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.

The Unwedding by Ally Conde

This was an enjoyable read, which lies on the lighter end of the "good fiction" spectrum. I have found the Reese Witherspoon monthly book choices to be reliably enjoyable (with a couple exceptions--and I have read only a third of them--but it is a list I am working my way through slowly, so yes, I would recommend it). There are two "unweddings" here. The first is Ellery's--she decided to be a guest at the Big Sur exclusive resort since she had a prepaid reservation. She and her husband, Luke, were supposed to spend their twentieth wedding anniversary together until he tells her he wants a quick divorce since he already has a girlfriend. Her best friend convinces her that a few days in the lap of luxury will be good for her. While it does pan out for her, it doesn't start off well. She is at the exclusive resort that has been mostly booked for a wedding and while it got off to a good start, the second unwedding happens when the groom is found dead. It becomes a locked room mystery because in addition to the murder, there is also a massive mud slide isolates them all for several days while they try to figure out who amongst them did the deed.

Scrap Management a la Colby Cartledge

I do not in any way manage my scraps. Our guild does all of it's monthly meeting on Zoom, and Colby asked people to put in the chat how they manage scraps and someone posted a clear plastic bag, and that very much resonated with me. There was a time when I threw them away--a practice that is slightly horrifying to me now that I know more about using them and also how much water the textile industry uses. And so now I go through them when getting ready to do a new quilt and pick out some pieces that are bigger and can be used in the quilt. Colby was very non-judgemental, other than saying you should gift them if you don't want them--there are homes for them.

She described in detail her system, which is to cut things into 2.5" strips, 5" strips, 2.5" squares and 5" squares. Save the less than 2.5" strips for string quilts, and then you can do you--cut pieces that generally work for you--this works for her. Then she showed a trunk show of quilts that are either string pieced (she does the blocks on used dryer sheets--genius, as they are all precut to the same size and basically trash) or use the sizes that she cuts her scraps to, and then here are two take home messages for me--one is to "shop your scraps first", and then the corallary being "pick a color way, not a particular fabric", which means that you don't need to have enough of the scrap for the whole quilt, but rather enough of many scraps that are the same color way and value to do the quilt. The string quilts are pretty scrap forward, or color crazy, but a lot of the scrap quilts were harmonious, just not the same. She says that she designs a quilt with the scraps in mind, so if she has beaucoup blue, the next quilt will revolve around that, and so on. She supplements with yardage, but she doesn't start there. It was just awesome to hear her walk us through her thinking, and it also gives me a starting point as I think about managing my scraps, rather than having them all laid out on a table!

Gifted by Suzumi Suzuki

This is a novella that has either very little going on or quite a lot going on. The possibility exists that it is more of a commentary on the state of Japan and the options that it holds for women over a generation is how I choose to see it--especially after watching the documentary, Black Box Diaries this year, which chronicles a young female journalist's arduous quest to bring her well-connected rapist to justice--which doesn't quite happen, and highlights the protection that Japanese society affords sexual predators. There is an unnamed narrator who's story is told--she is twenty-five and living in Tokyo’s entertainment district. She works as a hostess in a bar, but soon quits her job so she can care for her mother, who is dying of cancer. The mother briefly moves into the narrator’s apartment, but in a matter of days her condition deteriorates enough that she is admitted to the hospital. The narrator’s time is then filled with hospital visits, walks around the city, and occasional contact with friends, mostly by text. These friends are young women who are sex workers or, like the narrator, have jobs that cater to men’s desire for entertainment and company, sometimes leading to sex, sometimes not. Her mother's story is a bit different from this, but the theme is the same--that in Japan, women are second class citizens with no where equal rights to men, and subservient to them in many ways.

Tandoori Chicken (Baked)

We made this at our vacation house (we have a deep spice cupboard, but even still had to make a few substitutions) and were really surprised by how much we enjoyed this. Tandoori Marinade: 1/3 cup plain, whole-milk Greek yogurt 2 tbsp neutral oil such as grapeseed oil 2 tbsp melted butter salted or unsalted both work (sub more oil) 2 tbsp lemon juice 6-8 garlic cloves 1 tbsp heaped, finely chopped/crushed 1 inch piece ginger 1 tbsp heaped, finely chopped/crushed 1 tbsp tomato paste 1 tbsp Kashmiri chili powder sub paprika 2 tsp coriander powder 2 tsp cumin powder 1 1/2 tsp red chili powder or cayenne 1 tsp for less heat 1 tsp garam masala or store-bought Tandoori Masala 1/2 tsp turmeric powder 1/2 tsp ground black pepper 1 tbsp dried fenugreek leaves (sukhi methi) crushed between your fingers 2 1/2 tsp kosher salt 1/8 tsp sugar I use cane sugar pinch deep orange or red food color optional - Note 3 For Serving: finely chopped cilantro lemon or lime wedges thinly sliced red onion Mint Raita and/or Imli (Tamarind) Chutney Imli (Tamarind) Ki Chutney This tangy and sweet chutney is often served with BBQ at restaurants. You can either use your favorite store-bought version or use my 1-minute recipe. 2 tbsp brown sugar 1 tbsp water, preferably hot/boiling 1 tbsp tamarind concentrate (I’ve tried Indira’s brand and Tamicon) 1/8 tsp red chili powder 1/8 tsp sea salt In a small bowl, combine all ingredients in the order listed. Refrigerate or allow it to rest for at least 30 minutes so that the sugar dissolves and the chutney thickens up. Instructions Prep Chicken: Use a sharp knife to make 4 (2-3 inch) deep slits across the meat side of the chicken pieces. Turn over and cut another 2-3 slits on the underside. Marinate: In a bowl large enough to fit the chicken, combine all the ingredients listed under Tandoori Marinade. Toss the chicken pieces to coat, making sure to get in the cuts and crevices (I use kitchen gloves to do this). Cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours, up to 48 hours (the longer the better!). When ready to prepare, take out of the fridge and allow to come closer to room temperature. Preheat + Prep (see Note 1 for Air-Frying): Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Place a baking rack on the parchment or aluminum foil-lined baking sheet. Lightly grease the rack with baking spray. (If you don’t have a rack, lightly grease the parchment paper or aluminum.) Place the leg quarters meat side up on the baking sheet/rack. Reserve the excess marinade. Bake + Broil: Bake for 30 minutes, flipping the pieces midway, until cooked through (165°F/73.9°C). Turn on the Broil Function to High (550°F/288°C). (If you don’t have a broil function, turn it to the highest heat setting.) Remove the chicken from the oven and flip the chicken once again so the meaty side is on top. Brush/baste the remaining marinade over the chicken pieces. Place back in the oven and broil for 4-5 minutes, until lightly charred (timing will depend on your oven). If not charred within 6 minutes (mine is usually not), move your oven rack on the top shelf so it’s close to the heat source. Continue to broil for another 1-2 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 5 minutes. (See Post for Smoking with the Charcoal Method) Garnish with cilantro and serve with lime/lemon, thinly sliced red onion, and Mint Raita or Imli (Tamarind) Chutney. Notes Note 1: The leg quarters I use are the ones you’ll find at Halal stores - skinless and smaller than the ones you’ll see at supermarkets. If you go to a Halal meat store, you can ask them to make the tikka/tandoori slits on the chicken and they’ll usually do it for you. Skinless chicken is not common in regular supermarkets so if you're not able to find it at Halal meat stores, you'll have to remove the skin yourself. Best with bone-in chicken such as chicken drumsticks, bone-in thighs, cut up leg quarters, or a whole, skinless, cut up chicken. If using boneless chicken, bake for shorter length of time ~20 minutes. Note 2: Air-frying instructions I find myself air-frying it more often than baking. It's just so crispy and juicy, with minimal effort or fuss. The heat circulation helps “bake in” the spices, like they do with Chicken Chargha. Preheat air fryer at 380°F (193°C) for 5 minutes. Generously spray the bottom of the air fryer basket with cooking spray. Place the chicken pieces in a single layer so they’re not touching. (I can fit 3 at a time in my air-fryer.) Spray the top of the chicken generously with cooking spray. Air fry the chicken pieces at 380°F (193°C) for 18-22 minutes, or until they’re they're crispy and slightly charred. No need to flip. Ensure the internal temperature reaches 165°F (74°C). Rest for 5 minutes before serving. Note 3: You need a small amount (~1/16 tsp) for restaurant-style looking chicken. I prefer preema powder's deep orange but you can also use red.

Burn Book by Kara Swisher

I feel like I should have read this when it came out and then everything that is happening/unraveling in 2025 would have come as less of a shock--shocking still but more obvious as to what was to come. This is a memoir, the author recounting her life in journalism in Silicon Valley, but it is also an expose of the top guns in tech, who they are, what they care about, and most importantly, what they do not give a crap about. She also does a decisive take down of Elon Musk, having sussed him out early on and ruffling his dainty feathers. She is straight forward, brusque even, and she had a front row seat to the whole thing unfolding, sharing in the hopes for what tech could do to change the world, and then seeing how it could unravel democracy in the wrong hands--which is where we are now. I think this is something everyone should read and think about, and maybe hope we heed the warning signs of just how bad these people really are, and what can we do about it now that all her fears are coming to fruition.

The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf

I read that there was a new biography of Alexander von Humboldt and the reviewer described him as the Father of Botany, and I had never heard of him. More accurately, I did not recall having heard of him, because I read a number of Darwin's writings and writing about him in preparation for my 2023 trip to the Galapagos--Darwin carried von Humboldt's writings with him on The Beagle, and asked his siblings to forward any newer publications to him while he was on that journey. He identified Von Humboldt as influencing his theory of evolution. He traveled widely, collected specimens wherever he went, did detailed drawings, and took copious notes. At a time when botany was all about taxonomy, he saw connections with climate and geography and grouped plants into vegetation zones, giving “western science a new lens through which to view the natural world” (p. 127). As Humboldt collated more data, plants to him “revealed a global force behind nature” (p. 128), whether indicating past human migrations or the movement of landmasses (prefiguring plate tectonics by more than a century). “No one had ever approached botany in this way” (p. 128). Observing Spanish colonial practices, he warned that deforestation and irrigation could affect the climate. Seeing the impacts of other forms of resource extraction, he connected the dots and warned that the action of humankind could affect future generations. His visionary assessment of climate effects of mankind he influenced one of my favorite Vermonters, George Perkins Marsh, who reforested the state after devastating deforestation.