Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

This is a peaceful book, one that focuses within rather than without. On the one hand it is a memoir of a time and of a relationship that seems like it might fit better in a children's picture book than in a grown up reflection. It is so beautiful that I felt transported by it. The setting is the English countryside, the time is COVID, and the relationship is between a woman and a hare. Things are in lock down and people are not seeing much of each other. Enter the leveret, a baby hare, which is both a magical interloper and harbinger of transformation. The author finds the creature lying on a country track outside her home, seemingly abandoned. From the outset, she is conflicted about whether to rescue the hare and take her into her home or let nature take it's course. She relents, though she places certain restrictions on their relationship: she does not name the animal, tries not to touch it, and does not, except briefly, confine it (it can leave the house through a specially constructed flap). Over the course of the book they develop a remarkable relationship with its own language; not, of course, a human language, but one of gestures, movements and exhalations (hares, we learn, emit soft, puff-like sounds). Dalton has a zoologist’s eye for detail combined with a poet’s sensitivity to descriptive language; she conjures the beauty, the allure and variation of the hare’s sounds, mouth, eyes and fur, which changes with the seasons and marks the passage of time. Her language is shot with such intense tenderness and emotion--she cares deeply about what happens and as a result, so do we. This is a breath of fresh air in a chaotic time.

Tea Growing in Munnar, Kerala, India

After sweating at lower altitudes in Tamil Naru, the hills of Munnar were a welcome alternative. The hills abound with tea here. Tea or Chai is the most widely drunk beverage in the whole world. The tea plant, Camellia Sansis, is a cultivated variety of a tree that has its origins in an area between India and China. There are three main varieties of the tea plant: China, Assam, and Cambodia and a number of hybrids between the varieties. The China variety grows as high as nine feet (2.75 metres). It is a hardy plant able to withstand cold winters and has an economic life of at least 100 years. The Assam variety, a single stem tree ranging from 20 to 60 feet (6 to 18 metres) in height. Regular pruning keeps its height to a more manageable 4 to 5 feet tall. It has an economic life of 40 years with regular pruning and plucking. When grown at an altitude near that of Darjeeling (Assam) or Munnar (Kerala), it produces tea with fascinating flavours , sought after around the globe. The Cambodia variety, a single stem tree growing to about 16 feet in height, is not cultivated but has been naturally crossed with other varieties. Tea growing in this region was started by colonialists, starting in the mid-19th century.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

This is the second book that I have read by this Nobel Prize winning author, the first being The Vegetarian. This book shares some story telling features with that book, which is a deft combination of poetry and pain that reads with an almost dream like quality. It is a horrifying story that is not so horrifying to read--it is almost matter of fact in tone. The story is that after an accident, Kyungha is asked by her friend Inseon to travel to her home on Jeju Island to save her pet bird Ama from starvation. Kyungha agrees--she doesn't have something that she has to do instead, and she heads off immediately. She travels through a snowstorm, as the power grid fails and the transport system shuts down, her mind always on the flickering edge of a migraine. So extreme is the journey that, as she arrives at Inseon’s house, she seems to cross into a different reality, a world of shadows and of ghosts so real that Kyungha does not know if she herself is alive or has she died and entered a state between life and death.

Chris Manchini--Just Finish It

Chris Manchini of Rose City Originals spoke to my quilt guild and there was a lot to be learned from him. First, it is nie to see someone who is not a cookie cutter quilter. He is a man, there is that, but he is also a pattern maker who does large format quilting, which is not the norm. He has been sewing almost all his life, but he came to quilting about a decade ago, and pretty quickly found that things that he wanted to make did not have readily available patterns. When you look at what he has created, you can see why he had to figure it out--there is a higher than usual percentage of skulls than you see in traditional (or even non-traditional) quilts. Then there is how he lays out the patterns--he uses a Lego assembly approach, which is modular assembly paired with a lot of graphics to help you keep it organized. So while this is not in my usual wheelhouse, I was very happy to hear him talk about his art and his process. Then there was his take home message, which is "just finish it". He says that the pile of unfinished projects that most all quilters have languishing in hidden corners of our crafting spaces carry a psychological burden, and so when we finish them, we lighten our load. He hypothesizes that in order to do that we have to overcome some obstacle, and that often that involves feeling like the project has a flaw and that we need to ignore it and move on and that we will be rewarded in two ways--that it will be done, which is a huge plus, but that also once done, the flaw that we saw is diminished, that the finished project is greater than the sum of it's parts and we cannot see that until it is done. I am inspired by this, and hope to follow through on his advice.

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

When reading light literature, I am on team murder mystery first and foremost, but the growing number of authors who write more modern themed romance novels has had some appeal for me--and one of my kids likes them too (none of them are mystery fans). Emily Henry is my favorite author in this genre, and there is the added bonus that not only are her female characters not looking for someone to take care of them, they are often authors themselves. That said, I did not love this book--the set up is quite contrived, the motivations of the characters is suspect, and at no point did I change my mind about any of it. Here are the basics: follows Alice Scott, a journalist waiting for her big break, with a relentlessly optimistic view of the world, and Hayden Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer whose stony disposition is the complete opposite. They find themselves pitted against each other in the small town of Little Crescent Island, where Margaret Ives, a notorious heiress who disappeared altogether years ago and hailed from one of the most notorious families of the twentieth century, has decided to share her life story after decades of silence. But only one of them will get to write her biography. They are trying out for the role and of course find each other just as fascinating as the woman they are auditioning for. There are some twists and turns along the way, but it fell a bit flat for me. I will, of course, read her next book and am glad I read this one, but it was not a favorite for me in her otherwise enjoyable oeuvre.

The Peacock Door, Heritage Hotel, Madurai, India

We stayed at some beautiful hotels while we were in Southern India, and the Heritage Hotel in Madurai is one of them. It had this spectacular carved door in the lobby. n the late 1700s, when the Royal family of mayurs, moved to a large palace near Baripada, in the present day Mayurbhanj district of Orissa, they demolished the fort that they had occupied for over 75 years, to prevent its misuse by invaders. "Mayur Dwaar" the Peacock Door, which stood as the imposing entrance to the fort, was carried with them to their new palace and stored as a symbol of the might and heritage of the Mayur dynasty. With the unification, through marriage, of the Mayur and Bhanja dynasties, to form the Kingdom of Mayurbhanj in Northern Orissa, and their subsequent shift to the Present Mayurbhanj palace, the "Mayur Dwaar" lost its prominence and found its way to an Armenian trader in Calcutta, where it remained. The family migrated to USA in 1945 and left the "Mayur Dwaar" and other antiques, in the care of Mr. S.R. Bose, the last magager of the Armenian Firm. The Present owners procured it from Mr. Bose, with consent from the Armenian family. The door is elaborately carved, with the Mayur (Peacock) motif visually dominant. Though it has a strong Rajasthani influence, and is a typical fort door of that era, its uniqueness lies in the exquisite details of the outer frame, and the head work, with the 2 alcoves originally used for lamps. The wood seems to have been specially treated, and has withstood the ravages of time remarkably well.

Behind You Is The Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj

This is in some ways not at all unusual and in other ways it is unique. The book follows three interconnected Palestinian immigrant families in Baltimore. Palestinian immigrants have been in the spotlight of late, and yet there are very few books in English that portray them. This is an exception--and not one that glosses over or sugar coats the details that are unsavory, especially when it comes to violence against women and women seeking their own paths that diverge from those of their male relatives and their cultural norms. Its characters come to life, transcending politics, breaking through preconceptions and stereotypes, speaking clearly and lucidly about their experiences, some of which are relatable and some which are not. The book is filled with stories of immigrant parents who can’t make sense of their American children, but there are also shimmering moments of revelation and reconciliation. The novel’s title, “Behind You Is the Sea,” comes from a battleground speech attributed to the Islamic conqueror Tariq ibn Ziyad. Facing the enemy, ibn Ziyad is said to have set his soldiers’ boats on fire, making retreat impossible, asking for bravery in the face of almost insurmountable odds: For these characters the battleground shifts — between parents and children, men and women, tradition and self-invention. Most importantly, it breaks through the stereotypes that reduce Arabs and Arab Americans to clichés, creating a false division between us and "them", which is especially valuable in the current political climate.

The Way We Speak (2025)

I watched this movie on a long haul flight, and it is unusual in that it explores public and private struggles in a way that made me, at least, uncomfortable. There are three main characters in this. The setting is a debate at a conference. THe first is a middle-aged writer named Simon Harrington who is finally starting to have a breakthrough is brought in to have a series of debates over three days with another rationalist, his longtime best friend and colleague George Rossi. When Rossi bows out due to health problems, Simon ends up squaring off against a last-minute replacement, Sarah Clawson, a young Christian essayist whose latest book has sold over a million copies. The third is Claire, Simon's wife, who is a well respected doctor and researcher, and also dying of cancer. Simon is struggling both professionally and personally. He has always finished second, and he had been hoping to shine on this stage--both for himself, but also as it might be the last time his wife will see him compete in this way. He relies heavily on her, but rather than grapple with losing her, he is focusing on the debate. His new opponent is no more likable than he is and worse yet, she fights dirty. Claire is the adult in room, and it all comes to a dramatic end.

Crumb Quilts by Emily Bailey

The subtitle of this book is: : Scrap Quilting the Zero Waste Way. There is a growing movement within quilting to use ALL of the fabric when quilting. It is perfectly acceptable to make a quilt that inherently generates some waste, but the next step is not to compost it or throw away the left overs, but rather to use them to make something else. I have always done this is a casual way. Some fabric that I used almost 10 years ago in one of the first quilts that I made when I returned to quilting after a many year hiatus following my diagnosis of ovarian cancer used some Guatemalan fabric that I bought in the 1980's that was well used when I got it. I used some of the leftovers in a baby quilt a few years after that, and I just added some of it to a Block Of THe Month Quilt that I made last year with the Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild. So not opposed, is what I am saying, but also not particularly systematic either.

This is my favorite quilt from the book and it demonstrates something that I have not done, which is organize my scraps by color and value, and then essentially piece together a back ground to use for making quilt blocks. I really like the star as a design feature, and these slightly wonky stars very much appeal to me--but the pieced backgrounds are an added plus. This is all in the interest of wasting nothing, or as little as possible, and while I came from a family that valued this (Depression Era parents), the fact that textile production uses so much water is another reason not to waste it.

Kaveri River, Tiruchchirappalli, India

On our trip to Southern India we learned a little bit about the Tamil rituals around death. The death ceremony is marked by cremation which is now done in a crematorium. Somewhere between 10-16 days later, people may perform rituals at the Amma Mandapam Bathing Ghats in Tiruchirappalli, India, or immerse the ashes of the deceased in the Kaveri River in Srirangapatna (this is a sacred river, the Ganges of the south and the second longest river in India): Amma Mandapam Bathing Ghats

This is a place where Hindus can perform rituals for their ancestors. The ghats are located on the Kaveri River and include: An open hall where prayer items can be purchased Three small temples Ritual performing lines Bathing ghats for men and women Barbers for ritual shavings The eldest son and a priest perform the ritual. Then, one year later it is done again.

Turkuaz Kitchen by Betül Tunç

There is a bit of a trad wife vibe going on here, with the author talking about the joy of cooking everything from scratch for her husband and son--so if you are super sensitive about not supporting that, there might be too much of it here. The author is from Turkey and apparently has a social media presence and following (lost on my for the most part, but may be how she got this book contract). After coming to the U.S. , Betül began creating vintage-style videos on Instagram, garnering an audience that grew rapidly with each personal post she shared. My on line cookbook group cooked out of it for a month, and that is how I came to find it. It is beautifully put together and photographed, and well written. She shares seventy-five recipes for sweet and savory doughs and the dishes to make with them. With inspiration from traditional Turkish recipes, as well as recipes she discovered in her travels, Turkuaz Kitchen is a treasure trove of recipes for: *Basic Doughs: such as bagels, pita, ciabatta, and pizza dough *Enriched Doughs: such as croissants, cardamom buns, buttermilk dinner rolls, and burger buns *Quick Breads and Short Doughs: such as pie and tart dough, scones, biscuits, and biscotti *Unleavened Doughs: such as pastas, noodles, and dumplings *Doughs from Turkey: such as Turkish style phyllo, Turkish Pistachio Baklava, Spinach Triangle Borek, and Grandma's Lavash--these come with savory accompaniments, not just the dough.

Restó SCA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

We had an evening flight out of Buenos Aires when we were on our way to Salta in Northwestern Argentina, and spent the day walking the streets, ending up at the Holocaust Museum. It is a beautifully done museum in a city that is known for becoming home to survivors as well as Nazis after WWII. This truly lovely restaurant is right across the street and was an excellent antidote to a sobering museum. The restaurant is in a building in Recoleta where it shares occupancy with the headquarters of the Sociedad Central de Arquitectos (SCA), founded in 1886 and one of the country’s oldest professional associations. Located at the end of the building’s former carriage entrance, the restaurant has a subdued bistro-style feel with just a few tables and a bar that is home to an enticing display of cheeses. Previous incumbents here have included renowned chefs such as María Barrutia and Guido Tassi, although it is now the turn of María Magdalena Piaggio, a chef who has an in-depth knowledge of French cuisine and whose fresh Mediterranean and international recipes are based around Argentinian ingredients. We tried the standout dishes she is known for, namely stuffed quail and the ricotta gnocchi, but my favorite was a tortilla de patata with a piece of hot smoked salmon atop it and a small microgreen salad on the side. I would recommend this for lunch, and there are few restaurants of this quality that offer an upscale lunch, which is my favorite when dinner doewsn't start until eight at night.

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Claire

I really like color--I was drawn to quilting because of my love of fabric, but color is a big part of where I go as a quilter, but in reality I know very little about it. This year I took a class with Tara Faughnan at QuiltCon, and it really got me thinking about color and how little I really understand or know about it. This book is a part of my quest to better understand color, and hopefully not get too crazy on the the way that I lose my sense of what I love about it. I got this out of the library, but when I got about halfway through it, I bought a (used) copy of it. The book begins with an introduction on how we see and what colors actually are. The science behind the different interactions of dyes and pigments with light is actually very cool, as well as how this information is processed by the cellular machinery in our eyes and brain. This is followed with a small discussion on the history and language of color, which raises some interesting points such as the ancient Greeks not actually having a word for ‘blue’ and the implications of how the absence or presence of these descriptive words in a language shaped the perceptions of colors and the world at the time. The bulk of the book is devoted to discussing the members of 10 different color families. In a charming piece of design, the margin of each page is colored to match the subject, so don’t worry if you’re not confident differentiating your orchils from your heliotropes. Each family of colors is separated by two blank pages, showing a gradient composed of all the upcoming members in all their glory. The layout is a stroke of genius and each color only has one or two pages of accompanying text, making it a perfect book to pick up when you only have a few minutes--the stories that she tells about each color are very informative and entertaining, and the whole time I was reading it I was contemplating color and color choices that I make. This is a fun and approachable way to see and think about color.

Lost Wax Bronze Casting, Tiruchchirappalli, India

We watched a demonstration of lost wax casting of bronze figures in a shop behind the temple in Tiruchirappalli. Dokra (also spelt Dhokra) is an Indian Heritage Craft known for casting of non-ferrous metals (mainly Brass and Bell Metal). It originated in India over 4,000 years ago. Lost-wax casting technique used in producing Dokra artefacts is one of the oldest enduring metalwork methods on Earth. Dokra is a skilled craft form producing objet d’art. Dokra artisans create small, delicate artefacts, such as figurines (human, animal or divine), jewelry, lucky charms and utensils. One of the earliest known lost-wax artefacts is the ‘Dancing Girl o’Mohenjo-Daro’. The lost-wax casting technique is eponymic to Dokra Damar tribes, the main traditional metalsmiths which initially resided in Bankura-Dariapur belt in West Bengal, parts of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Despite different locations and difference in language this tribe extends from Jharkhand to West Bengal and Odisha. The members of the tribe, over the centuries, have moved to southern and western parts of the country, thus presently covering large parts of the country.

Key features of Dokra art because of which there is increasing demand for these products. • The oldest surviving metalcraft process – the lost-wax casting technique. • The historical and cultural significance of this art form related to temple art. This workshop is within line of sight of the temple. Lost-wax technique – A wax model of the desired object is painstakingly crafted in beeswax. The wax model is then covered in a clay shell, and the clay shell is baked. The wax melts and runs out of the clay shell, leaving a hollow space. The clay shell is then filled with molten metal, and the metal cools and hardens to form the final object.

When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà

This is an award winning Catalan author and an award winning book, which is a series of short, sometimes very short, interlinked storied with one family at the center of them, but also including the perspective of nature and things within nature as characters of sorts in the book. In saying this, I am struck that there may be a lot about the author's meaning and message that did not come through to me. The underlying or unifying theme is grief, and that does come through clearly. The book is set among the villages, forests and rivers of the Pyrenees, the book builds a layered history of the area while focusing primarily on one family. Domènec leaves his wife, Sió, and two children, Mia and Hilari. The Spanish Civil War is a part of the destruction in the novel as well, but it does not seem to be central. The stories depict the natural world as a complex system of relationships that shapes human lives. Within that system, everything is important, the mushroom as much as the man. When we step back and allow the bigger picture to take shape, we adopt a more expansive view. At least I think that is the advise.

I'm Still Here (2024)

I finally saw the last of the 2025 Best Picture nominations, and this was fantastic. It is also based on a real story, and the film recreates the settings and the time. It is 1970 in Rio de Janeiro, where Eunice and Rubens live with their five children by Leblon Beach. With white sand as soft as pillows and blue seas as clear as the sky, the idyllic locale should be a soft landing for the Paiva family. An architect and former congressman, Rubens has only recently returned to the country after a six-year self-exile due to the 1964 coup d’état. For the family, however, the dictatorship is never far from the foreground. Military helicopters fly over the beach, and trucks carrying additional troops occupy the streets. Television news stations cover the release of the German and Swiss ambassadors from anti-government factional custody. Rubens also takes secret phone calls in his office, coordinating pickups and drop-offs of packages. The collapse occurs when Rubens is taken for questioning by plain-clothed army officials, a catastrophe that takes the film to darker places and engenders many unanswerable questions. And while it’s not a spoiler to say Eunice and her children will never see Rubens again, those hopeless queries aren’t necessarily what the movie is about. Rather, this poignant film concerns the response to having neither a definitive answer nor final closure. Eventually, Eunice and Eliana will be taken in for questioning, psychologically tortured, and then released. Eunice will pick up the pieces and dig, becoming politically active in the process. We will follow her struggle through the decades—her career as a professor and supporter of Indigenous rights—leaping to São Paulo in 1996 before settling in 2014. She made a life after that was both all her own and honored the legacy of her husband.

Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson

In the interest of full disclosure, I loved Black Cake, the author's first book, so much that it would be hard to compete with that in this, her second book. That said, this has a lot of the appealing story telling that the first book did, and well as an emphasis on traditions of the past and their link to the present, but for me the story was not as well constructed, and the ending was both abrupt and unsatisfying. Would I read her next book? Absolutely, and I do recommend this one as well. The book begins in 2000 as we witness the tragic home invasion of the Freeman house in Massachusetts where not only their cherished family heirloom (a jar thrown by an enslaved potter in the 1800s) is broken but ten-year-old Ebony’s brother Baz is shot and killed at the young age of fifteen. There is a lot of unwanted publicity around it and when, 20 years later, Ebbie is stood up at the altar by Henry it all resurfaces and she ducks out of the country to get away from it all. The past follows her though--the profound loss of her brother, the significance of the pottery jar that has been in her family since the mid-nineteenth century and Henry, who turns up at her rented cottage in France. The weaving of the story together is one that I like, with the significance of generational trauma playing a role in the present being something I enjoy in a book, and that I see in my professional life. Check this one out, and if you haven't read Black Cake, read this first.

Thanjavur Art Gallery, Thanjavur, India

Thanjavur Art Gallery, located in the Thanjavur Palace has an exquisite collection of ancient sculptures and coins. It is officially called the “Raja Raja Chola Art Gallery” and locally known as “Thanjavur Kalaikoodam”. These bronze sculptures of Hindu Gods and Goddesses range from 9th century A.D to 19th century A.D. Some very unique deities and saints can be seen. Early Indian lifestyle, their clothing, ornaments and even hairdo are carved in these statues. I really enjoyed the sculpture on display here.

Artifacts are placed in a hall which used to be the Kings’ royal court (Durbar Hall). The walls and the ceiling of Durbar hall are ornamented with paintings and statuettes. Even the pillars and arches are decorated with fascinating scenes from Hindu epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata. The highlight of the art gallery is the collection of stone sculptors and bronze idols that belong to the Chola period, Vijayanagara period and later periods. There is so much to see here that it is easy to get overwhelmed!

Dream State by Eric Puchner

I really enjoyed reading this book--and did so on a trip into the northwest corner of Argentina to explore the high altitude wineries there. It is spectacular and varied terrain, with the Andes as a back drop, and the perfect sort of dream state to read this book, set in Montana and spans a half century, much of it into the future. The novel opens in the days before a wedding in 2004. Cece, the bride, has arrived a few weeks early at an empty summer home owned by the parents of her fiancé, an irrepressible, universally adored doctor named Charlie Margolis. The guests on either coast aren’t thrilled about having to travel so far, but Cece has loved this homestead for years. For her, the old house is an embodiment of the family she’s about to join, who are "everything she’d always wanted.” That is the story she told herself, but when she is ferried around by Garrett, Charlie's prickly and reclusive best man, who has absolutely nothing and even that he does not want to talk about, Cece finds that she cannot stop thinking about him. So on the one hand, it is a story often told, where the wedding is called off and the bride runs away with the best man--on the other hand, it is quite different, because it is about how that choice, impulsively made, plays out over the next few decades. The choice of going in to the future is one I don't quite understand. Other than the degrading environment, the future is not much talked about--other than that we still seem to be a democracy which in 2025 seems like an open question. May it be true.

Here (2025)

This is a terrible movie and you should not be lured in by the fact that it has a competent director, Robert Zemeckis, who has directed enjoyable films and Tom Hanks in a lead acting role. Even if you are on a long haul flight you will be disappointed. The film, based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, is to plunk the camera down in one place to illustrate all of the events that have occurred in that very spot throughout history, using frames-within-the-frame to transition from one point in time to the next. Now, I loved the David Mason book, Northwoods, which did something like this, but the content of this is boring, and at no point does it improve. At first, it is open land that gives us glimpses of everything from the dinosaurs perishing to Native Americans living their lives to the home of Benjamin Franklin’s estranged son. As the 20th century arrives, the location becomes a duplex’s living room, and we begin observing the lives of some of those living within its walls. Apparently the director (unbeknownst to me--I learned this afterwards from a reviewer who, if possible, liked the movie less than I did) trying to evoke memories of “Forrest Gump” by reuniting the key members of that film’s creative team—the package also includes screenwriter Eric Roth, composer Alan Silvestri, and cinematographer Don Burgess—in the hopes of getting something of equal appeal. What he doesn’t have, however, are two things that made that film work—a compelling narrative and a darkly humorous undertone that helped prevent it from being overwhelmed by sentimentality.

Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah

The novel takes place in Tanzania, in the '90s, in a moment of rapid change. The government had recently changed its foreign exchange laws, and so tourists are flocking to Zanzibar – its island just off the coast of East Africa. The author has said that the big money of tourism brought with it new hotels, new people, NGOs. But the influx of tourists also brought corruption as well--beaches and restaurants exclusively for tourists – no locals allowed. There are three characters around which the novel is constructed, each of them of approximately equal importance to the narrative. The story begins with Raya, a beautiful teenage girl married off to a contractor in his 40s who is intolerably violent to her. When their son, Karim, is 3, Raya says enough and moves back to her parents’ house. Gossips be damned, she must protect her son. She soon discovers a life of her own, finds a rich new partner and abandons Karim to the care of her mother. Karim grows up and the story centers on him, the educated and arrogant man he has become, his young wife, Fauzia, who suffers from epilepsy, and Badar, a young servant who was dropped off at Raya's house when he was 13-years old and whom the other two treat almost like a younger sibling. They all come from different worlds, and yet they have something in common. Rightfully or wrongfully, they all feel unwanted by their parents in some way. It is a slow paced story that takes some getting used to, but patience is rewarded in the end.

Brihadeshwara Temple Thanjavur India

This is a top five temple, in a trip replete with spectacular ancient temples. I would recommend a slower pace than we accomplished, but the content of the trip, the places we went, were all recommended, not a clunker amongst them. One of the largest temples in India, the Brihadeeswara Temple, also known as Peruvudaiyar Kovil, is located in Thanjavur. Dedicated to Lord Shiva, represented as a huge ‘Lingam’, the temple was built around 1010 AD by the Chola king Rajaraja Chola I. The temple continued the Hindu temple traditions of South India by adopting architectural and decorative elements, but its scale significantly exceeded the temples constructed before the 11th century. The Chola era architects and artisans innovated the expertise to scale up and build, particularly with heavy stone and to accomplish the 63.4 metres (208 ft) high towering vimana.

This is a telling of the building of this temple in ancient Tamil. The text wraps around the building, with no punctuation (we are told), as a chronicle of how they moved the massive granite blocks and built this temple.

The Choice by Edith Eva Eger

The author was a young teenager in Hungary when WWII began. It has been said that the best chance of survival for a European Jew in Nazi occupied Europe lived in Hungary--the extermination came later there than to other countries, but the best chance wasn't very good. The front end of this memoir is a first hand account of what it was like to be there. She and her sister, who had been rivals before being interned at Auschwitz, clung to each other after Mengele personally evaluated them on arrival and sent their mother to the gas chamber and allowed them to live. The second half of the book is about her PTSD and how she struggled over the years to cope with it, sometimes well and often times not very well at all. She ended up, well into middle age, deciding to train as a therapist and to help others claw their way to better mental health, to overcome the immeasurable trauma that they had experienced and live fuller lives. She published this when she was in her 90's and she is still alive at 97--one of the oldest Jewish survivors of Nazi Germany.

You're Cordially Invited (2025)

I watched this romantic comedy on a long haul flight home recently. It features Reece Witherspoon as a high-powered, equally high maintenance TV executive who is acting as the wedding planner for her niece’s wedding as well as Will Ferrell, whose only daughter is getting married at the sight of he and his deceased wife’s wedding. Both parties have an emotional attachment to the remote wedding venue and they are mistakenly double booked. It is a situation that has comedic potential—in this case it is not fully realized. The two veteran actors involved do a reasonable job with the material that they have, But everyone involved is a pretty decent person, which ironically makes the tension less funny and more cringe-worthy, and that in and of itself the stumbling block. All in all, this is just okay—I was happy to watch it, but wouldn’t recommend it to others.

How To Read A Book by Monica Wood

This was recommended to me by a friend who read it with her book group. This is a great book to read and discuss with a group. It is a book about redemption, forgiveness, and starting over. It is also about creating the family you need when the family you have is for whatever reason just not working out. Harriet is a retired English teacher who leads a book club in a women’s prison near Portland, Maine. Violet is an inmate at the prison who meets Harriet in the book group, but is also about to be released. She was convicted of manslaughter after she went on a bit of a bender with her high school boyfriend and kills a woman with her car. Her family disowns her for the shame brought on them and her mother dies--of a medical condition, but Violet's family blame her for this as well. They are not about to participate in forgiveness. After she is released, Violet moves into an apartment close to Harriet’s house, and even more improbably, it also turns out that Harriet’s friend Frank was married to the woman Violet killed in a drunk driving car accident. The book is about how the three of them form a family of sorts, how they manage to find not just support but the ability to heal through their friendship, and how each of their families are a hindrance to healing. Despite the weight of the material here, it is a light and hopeful book that is quite enjoyable.

Silk Weaving, Kumbakonam, India.

In the 17th century India had 20% of the world’s population and accounted for 25% of the manufacturing, which was almost entirely related to textiles. Today the silk market is so huge in Kumbakonam that approximately 5000 families are employed by the Silk Weaving Industry in Kumbakonam. The Thirubuvanam Silk Handloom Weavers is the biggest society in Tamil Nadu, delivering conventional silk sarees with unadulterated Zari. The region is well known for silk weaving from the time of Great Chola rulers. This home shop dyes and spins silk, then loads the silk onto shuttles for hand weaving. There is some hand manipulation of the blue/gren transition design, and use of Jacquard weaving templates for the blue/gold edge. Could have watched this for quite some time… And yes, I bought one.

Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez

One of my kids is a bit of a modern romance novel reader and he got me a little bit hooked on the Emily Henry style books. Those are the gold standard for me, but the Abby Jimenez books are pretty good. Then came Project 2025, barreling through America at lightning speed and destroying everything decent in its path with a head of state who cannot tell the truth even for a minute of the day. They lying, the cruelty and the graft are so staggering. So in contrast to that are these formulaic novels which have competent women, men who respect them and do not try to control them, and voila, it is a pleasant, if brief break from the white racist misogynists who want to break everything. Although in this case, not completely. Alexis has broken up with her boyfriend who is a decade older than her and wanted her weak and under his control. She finally breaks up with him because he cheats on her--but she does not get clean away, because her father is cut from the same cloth. A chance meeting with Daniel can change all that--he is everything her father looks down on--or is he? Alexis is trapped in a maze that she sees no exit from until all of a sudden, she does--wildly unrealistic in many ways but entirely likable. I will take a break but eventually read the second book in this series. The thing about these sorts of books is that people are a bit two dimensional and you have to be up for a bit of that when you read them.

It's Morel Season!

In truth, the season peaked a couple weeks ago, but I am still dreaming of mushrooms and the dishes that are made that highlight them. It has been a bumper year for morels in the corner of Iowa that I live in, and we enjoyed a dinner recently with mushrooms that were foraged from a friend's property. He got about 3 pounds of them, and we made a pasta sauce with these components: Mushrooms!! 1 Onion diced (substitute chives if you want to highlight seasonal ingredients) 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced (we also have green garlic right now, and that could certainly be used Saute in olive oil and butter until the onions soften, then add the mushrooms and cook until the stems are soft. Add a cup of cream and cook down until the suace thickens a bit. Season to taste. You can squeeze in some lemon, or splash in some white wine to add some brightness. Cook 1-2 pounds of pasta, and save some of the pasta water. We used linguine, and I do like a long thin pasta for this sauce. Serve with parmesan--we grated some we had brought back from Modena, but that was just icing on the cake, any good parmesan will do. It will probably cost an arm and a leg soon because of senseless tariffs, but that is what we must suffer for electing someone who lost all his family money and is now set on losing everyone elses. We are combating that by using what we have, and foraging for some of our food--which is not a bad strategy in general.

Patriot by Alexei Navaltny

This is a tragedy in the form of a memoir. Alexei Navalny knew how it would end: “I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison and die here.” He was right. On 16 February 2024, the Russian authorities announced the death of its highest profile political prisoner in colony FKU IK-3, north of the Arctic Circle. He was 47 years old. By the time it was published we definitively knew the outcome--that Putin killed Navalny. He had after all tried once and failed. When Navalny recovered and returned to Russia, everyone knew where it was headed. In the meantime he demonstrated conclusively that the Russian state had put a hit on him. The documentary that chronicles this story is remarkable--it also shows why Navalny was so dangerous for Putin. He was a smart, charismatic and handsome man who was charming, self-effacing, and the leader that Russia needed and arguably at one point at least, deserved. Having watched the documentary that won the Academy Award in 2024 and followed Navalny's return to Russia, his imprisonment, and his slow death there, the front end of this memoir was more gripping for me. It tells Navalny's rise to a much feared opposition leader, which included he and his extended family being targeted by the Russian government. The depth of corruption in Putin's Russia and the corruption it thrives on is well detailed here and he is a good writer to boot. This is a difficult read, and one that is unlikely to change any minds, but well worth reading.

Airavatesvara Temple, Kumbakonam, India

Airavatesvara Temple was my favorite temple after the temples at Mahabalipuram. This temple, built by Chola emperor Rajaraja II in the 12th century CE is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with the Brihadeeswara Temple at Thanjavur, the Gangaikondacholisvaram Temple at Gangaikonda Cholapuram that are referred to as the Great Living Chola Temples. The temple is dedicated to Shiva. It also reverentially displays Vaishnavism and Shaktism traditions of Hinduism, along with the legends associated with Nayanmars – the Bhakti movement saints of Shaivism.

There is just so much carving and detail throughout the temple. Hinduism is replete with myths and stories--there is a lot of material to work with--and a lot of it is carved into stone here. From the UNESCO website: The art work that adorns the temple is extremely detailed, intricate and beautiful. It’s sheer poetry in stone. Built in the Dravidian architectural style, the main stone work of the building resembles a chariot. The entire temple complex is filled with rich carvings and inscriptions that narrate stories from ancient Indian Puranas. Words don’t do justice to the charm and splendour that the structure emanates; it’s one to be seen and experienced. Every carving tells a story.

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

I read a review that called this more of a self help book than a memoir, and it is a good way to think about and approach the author's story. She was a closeted gay woman who married because she thought she had to, developed an eating disorder as a teen to have a locus of control, became an alcoholic as an adult, and was a deeply unhappy person who tolerates her husband's serial infidelity to keep her family together at the front end of her memoir. The first half makes a case for how we are born into society's metaphorical cages that teach us how to act, what to say, who to love, and who to be. Why? Because women are taught to be quiet, stifle our emotions, dream realistically, and fit the status quo, but many of these cages keep us from ever truly knowing ourselves or living freely, offering instead a life of elusive discontent that we avoid by drinking, convincing ourselves that "good enough" is good enough, or simply never looking straight at our problems because they're too much to bear. Then she meets the love of her life and she breaks free in almost every way possible. After blowing up her marriage and starting life over--you could even say she resets the starting line--she offers four keys to unlocking these cages: Feel It All, Be Still And Know, Dare to Imagine, and Build and Burn. These essentially translate to: Feelings are meant to be felt, you need to trust yourself, discontent is a sign you're in the wrong place, and new construction can only come from deconstruction.

The Room Next Door (2024)

Pedro Almodovar is a genius when it comes to exploring the nature of humans and he does it in vibrant technicolor. His films tend to touch on the untouchable, things that people do not want to talk about. His subject matter is like a laundry list of things that book banners want off the shelves completely but are at the same time part of the human condition. He is Spanish and so have his films been--until now. This one is in English and it deals with not just terminal illness and death but with choosing suicide rather than a painful death when euthanasia is not an end of life option. The movie is based on Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, and it is an emotional two-hander between acting titans, Juliana Moore palying the friend, Ingrid, and Tilda Swinton plays Martha, the recurrent cancer patient who is out of viable treatmnet options. As Ingrid, Moore is us, the audience--the character we have to judge ourselves against--what would we do? The cancer patient doesn't want to be alone, or to be found dead days later, so she asks a friend to be there--not to administer the fatal pill but to raise the alarm once she is well and truly gone. Ingrid is trying to do her best with an impossible task, perhaps sympathetic to a fault, yet she gracefully attempts to deal with the grief of losing her friend without making Martha uncomfortable. She does an amazing job of portraying a wman in this untenable situation, trying to support her ailing friend all while suffering the loss of a friend. Swinton is graceful in a different manner. Her performance feels restrained, holding on to a stiff upper lip even as if her character looks like she’s physically holding back the pain from appearing on her face. It is magnificent.

Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson

I am not sure why, but this is the first memoir or biography that I have read of a Supreme Court Justice--and it was a good place to start. I picked it up because it was on the New York Times Notable Books for 2024, and the author is the first African American woman on the court, and only the 5th woman to serve on the highest court. One review I read said that this chronicled her meteoric rise, but I would characterize it more as a clawing upwards against the odds. She is smart with equal parts tenacity and hard work to propel her forward. For those who are seeking something along the lines of her judicial opinions, there is none of the scathing writing or flashes of wit that she is known for as a judge. This is quite literally the story of her life, which includes both struggles and successes. She grew from a serious-minded little girl, eager to earn her parents’ approval, to a hardworking young woman determined to overcome every challenge. A self-proclaimed “risk-averse rule follower,” she describes herself as someone whose “nature was to seek harmony and cooperation wherever I happened to be.” The boldest thing she did was to marry her college sweetheart--someone from as different a background from her as it could be--he a white Bostonian who's family traces their roots to the Mayflower and she who arrived enslaved almost as long ago but under very different circumstances. It is a good read, but by no means earth shattering. Happy to have her in the siege defense as democracy is under attack.

Crizia, Buenos Aires, Argentina

On a recent trip to Buenos Aires we found it to be a city with a lot of excellent dining options. It was not an inexpensive city, and this is not a bargain, but it is a good value for visitors from Europe and the United States. We had the all seafood tasting menu, which is a favorite of mine. The seafood is sourced from all over Argentina's vast coastline, and the raw ingredients were spectacular. Equally impressive was what the chef did with them, dishes that highlighted the qulity of the seafood but also added or boosted it's natural flavor. What I think of as the add ons--the bread and the dessert--were good. The bread was spectacular, one with flavorful wheat and cultured butter and the other with flavorful corn. The desserts were very restrained, to the point where a dessert person might be disappointed, but for me it meant I didn't leave overwhelmingly full. I would 100% recommend this restaurant and would go back on a return trip.

1848: Year of Revolution by Mike Rapport

Eighteen forty-eight was a change year. A series of liberal revolutions exploded from one end of Europe to the other, toppling governments from France to Hungary to many of the small German and Italian states. The revolts rank in the annals of upheaval alongside the American Revolution in 1776, the French Revolution in 1789 and the end of European Communism in 1989. This book describes the uprisings of that year while making clear their modern resonance. The revolutionaries were overmatched by near-impossible challenges that sound remarkably familiar today. They had to wrestle with the demons of nationalism, which threatened to drag liberal revolutions down into the muck of ethnic conflict. They had to forge new constitutional orders that could temper violent radicalism. And they had to confront the grinding poverty and social misery of the freshly empowered masses, who had unattainable expectations for economic growth and social equality. I did not know much about this before I started reading 19th century fiction that is set in this time, and how transformative it was for Europe. This is not scintillating reading, mind you, but there is a lot of good perspective contained within.

Wolfs (2025)

This movie thrives on the camraderie and sharp banter between the two main characters played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt. It is ultra light in content, but we watched it at the front end of a red eye flight to South America and it was perfect. Clooney and Pitt are once again criminals, this time they are the guys that you call to clean up a crime scene and get rid of the body. They are both getting long in the tooth to be doing this work yet they are each eager to demonstrate to the other that they still have what it takes. They manage to maneuver their way through a few tight situations with only the bad guys being the worse for wear, and they tee it up perfectly for a surprise at the end. Classic reparte with two veterans who seem to like working with each other.

Shred Sister by Betsy Lerner

I will open with the punch line--I loved this book. It is the sort of story that sucks me in and I don't want to put it down until the end, and then was sorry that there wasn't more to come. The Shreds of Connecticut are raising two polar opposite daughters. Firstborn Olivia is sexy, wild and bipolar. The book is dotted with Ollie-triggered catastrophes, together with her family’s anguish as it scrambles to cover, cope, adapt. Very early on you get the sense that when she reappears, trouble will ensue. Then there is younger sister Amy — she is shy, comparatively plain, nerdy, and self-conscious. She acts as the able and witty narrator, opening with a dramatic window-shattering accident that showers hyperactive young Ollie in glass shards. Blood, ambulance and hospital time ensue; father deals while mother’s away on a vacation cruise. Amy’s voice — a perfect amalgam of weary cynicism, jealousy, angst and steady, painful love — wins the reader to her side and we shudder with her when the tornado that is Ollie comes back in to the Shred's life . This is the best of stories, with equal parts reflections and insight--not to be missed.

Gangaikonda Chozhapuram Temple, Thiruvarur, India ·

This place is astounding, And these two pictures are a minuscule representation of what is here—the carvings tell stories, as do the sculptures and the columns, and it is all spectacularly beautifully done. The structure is granite, the statues as well, and the carvings atop the gopuram are stucco (made of limestone powder, jaggery, egg white, and gum tree resin). Located in Ariyalur this temple, Gangaikondacholapuram, is the biggest temple constructed during the reign of Rajendra–I in Ariyalur region. Following the conquest of the Gangetic plains in A.D. 1023 the Chola king Rajendra–I built this in commemoration of his victory. It is a Shiva temple in the Dravidian style.

He also shifted his capital from Thanjavur to this newly built town. From his period to the end of the Chola family rule in A.D.1279 this city was the capital for the Chola Empire for a period of 256 years. The gigantic stone temple which he built in this place is rich repository of beautiful sculptures of middle Chola period. As in the case of most Shiva temples, the principal deity is represented as a Shiva Lingam which is 13 ft tall. The main part of the structure is 341 ft high and 100 ft wide.

I Heard Her Call My Name by Lucy Sante

Happy Mother's Day. This is a memoir of transitioning, written by a writer and university professor by trade, about her "egg breaking", being unable to continue to live as a man and coming out as a woman at age 60 and what the experience was like for her. This is the second such book I have read--written by another author and university professor, Jenny Boylan about her experience, and these are so valuable to me as a mental health provider who has a substantial patient population of people who have done just this. The struggles within one's self--not with questioning their essential femaleness but rather holding it in for so long, then letting it go free, who to tell, how to tell them, and who might get hurt--both this author and Professor Boylan had significant others they did not want to lose, and in one case, kids as well. I have a limited imagination, and so these frank renditions of what happened and how it felt are valuable--and also very likely frightening to release into the world, so thank you for that.

Pope Leo IVX--First American Pope

First things first. Since we all watched Conclave, we have some idea of the politics that were at work in the conclave that took place this week. If you missed the movie in the run up to the Oscars, you could watch it between Pope Francis' funeral and today. The debate around where the next pope would lie in terms of church doctrine and direction as well as where he would hail from were widely discussed. In terms of politics, the choice was more non-commital than decisive, and an American was a bit of a surprise. Some things to say--first, he is not that American. He lived in Peru for decades and has Peruvian citizenship. He is fluent in Spanish and Italian, so he can speak to much of the world's Catholics. Second, he is in N ugustinian order, meaning that he is not all about pomp and circumstance, he thinks all humans walk together, and he has a commitment to the poor. Third, he has a math and science education, and he has good leadership experience, and he might be smart. He is seen as a unifier and while not necessarily rooting for the church, it would be good for it not to go downhill and for it to mend fences. Lastly, he told Vance that he did not know what the hell he was talking about when he talked about Jesus--it was obvious to anyone who has read the New Testament that Vance was more in line with Pontious Pilate that Jesus, but it is good that the next pontiff let everyone who was in doubt know what he thought. So, not a terrible choice, it seems, and a quick decision to boot.

Climbing The Mango Tree by Madhur Jaffrey

My spouse and I picked this out to listen to while traveling by car together because the author is an icon in cooking. She is the most recognizable Indian cookbook author in America and the most prolific. This is not about that at all, but it is still worth a listen. Daniel Boulard encourages aspiring cooks to explore what they know, to understand the food of the culture that they grew up in, and the India of Jaffrey's youth was very multi-cultural before independence and partition. She had a very privledged childhood, in which her barrister grandfather lived on a road that was named after him and the family had a full-blown folk tale about its origin, involving an ancient kingdom and a massacre from which one infant boy was saved by the sheltering wings of a kite. This bird became the tutelary goddess of the family, henceforth held sacred by all its descendants. While the memoir is not about food, her taste memories sparkle with enthusiasm, and her talent for conveying them makes the book relentlessly appetizing. She provides many family recipes (which we did not listen to), including one for split-pea fritters, as well as directions for preparing both traditional and easy tamarind chutney. The whole package — fritters, yogurt, chili mixture and chutney — is a stupendous dish, and not too hard to make at home. But the full magic of Jaffrey’s description has less to do with the chaat’s extraordinary flavor than with the presence of the khomcha-wallah and the wondering appetite of a child. This is worth having a go at, but it is not about the cookbooks so much as it is about the author.

Pondichéry, India

Yet another seaside town on the Bay of Bengal. Pondicherry, India, was under French rule for 138 years, from 1674 to 1954. In 1673, French officer Bellanger de l'Espinay moved into the Danish Lodge, marking the beginning of French administration. In 1674, François Martin, the first governor, began projects to turn the fishing village into a port town.

The transition away from French rule was gradual. In 1948, the French and Indian governments agreed that the inhabitants of the French Indian possessions would choose their political future. In 1954, the French possessions were transferred to the Indian Union and became a Union Territory. Puducherry officially became part of India in 1963. Many Tamil residents of Pondicherry have French passports because their ancestors were in French governmental service and chose to remain French at the time of Independence. In 2013, there were 9,950 French nationals in India. I was looking forward to being here, but while the architecture is definitely French. there are signs in French, and some people even speak a little French to this say, there wasn't much left. The "French Fusion" was heavily Indian influenced, and overall glad we spent just an afternoon here.