a slightly improbable start. Phoebe Stone is recovering from yet another failed fertility attempt, and in the midst of licking her wounds from that, she is confronted with her husband leaving her for another woman--one who has just had a baby. So newly divorced Phoebe Stone decides to go to the luxury Rhode Island hotel that her husband wouldn't book a holiday at with her with the express intention of killing herself. She soon finds out that she’s the only guest not attending the week-long, million-dollar wedding of spoiled little rich girl Lila. So even though the tone is one of giving up on both life and happiness, there is a bit of the comical involved. Lila, who is just as self-centered as this sounds, is terrified that a suicide would ruin her perfect wedding, and so she befriends Phoebe, who gradually discovers reasons to cherish life again. It is a mixture of fun and serious in a story that is propelled forward with recognizable characters and when it arrives at a largely foreseeable ending, you can close the book with a satisfied grin.

Falling For Figaro (2020)

This is an entirely predictable and yet quite enjoyable romantic comedy with three main characters. The first is Meghan Geoffrey-Bishop(played by Joanna Lumley), a retired opera star earning a precarious living by giving singing lessons in her farmhouse in a remote pocket of the Scottish Highlands. She’s not exactly overwhelmed by students. Only the most intrepid need apply since each lesson is a survival course, spiked with vitriol and made even more interesting by the occasional physical assault. It’s her view no opera singer succeeds without becoming intimately acquainted with the value of suffering. While she is not the main attraction, she ultimately steals the show. Meghan has just two students – Max (Hugh Skinner), a handsome local who has devoted years to his desire to have an opera career, and Millie (Australian actor Danielle Macdonald), an American who has given up her lucrative job as a fund manager in London to see if she, too, has what it takes to become a singer. It is hard to quite get why, not because it is not all about the money for everyone, but because her character doesn't give much insight into that--be that as it may, the movie rolls on, going exactly the direction you would expect it to, to an lovely ending. The singing is dubbed by people who know what they are doing and is a plus rather than a detrement.

The Three Musketeers by Andre Dumas (1844)

This is my second Alexandre Dumas book (The Count of Monte Christo was my first) and I would characterize this as a dramatized historical fiction, meaning that the era and the background events are historically accurate, including some historical characters, whereas the three musketeers and their manservants are exaggerated, larger than life characters, fiercely loyal, and improbable in their foibles but larger-than-life in their talents as marksmen and soldiers. The setting is France, 1625. A young poor nobleman named d'Artagnan leaves his Gascony home to head to Paris. There he meets Treville, the leader of the musketeers, and manages to schedule three consecutive duels with Aramis, Athos, and Porthos--the three musketeers. The rest of the story follows our young hero while he duels, falls in love, manages to save the Queen of France, and spoil Cardinal Richelieu's plans all while achieving his dream. People die, people lie, and women do not come off well, but it is a well written adventure that is fast paced and satisfying. It was written in the era of serialized release of novels, and while lengthy, it marches forward at a good pace.

Creek House Diner, Bethel, Vermont

I have been going to Vermont for over 40 years, and while I am not big on breakfast, somehow, from the very beginning, I have gone out for a traditional breakfast almost every trip there. One reason is that it is one of the few places you can go and reliably count on getting real maple syrup with your pancakes--the pancakes might not be of the quality that you would make at home, they might have that classic back flavor that comes from a mix, but smothered in real butter and maple syrup that came from a tree and it is delicious.

We have had several "go to" places over the years, most of them in Randolph or Bethel, occasionally we have had to resort to going to further flung towns, but we usually stick close to Randolph Center, where our house is. The last remaining option burned to the ground a couple of years ago, and while we have found a wonderful bakery in teh Red Hen in Middlesex, we did not have what this is--a diner with the classic breakfast. I have to say, this is the best one yet. The food is good, the place has a great vibe, there is an extensive outside seating option should you not be there in the fall, and by mid-day they are have soft serve ice cream if breakfast is not your thing.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

I described this as a dreamy novel with a bit of a dark back beat--which is maybe of my own making. Reviewers of the book did not get that vibe, but I definitely did. Six astronauts are bobbing about in zero gravity in a spacecraft, looking out at their planet as they circle it. From their vantage point, 250 miles above the surface,the whole of Earth looks different, more fragile and in some ways more knowable. The astronauts go about their laboratory tasks, monitoring microbes or the growth of cabbages. They work with a sense of vocation that is unabated after months on the mission. Nothing has dimmed for them. Earth is newly ravishing every moment as it moves with predictable grace. Sometimes the observers want to see the planet’s most theatrical displays, but often it’s the small things that most affect them. For me, the back drop is that things on Earth are falling apart, and yet from space, it is harder to discern the collapse. It looks fragile, to be sure, but also quite untouched and beautiful.

The Long Game (2023)

I was test driving watching movies and sewing on my Featherweight while traveling by car for work-related reasons, and was restricted by what I could stream on Netflix and this seemed like a good bet. It is a film that is an an adaptation of a true story about the golf team from San Felipe High School in Del Rio, Texas, set in the 1950's. They're a group of Mexican-American boys who all caddied at an upscale private country club in their community where they were not welcome to play and certainly not be members. They aspired to play golf themselves, so they built their own crude practice course in the middle of the South Texas desert. They're brought together as a golf team under their coach (JB Peña), who has just taken a job as an Assistant Superintendent at the high school and is an avid golfer. He is a veteran of WWII and like many brown and black soldiers he was treated better abroad than at home, and aspires to membership at the (all-white) country club where the boys work, but is denied because of his ethnicity. They face a lot of obstacles and discrimination in the golf world and the community as a whole as they strive for legitimacy and acceptance, and deal with their own individual struggles in handling and overcoming it. Cheech Marin plays "Pollo", a longtime employee of the country club who shares his (often humorous) outlook and serves as kind of a mentor to both the youths and Peña. They're also helped by Frank Mitchell (played by Dennis Quaid), a former PGA Tour player who is a member at the country club but sees potential in the youths, so he takes on the role of teaching them the game and uses his influence as a country club member to get them into golf tournaments. It's a good story with some unforeseen twists and turns, a good mix of humor and drama, and some very touching moments. It's a golf movie, but one that non-golfers can enjoy. If you're looking for a light movie to watch, it's worth your time.

Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman

I was reading this book when Obama's 2024 Summer Reading list was released, and lo and behold, this was on it. I see this as an overlap with the movie that he and his wife's production company Higher Ground, supported making--American Factory. The theme is how are people making it with the shifting ground for jobs for the American work force. The background is reflective of the increasing concentration of resources in the hands of a tiny cluster of gargantuan corporations; the transfer of manufacturing operations from the American heartland to China and the Global South, where labor is cheap; the rise of online retail, with its seductive conveniences and its indifference to the environment, and what that leaves workers who have a high school education, sometimes less. Luxury at the top, fear in the middle, serfdom at the bottom, and nobody going anywhere. The main characters all work for Town Square, a big-box mega-retailer not unlike Walmart. The book focuses on the logistics team: the people who unpack delivery trucks before dawn and break down the boxes to line the shelves. There is no protagonist, this book is one where it is every man for themselves, not because they don't function as a team, they do, but because they are all vying for a leg up on the ladder, which is both a struggle and a lot like the jockeying for position that you would see at any organization, but the consequences of not moving up is loss of health insurance, living in your car because you can't make the rent, food pantry's and no leisure time because you have to juggle three jobs. It is harrowing and it rings true.

The Beautiful Game (2024)

If there is a sub-genre that is sure to put smiles on faces and often fit for family viewing, it’s a sporting underdog story. This one focuses on the Homeless Football World Cup, which has been held every year since 2001 and involves seventy countries--which is the ultimate underdog story, people who have no permanent housing getting together to play soccer. Bill Nighy is the star of the show--he plays Mal, an experienced Football Coach and talent scout who now oversees the England homeless football squad. The movie opens in a park in London, where Vinny catches his eye with some deft moves (albeit against a group of kids). Mal invites Vinny to join the squad with Vinny living out of the back of his car and struggling to find shift work. The bulk of the action revolves around the World Cup itself taking place in Rome with a ragtag mix of players, who do not seem to be able to work especially well together. This blend of hopeless players, inspired by their coach, feels reminiscent of other feel good movies in the genre. This tackles some deeper themes like addiction, with comments on belonging and cultural differences highlighted by some players from the competing teams being refugees. While, for the most part, there is plenty to admire in The Beautiful Game, it gets bogged down in some of its subplots, which can at times meander. Streaming on Netflix.

I Love Russia by Elena Kostyuchenko

This book is almost unbearably sad, from start to finish--the weight of that sadness begins almost immediately, and that is the thing that for me made it hard to read. The idea for the book was conceived in Ukraine. In May 2022, the author, a journalist, visited four locations—the Polish border, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odesa—on a five-week assignment for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. She witnessed destruction on an apocalyptic scale—apartment blocks reduced to rubble, orphanages emptied by the threat of heavy shelling, bodies scorched with “charred black [messes] for a face.” At the end of her trip, she was told not to return to Moscow. Because she’d transgressed Russia’s draconian new censorship laws specifically targeting anti-war media, a target had appeared on her back seemingly overnight. These conditions made her turn inward. She began to work on a book that contextualized her past reportage with personal reflections on Russia and the turn to fascism that Putin has been driving. The entire book has moments that cause the reader to reflect, but the section where her mother explains to her that Ukraine has always been Russian and why, which aches with both manipulation and naivete, is what runs through the book as a whole, and you leave with a better understanding of just how hard it is to escape a fascist leader once they have you in their grips.

Maple Syrup: Another Roadside Attraction

We love Vermont maple syrup. Especially the amber variety--which used to be called Grade B--it is darker and more full flavored than the more widely available golden syrup. The lighter variety is the more widely valued, but we prefer the amber syrup. The lighter syrup is collected when it is colder. Most of the sugar in sap is sucrose. When sap is tapped, naturally occuring yeast and bacteria break sucrose down into the smaller molecules fructose and glucose. The warmer the temperature, or the longer sap waits to get collected, the more sucrose gets converted. Fructose and glucose go through a Maillard reaction, or browning, when exposed to heat. Sucrose doesn't. The more fructose and glucose in the sap and the longer the sap boils, the darker the syrup.

Vermont makes more than half the country’s maple syrup, more than any other state. In 2024, Vermont’s sugar makers produced a record of 3.1 million gallons. All that maple is processed in more than 3,000 sugarhouses statewide, from smaller family-run operations to industrial syrup producers. We prefer to buy from a small producer, which is someone who has a sign on the street that they sell syrup. You knock on the door, tell them what you are looking for, they'll name a price and you pay in cash. It is so much funner than going to the super market, and the syrup is delicious.

Chop Fry Watch Learn by Michelle King

There is so much to learn in this book that centers on Fu Pei-mei, the Taiwanese woman who broke with tradition to show people how to cook. The traditional Chinese art of food preparation was something that you would not write down. It was instead passed down within the family, and the secrets were closely guarded--so when Pei-mei first wrote a cookbook, and then demonstrated the recipes on television, she was bringing Chinese food into the modern day. Her cookbooks were bilingual, so that they could be shared across language as well as being inter-generational. Then, like Julia Child and French cooking, she went on TV to demonstrate how exactly to make these recipes. Chinese cooking prioritizes two essential qualities: huohuo (“fire-time”) and daogong (“knife-skill”). The former is the precision with which a cook can control the heat of her stove, the latter the blade of her knife. Think of the perfectly sliced green scallions, thin and trembling like blades of grass, that accompany a Peking duck or the way beef sliced for a stir-fry instantly cooks on a heated wok, evenly seared on the outside, still juicy and tender within. Both of these skills were broadcast live on Taiwan Television in 1962, when a housewife and cooking instructor named Fu Pei-mei was asked by the network to host a 20-minute cooking show. The set was makeshift, decorated by a cloth fish stapled to the wall. Fu had been asked to bring her own ingredients and equipment, which included her wok, cleaver and brazier--it was just as low budget as the PBS shows that Julia Child made, but despite all of this, both shows were both ground breaking and wildly popular. The author has introduced a Taiwan icon to an American audience.

The Miracle Club (2024)

Here is an overall tip for watching movies you never heard of on Netflix--the higher percentage shot is to pick one with a cast of people you have heard of before. This one includes Laura Linney as well as Kathy Bates and the newly departed Maggie Smith, so hard to beat that line up. The story is less exciting than the cast. Set in 1967 in Ballygar, a hard-knocks community in Dublin, four friends have on tantantalizing dream: to win a pilgrimage to the sacred French town of Lourdes, that place of miracles that draws millions of visitors each year. When Maureen dies, leaving her closest friends to mourn: Lily, Eileen, and Dolly, they skip the funeral and try to win a trip to Lourdes instead. The actual service in the actual church is therefore occurring unattended, save for Chrissie (Linney), Maureen’s long-estranged daughter, fresh from America and not at all on good terms with Maureen's neighbors. The story unfolds as to where the bitterness originated, and as is almost always the case, there is a misunderstanding and an assumption that is flat out wrong at the center of the dispute, and while the whole thing is fairly predictable, it is also a cautionary tale, because there are quite a few people in present day America who want to see a return to the morays and choices that women had then. This is a good watch in your living room movie, not something to seek out, but enjoyable in a quiet way.

Wait by Gabriella Burnham

I am on a roll. I am reading about how the other half lives--the half (or more) of Americans who live at or under the poverty line. The setting is Nantucket, that beautiful island off the coast of Massachusetts, which is associated with gorgeous estates, wealth, pretty boutiques, cobblestone streets, photogenic beaches, and clambakes. The other half of the story, less-told one, is the Nantucket of undocumented immigrants, broken families, housing insecurity and hopelessness--that is the half this book is about. The story is about a family where the mother is illegal and is raing her two daughters alone, working several jobs and barely making it. The story follows daughter Elise, who learns, days after her college graduation, that her mother, Gilda, has been deported to Brazil. She had overstayed her visa and, as she explains to her older daughter, was thrown out of the country "like she was nothing." Elise has no other family besides her sister, Sophie, a recent high school graduate. Together, they must find a way to support themselves on Nantucket, no small feat in a place where affordable housing is scarce and the cost of living high. The sisters are offered a lifeline by Elise’s college friend, an heiress named Sheba who has her own problems (such as getting rejected from a yacht club), which is how we see the stark contrast between the haves and the have nots.

Vermont: It Never Gets Old

Let's face it--Vermont is the best New England state--I feel somewhat chagrined to admist it, being of Maine roots and having recently driven from the bottom of the state to the top, avoiding the coast (which is both what Maine is known for and the attraction for the non-Mainiac to the state and not my thing, so take this with a grain of salt), Vermont has it beat. I was not a big fan until I met my future spouse and he took me there over four decades ago and I fell immediately and deeply in love with it. First there are the mountains, which are spectacular and everywhere. They interfere with it being much good for row crops, but the fields are ever green and so dairy cattle abound. They make for quaint scenery and also for excellent cheese. Artisanal cheese in Vermont has been a growth industry over the years I have been visiting. It started with excellent cheddar, which is always a winner with me, but now it is one of the best places to get a wide variety of high quality cheese that is locally made. Then there are the multitude of small towns that have good restaurants, a few breweries, a multitude of shops where people make things, and all in all, it is practically perfect. I hope to spend more extended time in state when I retire and have more time on my hands to fill with beauty.

The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been a fan of Ruth Reichl for a very long time, and across her career changes. I have read a lot of her previous written work, which includes mostly memoirs and food-related writing, and so to me, this feels like a work of fiction that has a fair amount of autobiographical back structure to it. As a number of other reviewers have noted, the author shines when she is describing food, and there is an awful lot of that (in a very good way). Stella had a very problematic relationship with her mother--she was essentially ignored her entire life, and Stella was left to manage herself. When her mother dies in the early 1980's when Stella is in her early 30's, she receives a small inheritance that comes with strings attached--it will be a plane ticket to Paris and travelers checks. France has no hold on Stella until she falls in love with a dress. Through haute couture, Stella finds her inner beauty, along with a mentor and spirit guide in Jules as well as a guardian angel in a book store owner. Stella doesn't quite know herself, and she certainly doesn't know her creativity and talents, and as her time in France unfolds, she finds all that and more. It is a charming story with some whimsy, a lot of wonderful food, a bit of romance, and quite a lot of history from that time period in the City of Light.

Gallus Handcrafted Pasta, Waterbury, Vermont

What a treat! This new restaurant is in the location of a previous favorite--the Waterbury Hen of the Woods restaurant moved into a very modern building and left this charming (but small) site behind. I love this old mill, aside a stream (of course) with a dry staacked black slate foundation, and now it has new life with a handmade pasta restaurant run by the same chef! The menu is a pared down one, with about bread, about 5 appetizers, 6 pasta dishes, 2 mains, and one dessert. The drinks menu is similarly slimmed down, but wow, everything packs a punch. From our recent visit--and we will be returning--the favorites included: first, the eggplant parmesan, which was a lovely blend of fired eggplan, parmesan, and a bright tomato sauce--I could have had another order and still wanted more. The second for me was the meatballs in the spaghetti and meatballs. They were light as a feather and full of flavor, with the spaghetti being a great foil for them. All the food was delicious, and the few things our table did not try that night were ordered by fellow diners and looked equally tasty to what we ordered. And the swag they have is top notch to boot.

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

Everything about this book is such a pleasant surprise. I finished it just days before it was long listed for the Booker Prize, and it is very fitting of that particular prize. I found it to be refreshingly new as well as the very best of story telling. The setting is the 12th Annual Daughters of America Cup, held in Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada: a two-day competition of fists and fury, with eight fighters in three knockout rounds. We get into the heads of all eight girls, and we do so first while they are fighting each other. The quarter finals consists of 4 pairs of opponents, the winner moving on to the next round of fighting. The narrative goes back and forth between each girl and also back and forth across their lives, both before and after this fight, and is passed easily from one to another through brief moments of connection--it is like a boxing match in the very best of ways, a graceful dance between the two boxers, and here between their stories. What’s most impressive is how, in a relatively short novel with so many central characters, the author manages to make each girl spark distinctively and sympathetically – even though this means that each tends towards a single overwhelming personality trait, that feature holds true for each girl, from her childhood to the match itself and why she is there, all the way into their future adult selves. It is a thing of beauty to behold.

The Quest to Quilt

I have been working on getting myself back into quilting after my father died, and this quilt, which is a pattern that is available free of charge, was one that I did with a class at my local crafting store, Home Ec Workshop. I so love the store, it is in a hundred year old house, with lots of quilt-friendly fabric and lovely yearns for sale, and a classroom in the back that is just fun to be in. I had taken one class there since his death, and unfortunately, I did not care for the pattern much. I did manage to make 2 throws, and I quilted them both before the class ended--so a very good start--but it did not stick, and so I needed yet another push from somewhere. Luckily I have a co-worker who quilts. She has been doing double duty as a fabulous person to work with AND an inspirational quilter. She was my spirit guide at my first QuiltCon last year, she introduced me to her Modern Quilting Guild--which was a huge boon, because they are almost entirely on line and so I joined them, a source of monthly inspiration as well as specific times to quilt together--I really couldn't ask for more. She lost her father the year before I lost mine, and she came out of it okay, so I should too. In any case, she is a great role model, and inch by inch, taking baby steps, I am working on getting my creative aura back.

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawson

I am not familiar with this author, and I cannot remember where I read about this book, but I am so glad that I did. This is a work of historical fiction set in the late 18th century that features a Maine mid-wife, Martha Ballard, who worked for 30 years delivering babies and providing a host of other medical services to her community. Of note, no woman who she was present at the birth lost her life--this is a remarkable achievement and speaks to a number of things about medical providers and their patients--skill comes in many guises and she was exceptional. She kept a diary for her entire career, which is how we know about her, because she has otherwise been lost to history. It's 1789, and in the rural Maine community of Hallowell, a local man turns up dead--frozen face up in the Kennebec River. Many who knew him aren't sad to find that he is no longer a threat in town. He has a history of raping women, including one of Mary's friends, and while no one is sorry to see him die, it does appear that he was murdered. There is a lot of rape in this book--Martha herself was raped as a young woman, and there are two rapes in present day story--was this common in colonial America? The interesting history here about women and the shocking difference in their autonomy compared to men led me to think that it probably was an issue. In addition to the shame that rape still engenders, even with some #MeToo action trying to change that, woman could not testify in court without a male relative in court with her--so how can you accuse someone of rape if you don't have a man to stand by you? Women were not taught to read and write routinely, so they didn't have the ability to leave a paper trail--Martha herself was taught by her husband, but it was not the norm. And finally, I never thought about it, but men in positions of power, who could decide who got land and who lost it, had a lot of influence that might have made it difficult to prosecute them for sexual violence.