Kapaleeshwarar Temple, Chennai, India

This was the firt of many temples we visited in Tamil Nadu, and the detail of the sculpture is spectacular--both breath taking and overwhelming--I spent hours looking at my photos in close up to appreciate what I could not see quite as well from the ground level. They are exquisitely detailed and life-like. Zoom in! The temple is of typical Dravidian architectural style, with the gopuram overpowering the street on which the temple sits. The original dates back to 700 but this location is believed to have been built in 1566 after Portuguese destruction of the original (the French and the Portuguese were in Chennai before the English took hold in the mid-18th century).

The temple's name is derived from the words kapala (head) and Ishvara, an epithet of Shiva. According to the Puranas, during the meeting of the deities Brahma and Shiva at top of Mount Kailash, Brahma failed to show the due respect to Shiva. Due to this, Shiva plucked off one of the five heads (kapala) of Brahma. In an act of penance, Brahma came down to the site of Mylapore and installed a lingam to please Shiva.

How To End A Love Story by Yulin Kuang

I would have pegged this as a YA Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, but instead it is a straight ahead adult pick. I stand by my assessment, and it does have characteristics I like about her picks in both categories. Helen Zhang was a nerd in high school, prone to keeping her head down and writing rather than athletics. Grant Shephard is the quarterback of the football team and prom king. Their lives collide when he is behind the wheel when Helen's suicidal sister steps in front of his car. They share this trauma but in Helen's family, Grant is the bad guy. Fast forward to the present when they are 30 somethings--Helen is the author of a successful YA series that is being made into a television series and Grant is a seasoned Hollywood script writer who is on the team bringing her books to life. They are both invested in the team not finding out what their real connection is, and they have the inevitable prickly first interactions that lead you know where. It is not just a romance novel but also about the ripple of trauma across ones life. A bit unrealistic, but also enjoyable.

Textile Environmental Impact

I listened to a very impactful talk by Patty Murphy on zero waste quilting, and how she started down the path of using every bit of fabric from a quilting project. Here are some sobering statistics. These are numbers from the EU, where they addressing human impact on the environment, but we can extrapolate to elsewhere. 1. It takes a lot of water to produce textile, plus land to grow cotton and other fibres. To make a single cotton t-shirt, 2,700 litres of fresh water are required according to estimates, enough to meet one person’s drinking needs for 2.5 years. There are green house gas emissions to factor in as well/ 2. The textile sector was the third largest source of water degradation and land use in 2020. In that year, it took on average nine cubic metres of water, 400 square metres of land and 391 kilogrammes (kg) of raw materials to provide clothes and shoes for each EU citizen. 3. Textile production is estimated to be responsible for about 20% of global clean water pollution from dyeing and finishing products. 4. A single laundry load of polyester clothes can discharge 700,000 microplastic fibres that can end up in the food chain. The majority of microplastics from textiles are released during the first few washes. So mindfulness about the environmental impact is key, upcycling is good as well, and making good use of your quilting fabric stash is an earth friendlier goal.

House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson

This is a 2023 pick by Reese Witherspoon, whose monthly book choices reflect books that are written by women about women, and this certainly fits that bill. It has been hailed as historical fiction, which is true, it is set in post WWII America and focuses on the experience of two black women, one poor, the other working class, and what it was like to be young, black, talented, but with limited resources in a time where there was not much in the way of reproductive options, nor was abortion legal. The problem with reading this in 2025 is that it feels very precarious for women right now, and that all the social dilemmas and prejudices are being invited back at the national level. This is not a disaster driven novel--unfortunate things happen, but the two women are both talented and driven to the point where the reader can see that they will prevail--but others are not so fortunate, and this is somehow a mix between historical fiction and a cautionary tale. I very much enjoyed it--and it is a Good Reads Challenge pick as well.

Chicken Biryani

Way back in December we spent 2 weeks in southern India, and managed to have biryani once--we did, however, visit a spice plantation in the mountains of Kerala and brought home some spices to make this. The recipe here is a good rendition, using chicken drumsticks, so it is an economical dish that serves a crowd if you double it up. It wasn't pomegranite season, so we skipped them and it was good without them. Next time I would add vegetables as well. For the Marinade ¾cup Greek yogurt 3large garlic cloves, grated (about 1 tablespoon) 1(1½-inch) piece ginger, peeled and grated (about 1 tablespoon) 3tablespoons lemon juice 2½teaspoons kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal) 1tablespoon garam masala 1½teaspoons Kashmiri chile powder (see Tip) ½teaspoon ground turmeric 1green chile, such as Thai or serrano, slit in the middle (optional) 8chicken drumsticks (about 2¼ pounds), skin on or off For the Fried Onion 1large yellow onion ⅓cup grapeseed or vegetable oil ¼teaspoon ground turmeric For the Chicken 4green cardamom pods 5whole cloves 1dried bay leaf 1star anise 1(2-inch) cinnamon stick For the Rice 6green cardamom pods 5whole cloves 2dried bay leaves 1star anise 1(2 -inch) cinnamon stick 3tablespoons kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal), plus more as needed 2½cups basmati rice, rinsed until the water runs clear, and soaked in 2 cups water for 30 minutes For Assembly Large pinch of saffron threads 3tablespoons milk 1 to 2teaspoons rose water, to taste (optional) 4tablespoons ghee or butter ½cup fresh mint leaves, roughly chopped, plus more for serving ½cup cilantro leaves and tender stems, roughly chopped Pomegranate seeds, for serving (optional) Add ingredients to Grocery List Shop ingredients on Instacart Your first order gets $20 off and free delivery. Instacart terms apply. Ingredient Substitution Guide Preparation Step 1 Marinate the chicken: Place the yogurt, garlic, ginger, lemon juice, salt, garam masala, chile powder, turmeric and green chile (if using) in a large bowl. Stir to combine and taste, adjusting salt if necessary. The flavors should be bold and pleasantly spicy. Make a shallow slit in the thickest part of the drumsticks. Add the chicken to the marinade and mix until coated. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour, or preferably overnight. Remove the chicken from the refrigerator 30 minutes before cooking. Step 2 Prepare the fried onion: Line a large plate with paper towels and set aside. Cut the onion in half, then lengthwise into ¼-inch-thick slices, discarding any smaller pieces that may burn. In a large (12-inch) deep skillet with a lid, heat the oil over medium-high, add the onion in an even layer (a little overlapping is fine) and cook without touching, until the onions around the sides of the pan start to color, about 4 minutes. Step 3 Scoot the onions on the sides of the pan to the center, reduce the heat to medium and continue frying, stirring frequently, until golden brown and some are crisp, about 6 minutes more. The onion will keep cooking and turn darker off the heat. Season with salt, add the turmeric and stir for 20 seconds. Remove the pan from the heat and transfer the onion to the prepared plate with a slotted spoon. Do not discard the oil. Step 4 Cook the chicken: Place the pan with the oil over medium and add the cardamom, cloves, bay leaf, star anise and cinnamon stick. Stir until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the drumsticks (save the marinade) and increase the heat to medium-high. Cook, turning once, until the chicken takes on a little color, 2 to 3 minutes on each side. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir in the marinade and 2 tablespoons of water. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is just cooked through and the gravy is thick, 20 to 25 minutes. If the chicken is cooked but the gravy hasn’t thickened, remove the drumsticks and increase the heat to medium-high; cook until thickened. Taste and adjust seasoning, if needed, then return drumsticks to the skillet. Remove the pan from the heat. Step 5 Prepare the rice: In a large (5-quart) pot or Dutch oven that you plan on using for the biryani, add 10 cups of water, the cardamom, cloves, bay leaves, star anise and cinnamon stick. Bring to a boil over high. Add salt and stir to dissolve; carefully taste and add more if needed (it should be pleasantly salty). Drain the soaked rice and add it to the boiling water, giving it a quick stir; par-cook the rice until it’s tender on the outside but has a bite, 5 to 8 minutes. Drain and sprinkle it with a little cold water to stop the cooking, then set aside to drain completely. (The rice should not sit in a pool of water as it drains.) Give the rice pot a quick rinse and dry it. Step 6 Assemble the biryani: In a small bowl, heat the milk in the microwave until warm, about 20 seconds. Crumble the saffron threads between your fingers as you add them to the warm milk. Stir in the rose water, if using. In the rice pot, melt the ghee over medium heat, then transfer half to a small bowl. Transfer ⅓ of the rice and the whole spices to the biryani pot and gently pat it down. Transfer the drumsticks to the pot, then add the gravy and whole spices. Scatter ⅓ of the onion and ⅓ of the herbs over the chicken. Add another ⅓ of rice, top with another ⅓ of the onion, ⅓ of the herb mixture and drizzle with half of the saffron milk. Layer with the remaining rice, fried onion and herbs, and drizzle with the remaining saffron milk and ghee. Step 7 Cover and cook for 10 minutes. Remove the lid and wrap it with a clean, thin dish towel or a couple of paper towels, making sure the ends are tied at the top, in order to get a good seal and catch extra condensation. Return the lid and reduce heat to low; cook for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and rest for 10 minutes with the lid on the pot. Serve with mint leaves and pomegranate seeds, if using. Tip

The Most Fun We Ever Had by Clair Lombardo

A reviewer called this the love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler and if you are a fan of those two and were to read this as well, I think you would agree that that is a great summation of the vibe here. It is the author's first novel, and you can tell she graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop because the family in this story spend time in Iowa City, a place that most people do not have even a glancing knowledge of. This is an intricate multigenerational saga that covers a 40-year span for one family. It is about marriage, sibling rivalry, how the growing up experience shapes us, including our birth order and the stability of the ground we stand on — there are four sisters who are close, constantly sparring, and trying to figure out their place in the world as they measure themselves against their parents and each other. The book swings back and forth over the entire span of the couple's marriage, and there are plenty of secrets that seep out at various times, and the trick to tie them all together at the end, so that all the reader's questions are answered. I would say that this was mostly accomplished, and I would definitely recommend this to anyone who routinely puts down a 700+ page books and sighs with disappointment that there is not more of this story to read.

Chennai, India--The Home of Madras Fabric

Chennai is the capital of Tamil Nadu state, located on the Coromandel Coast of the beautiful Bay of Bengal, is known as the “Gateway to South India.” Yes, India is a country where vibrant colors abound, but Chennai, formerly known as Madras, is the origin of Madras fabric. The quilter in me needs to point this out. In the 17th century, British traders of the East India Company established a presence in Madras, where they encountered the local handwoven cotton textiles. Enthralled by the fabric's lightweight and breathable qualities, they began exporting it to Europe. Traditionally, Madras fabric was meticulously handwoven by skilled artisans in India. The cotton yarns were dyed using natural vegetable dyes, resulting in a vibrant range of colours. Weavers employed intricate techniques to create the distinctive plaid patterns, characterised by their irregular and lively designs.

During the 19th century, the popularity of Madras fabric soared, primarily due to its association with the Scottish influence on Indian textile production. Scottish soldiers stationed in India, particularly in the Madras region, developed an affinity for the lightweight fabric, which suited the tropical climate. The demand for Madras fabric skyrocketed, leading to the creation of plaid patterns specifically tailored to the Scottish market. As the British Empire expanded, Madras fabric made its way into international markets, gaining increasing recognition in Europe and the Americas. It was embraced as a vibrant and distinctive textile, capturing the fascination with Indian craftsmanship and cultural influences of the era.

A Walk In The Park by Kevin Fedarko

This is the tale of the author's self described obsessive attempts (and failures) to hike on foot in the Grand Canyon. He is seeking more than just adventure in this goal--he is seeking all sorts of things within himself when he embarks on this quest, and his chosen companion, photographer and long time friend Peter McBride, is not a good counter balance for him either. There are a lot of interesting tidbits of information to be gained while reading this altogether painful account of hiking the canyon--warning, do not read this if you are hoping for inspiration for your own hiking trip, you are unlikely to be tempted when all is said and done. There is a litany of information about the geology and stratigraphy of the Grand Canyon, From the billon year gap in the Great Unconformity layer, to the oldest exposed rocks in the world, his unrivaled explanation of their stargazing of the Celestial Vault, solidifying their three-dimensional insignificance, is a powerful portion of the narrative. So is the apparent movement of the stylized human figures painted on the rocks nearly 4000 years ago, where the canyon is alive and speaking to them. In between is the sad story of the local Havasupai tribe’s struggle for a voice in the fate of the canyon and the rampant Eco-tourism depicted by air traffic in Helicopter Alley. All told, this is well worth reading and thinking about, but for me it is also quite flawed in concept and execution in the trip itself.

Nancy Silverton's Best Peanut Butter Cookies

For the Toasted Peanuts 375 grams (3 cups) skin-on Spanish peanuts 3 tablespoons grapeseed oil (or other neutral-flavored oil, such as safflower) 1½ tablespoons Diamond Crystal kosher salt For the Dough 2 extra-large eggs 2 tablespoons pure vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract 140 grams (1 cup) unbleached all-purpose flour 130 grams (1 cup) sorghum flour 170 grams (1½ sticks) cold unsalted butter, cubed 270 grams (1 cup) creamy peanut butter 180 grams (about ¾ cup plus 2½ tablespoons) granulated sugar 110 grams (½ cup plus 2 teaspoons packed) dark brown sugar 1½ teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt ½ teaspoon baking powder For Finishing 100 grams (½ cup) granulated sugar 270 grams (1 cup) peanut butter (preferably creamy) 2 tablespoons flaky sea salt method To toast the peanuts, adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 350°F. Put the peanuts on a large baking sheet, drizzle them with the oil, sprinkle with the salt, and toss to coat them. Spread the peanuts out in an even layer and toast them on the center rack of the oven until they are dark mahogany in color, 18 to 20 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally and rotating the pan front to back halfway through the toasting time so the peanuts brown evenly. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and set aside to cool the nuts to room temperature. (If you think they are on the verge of being overtoasted, transfer them to a plate so they don’t continue to cook from the residual heat of the pan.) Turn off the oven. To make the dough, whisk the eggs and vanilla together in a small bowl. Combine the all-purpose and sorghum flours in a medium bowl and stir with a whisk to combine. Put the butter in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle and beat at medium speed until the butter is softened but still cold, 3 to 4 minutes, stopping to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and paddle with a rubber spatula whenever butter is accumulating. Add the peanut butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar and beat on medium speed until the mixture is light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes, stopping to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Add the baking soda, salt, and baking powder and beat on medium speed for about 15 seconds to incorporate the additions. Stop the mixer and scrape down the bowl and paddle. With the mixer on medium speed, gradually add the egg/vanilla mixture, mixing until the egg is completely incorporated. Stop the mixer and scrape down the bowl. Add the combined flours and mix on low speed for about 30 seconds until no flour is visible. Stop the mixer, remove the paddle and bowl, and clean them with the spatula, scraping from the bottom up to release any ingredients from the bottom of the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate until the dough is chilled and firm, at least 30 minutes. Adjust the oven racks so one is in the top third and the other is in the bottom third of the oven and preheat the oven to 375°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. To finish the cookies, pour the granulated sugar into a small bowl. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Remove the plastic wrap and reserve it. Scoop the dough into 21-gram (1½-tablespoon) portions and roll each portion into a ball. Roll the balls in the sugar to coat them and place 12 cookies on each of the prepared baking sheets, leaving at least 1½ inches between them. (Re-cover the remaining dough and return it to the refrigerator.) Press your thumb in the center of each ball of dough and turn your thumb to expand the divot slightly and make it round. Spoon 1 teaspoon of peanut butter into each divot and sprinkle a generous pinch of flaky sea salt on top. Place one baking sheet on each oven rack and bake the cookies for 4 minutes. Remove the baking sheets from the oven and pile a mound of peanuts (about 20) in the center of each cookie. Return the baking sheets to the oven, switching racks and rotating the sheets front to back, and bake the cookies until they are golden brown, have puffed up, and are just beginning to collapse, 4 to 5 minutes. (You want the cookies to be slightly underdone, so they will feel soft to the touch. They will firm up when they cool.) Remove the cookies from the oven. If any of the cookies have become misshapen during baking, gently cup your hands around the edges to reshape them. If the cookies spread so much that there are gaps between the peanuts, add a few of the remaining peanuts to each cookie so you have a pretty, abundant nut cluster on each cookie. Allow the cookies to cool completely before removing them from the baking sheet. Bake the remaining cookies in the same way.

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

I very much enjoyed this book, which is not overly long and not overly complicated, yet is able to deliver on some well loved themes for me. The four sisters Blue grow up in a tiny New York City apartment--the six of them sharing two bedrooms. So there is all the potential sibling rivalry at hand but it is subverted by an alcoholic abusive father and a mother who protects him over her children. So they are prone to wanting and needing to escape and they are more bonded to each other than might have otherwise happened. The story revolves around the accidental overdose death of the third sister from fentanyl and the grief that engulfs them in the aftermath. There is addiction in all sorts of manifestations, there is difficultly with intimacy, and there is generational grief, which is kind of a trifecta for a mental health professional, with general appeal for all.

Bianca Springer--Thanks I Made Them!

I skipped lectures at QuiltCon for a number of reasons—I wanted time with the quilts in the exhibit was the main one—between classes and the exhibit, I have no additional time. Then the auditorium set up is not my favorite for lectures—too big, too distracting and not enough bang for my buck. Finally, the on site experience is a sensory overload, whereas at home I can watch in an ideal environment. The only downside is that there is a limited time within which to watch the lectures, and this one was the last one I had a chance to watch. Bianca has a passion for garment making that is impressive. She is an inveterate upcycler who haunts thrift shops for vintage patterns as well as fabric, quilt tops, and quilts. She talked a bit about how she approaches making a quilt made by someone else into a garment. She tries to honor the spirit of the design the maker had in mind—which she is amazing at—and then points out that if she is buying it, no one who knew the maker is making space in their life for that quilt, so she is giving it a new life it wouldn’t otherwise have. She went on to walk the viewer through how to pick a pattern, how to make the garment, and the various ways you could make and embellish pieced clothing. It was very inspiring and I would seek out a talk by her in the future.

Tenth of December by George Saunders

This was on the New York Times list of 100 Best Books of the Twenty-First Century (so far, 25 years in), and there are two other of his books, one that I petered out on reading years ago and will get back to and one other. This is a collection of short stories, which are not my favorite, but I will say these are well written and enjoyable just not my particular cup of tea. The 10 stories in Tenth of December (the name of the last story and not anything else to do with these) are all about people. No matter the setting – a futuristic prison lab, a middle-class home where human lawn ornaments are a great status symbol –the stories are consistently about humanity and the meaning we find in small moments, in objects or gestures. He paints painful portraits of domesticity, of families, of death. The can be described as sadly happy, each story full of little truths that make us both amused and very uneasy. The author has a keen eye for detail and a way of portraying human foibles in hte kindest of lights.

Roasted Pork with Peach Sauce

This is a hands off meal, but requires long cooking--we were going our for the afternoon and popped it in hte oven before we left and it ws ready when we got home--we used some peaches we froze last summer for the sauce which worked beautifully. 6 to 8 pound bone-in pork butt 1/3 cup kosher salt 1/3 cup light brown sugar 1 teaspoon ground black pepper Peach Sauce: 10-oz frozen peaches (or use 2 fresh peaches) 2 cups dry white wine 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon rice vinegar 2 sprigs thyme 1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard The night before your meal, use a sharp knife to cut slits into the fat cap; 1″ apart forming a cross-hatch pattern, but take care not to cut into the meat. Combine 1/3-cup kosher salt and 1/3-cup brown sugar in small bowl, then rub over the entire roast (including the slits). Wrap roast tightly using two layers of plastic wrap, place of a rimmed baking sheet, and refrigerate until ready to cook the roast (but no more than 24 hours). The next day, unwrap and brush off any excess salt mixture using paper towels. Season roast with 1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper. Spray your V-rack coated with non-stick cooking spray. Add 1 quart of water to your roasting pan. Place the roast on V-rack with the fat cap facing up and set aside while the oven pre-heats. Set an oven rack to the lowest position and pre-heat your oven to 325-degrees. Bake for 5 to 6 hours, depending on the size of the roast. Basting every two hours, adding more water after each basting to prevent the fond from burning. But don’t add so much water as to dilute the liquid. The roast will be finished when an instant-read thermometer inserted near the bone (but not touching) reaches 190-degrees. Place the roast on a carving board and loosely tented with aluminum foil for one hour. While the meat rests make the sauce. Pour the jus from roasting pan into a fat separator. After allowing the fat to separate for 5 minutes, pour 1/4-cup into a small saucepan. You can discard the remaining jus. Cut the peaches into 1″ chunks. Add your peach chunks, 2-cups white wine, 1/2-cup sugar, 1/4-cup rice vinegar, and 2 sprigs of thyme to the small saucepan with the 1/4-cup jus. Bring sauce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. When the sauce has reduce to 2 cups remove from heat. Find and discard the thyme sprigs, then add the final tablespoon of rice vinegar and tablespoon of whole-grain mustard. Mix together and cover to keep warm. Cut around the bone (shaped like an up-side-down “T”) with a paring knife, then use a clean kitchen towel to pull it from the roast. Slice the roast using a serrated knife, and serve, passing the peach sauce separately.

The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Sava

This is a quiet novel. It is a meditation on modern life and modern love, with some juxtaposition between the older generation and the younger one, between those who immigrate and those who stay put, and finally between those on the brink of living fully adult lives, and those who are on the brink of it, maybe for some time to come. Asya and Manu have been living together in a foreign, unnamed city in a foreign, unnamed country for several years. Estrangement – from the city, from society, from the self – lies at the center of this story. Asya and Manu are not like their parents, who live in faraway countries and send dispatches, good and bad. They have a small social circle, but more often than not, it’s just Asya, Manu and their close friend Ravi who spend the days of their lives together – drinking, talking, dreaming, and revealing themselves in these still moments that they spend together.

Rachel Clark's Quilt Coats

I am taking a class with this artist in June and I wanted to watch her QuiltCon lecture to get a sense of both her work and what I am in for when I spend two days with her. She brought over twenty coats that were modeled by four different volunteers, and it was feast for the eyes. She grew up with garment makers in her family, but Rachel’s life as a quilter didn’t fully blossom until she got married to her husband, Gary, and moved from New Orleans, Louisiana to Watsonville, California in the early 1970s. After this long-distance move, she found herself without community for the first time.

Clark discovered that even though she wasn’t very good at approaching people and striking up conversations, she was very good at designing clothing that could serve as an excellent conversation piece. People will approach you to talk about what you wear—she did say in her talk that you should not wear it if you need to run through an airport—people who want to ask you about your jacket will just slow you down and you could miss your plane. Clark loved both dressmaking and quilting, and didn't feel the need to choose between the two. She explored the possibility of combining them to make unique clothes with quilting techniques. People were interested in her clothes, and in turn, interested in her. She used clothing to “invite people in.” Well, I share some of these traits with her—not the creative one or the garment maker one—the shy with people I don’t know one—and I hope this pieced garment phase I am about to enter will be a good one for me.

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

It is hard for me as a mental health professional to be truly dispassionate about a popular literature book that summarizes information about mental health literature, but this has some really good points that I can get behind. The bottom line is that growing up is still complicated and increased access to technology and the increased obsession with social media doesn't do kids any favors, but--like smoking--tech companies have no incentive to shield kids and every motivation to hook them early, so it is up to us to suspend access for as long as possible. Recommendation summarized: Delay phone access: Put off smartphones until high school and social media until age 16 Make schools phone-free: Ban smartphones in schools Increase independence: Give kids more opportunities for free play, responsibility, and real-world experiences Replace screen time: Replace screen time with real-world experiences with friends and independent activities How to implement Model good habits: Parents can model the screen time habits they want their children to have Encourage independence: Encourage kids to take on tasks they've never done before, like going to the store by themselves Support kids: Be supportive and loving when kids take on new challenges Change laws: Change state laws to make it clear that giving kids independence isn't evidence of neglect Change norms: Change group-level norms by encouraging teachers to assign homework that encourages kids to try new things

Roasted Cabbage with Miso Sauce

This is a great year round vegetable side dish. 6 tbsp butter divided 2 tbsp miso paste 1 Napa Cabbage cut into eighths 0.5 cup Panko breadcrumbs 0.5 tsp garlic powder 2 tbsp chopped parsley optional Instructions 1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Cut the cabbage into quarters. 2. Mix 2 tbsp of the softened butter with the miso paste and brush on the cabbage quarters all over, including the base. Place the cabbage wedges on a baking sheet and roast in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes until charred on the outside and still slightly crispy. 3. While the cabbage is roasting make the breadcrumbs. Melt the remaining tablespoon of butter in a pan, then add the breadcrumbs and the garlic powder, toast while stirring continuously to avoid burning until golden, then remove from the pan immediately. 4. Sprinkle the cabbage with the breadcrumbs before serving. You can also add chopped parsley if using.

We Will Be Jaguars by Nemonte Nenquimo

Nemonte Nenquimo is a Waorani woman from Ecuador’s Amazon region who co-founded the Indigenous-led Ceibo Alliance that scored a major legal victory in 2019, protecting half a million acres of rainforest from oil drilling. She and her family lived within nature, with food from the river, the rainforest and their gardens. A monkey was her childhood pet. According to family lore, she knew she would become a spirit jaguar when she died. But things were changing fast: A huge metal tube had descended from the sky not too many years before she was born. The missionaries who emerged from it didn’t speak her language, but they persuaded her community’s leaders to put a mark on a paper in return for clothing and other gifts. Within a couple of decades later, her river was black with pollution, much of her forest was cut down, her community’s men had been coerced into laboring for oil companies in exchange for pieces of paper their way of life had no use for. Missionaries said Nenquimo and her community must worship their god. She and other children were herded into schools that forced them to put aside their traditions--and as seems to almost always be the case with these set ups, there are sexual predators involved. This memoir conveys the sheer confusion and terror of colonialism for the Waorani and other Indigenous peoples. Missionaries, oil executives and government officials used underhanded methods to wrest control of the region from families like Nenquimo’s. Ironically, the missionary education gave Nenquimo and others the tools they needed to fight back. Her story is one of fierce determination to claim a heritage that was nearly stolen from her.

Sing Sing (2024)

This is--weirdly--a feel good prison movie. It does not romantacize prison. Prison in this movie is a cold, cruel place full of violent men whose daily life revolves around trying not to antagonize the alpha dogs within the prison population or the guards looming over them. Rather it is a story about a group men serving time in prison whose participation in a theater arts program gives them something to look forward to and improves them as human beings. Colman Domingo, who deservedly received an Oscar Nomination for his role, plays Divine G, one of many real people who went through the program. He was an actor and aspiring playwright in high school before his life went off the rails. He’s a devotee of theater, loves to act and read plays, and approaches it all with the quiet fervor of somebody who found religion behind bars. Some of the most memorable images in this movie focus on Domingo’s face in closeup as Divine G performs, thinks, or silently observes others. The movie is upbeat. The scenes are allowed to play out in a way that feels real, especially in the drama club meetings. Participants are shown rehearsing scenes, talking about their meaning and construction, giving each other notes on how to perform the material, and talking about how the art informs their lives and how their lives inform their performances. The end effect is lasting and hopeful, despite all the hate being poured on people of color in the current administration, may we survive it.

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

The short review is that this is a version of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain with a feminist view and a spin at the end. Like the original, sometimes it feels like it gets a bit bogged down in the mundane. Mieczyslaw Wojnicz is a young engineering student who has arrived in the village of Gorbersdorf to stay at a famed sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. He is staying at the Guesthouse for Gentlemen, slightly removed from the main campus, along with a motley crew of other patients, all in varying stages of illness. Wojnicz is an awkward man who is very sensitive to the atmosphere around him. He witnesses something startling on his first day at the Guesthouse letting us know that this place may not be as it seems and the sense of unease steadily grows. The misogyny is lethal in this place. Wojnicz’s days at sanatorium quickly follow a pattern. He visits the doctor, he and the other patients go for walks in the woods, he rests. In the evenings, they gather together at the Guesthouse and drink a liquor made from hallucinogenic mushrooms and discuss their great ideas--all of which leave him as low man on the totem pole, just one rung above women--barely. The reality of the place is slow dawning and devastating.

Quilt As Art: Valuing Our Work, Tara Faughnan

I had an inspiring time at QuiltCan in Phoenix last month, but I purposely did not attend any of the lectures. I find the whole experience to be overwhelming, for one thing. Another is that while on site, I want to spend as much time with the quilts as I can, and finally, I find the leture hall to be too big. I am naturally antsy and to be in an auditorium with row after row of people is just not my idea of fun. So streaming the lectures at home hits all the right notes for me. I took an all day class with Tara Faughnan and it was amazing to be in the room with her for a day and to see her numerous featured quilts in the exhibit hall was an added bonus. Her keynote talk walked us all through her career as a modern quilter, her lack of success in the more traditional quilt world, and how her work fit so perfectly with the modern quilting sensibility, and how nourishing that was for her as an artist. That was all great to hear, but when she talked about quilting as art, how to value what we produce, and how it connects us to generations of quilters who came before us, that really resonated with me. I love those connections, feeling like I am walking in the footsteps of earlier family members--my great grandmother quilted--and to treasure and value my deep seeded love of fabric. She talked about her own drive, which is greater and more talented than my own, but coming from the same place when all is said and done.

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

This book found it's way onto the New York Times Best 100 Books of the 21st Century. This is notable for a couple of reasons. The first is that there is very little on that list that is not fiction. I would say 10% fall into the non-fiction category and even fewer are memoirs. The other is that two of the author's works of fiction are on that list, making her unique in having two forms represented and in an elite group of authors to have three works represented. The book chronicles the deaths of five young American black men that the author knew who were dead before they were 25, one of whom was the author's brother. The causes of death are varied, and do not really touch upon police brutality nor the prevalence of white supremacists in policing across the nation. It is simply a telling of who they were, why they mattered and how their deaths affected her personally. She is bearing witness and remembering them. Such is the uncertainty that African Americans contend with in the United States in the 21st century--even before an avowed racist was returned to the White House after he was convicted of rape. That is the state of young black male life in the US and then there is the paucity of options available to so many – almost one in 10 young black men are in jail and murder is the greatest killer of black men under the age of 24. It is to these statistics that the author attempts to give both humanity and context in her memoir, in which she relates the unconnected deaths in the space of just four years of five young men who were close to her.

Creekside Market, Jackson, Wyoming

This is the first place we have eaten in Jackson that we hands down agree we would go back to. We are only eating in Jackson two to four times a year, it is not a frequent event, but often enough to be more than a little disappointed with the food we have eaten, even discounting the bang we get for our buck. We know it is a town with a lot of tourists and a lot of money, so we do not expect to find a bargain, but we do expect to find something we would return to. This market with a well above average deli counter exceeded our expectations and we would whole heartedly return. Added bonus is that it did not cost the earth. We split an Italian sub and a Reuben and both were delicious. We would 100% get the Reuben again because it was as good as any Reuben, and that is saying something. The Italian sub was a bit over-stuffed for my spouse's taste, but we both agreed that the quality of the meats included were great, and the pickles were delicious--in other words there was an attention to detail. The added bonus is that it is located right across the street from the Elk Refuge (they even sell low priced binoculars in the market should you have neglected to pack yours and be up for elk viewing)--we parked there to eat in our car while watching about 50 trumpeter swans from various distances away, including close enough to be splashed on by some.

By The Fire We Carry by Rebecca Nagle

This book is and is not about the 2020 McGirt SCOTUS decision that affirmed the Creek (Mvskoke) reservation and, by extension, the reservations of the Cherokee and many others. Justice Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, which opened with: “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise.” A surprise to me, and maybe most, and the right one. This book is about much more is about much more than the McGirt decision. It’s a comprehensive weaving together of personal memoir, a murder case, and Native history that demonstrates that the present is a loud echo of the past, diminished only by Native resistance and occasional right decisions such as the McGirt ruling. It is not so much a victory but more of a rare instance when existing law supporting tribes was actually honored and upheld by the US government. Her stories meander but act as a comprehensive analysis of stories we know well in Indian Country. Her book is an opportunity to un-erase the past in order to understand the present. This is history about Native Americans by a Native American. She tells these stories boldly, and it is important, because they are going to be actively suppressed, distorted, and misrepresented in the near future .

Brave Brilliant Beautiful Badass

My guild had the most inspirational speaker for March, someone who hit all the right notes for me. Here is Berene Campbell's description of who she is and what she does: I'm Berene, a modern quilt designer, speaker and community project instigator. My sewing patterns feature inspiring messages of positivity and hope, with the goal of making the world a kinder and more peaceful place. I am a big fan of “collective energy” and use community projects to corral fellow creatives to work together for change. These projects include awareness projects, collaborative community installations, fundraisers for social justice causes, and the Handmade Collective Awards - a bursary fund set up for the maker community to fund awards for BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ+ students. It felt so good to hear someone talking about lifting up women at a time when they are being torn down in my country. She also talked about how doing your part to do the right thing makes a difference, because even though we are all small, we add layers upon layers of support, building up upon each other to reach the goal of hope, love, peace, and treating all people equally and humanely, even the mediocre white men who want to step on us to get ahead.

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

This is a story of generational trauma triggered by a fictionalized account of a real life tragedy that happened to people close to the author. Fletcher family, wealthy Long Islanders whose patriarch Carl was abducted from his suburban driveway one random day as he left for work. No one knew he was missing until he didn’t come home later that day, causing his powerful mother Phyllis, his pregnant wife Ruth, and their two young sons to exhaust both themselves and all resources at their disposal until he was recovered. And Carl is rescued; found intact with nary any of the maiming and severed body parts his kidnappers threatened would happen. Emotionally, though, he was never the same. He spends the rest of his life in a sort of shell shock. His kids grow up and react to the trauma in their own ways. Eldest son Nathan is so afraid of his own shadow that he compulsively buys any kind of insurance he can find. Middle child Bernard went running as far away as he could from his parents and their town’s idyllic surroundings, becoming a mediocre screenwriter in Hollywood and lives with his own kind of fear. Youngest Jenny, who was born after Carl’s kidnapping, is the smartest offspring and is therefore the one both least and most likely to fail spectacularly. All together this could add up to something great, but I struggled to find the deeper message, beyond that it is hard to hang on to a family legacy when someone yanks the rug out from under them midstream.

September 5 (2024)

This is a dramatic retelling of the violent kidnappings of the Israeli national team by Palestinean terrorists during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. The script was nominated in the category of Best Original Screenplay and it is my last movie to watch in that category (it did not win). Most of the movie takes place inside a TV control room, where ABC Sports broadcasters faced an unprecedented crisis. The first surprise is that the lead actress from the film The Teacher's Lounge (one of last year's nominees for Best International Film) is in this as a reporter/translator who provides the link for the ABC reporting team on what is being reported on German television--she is very good, and I was glad to see her in an American movie. It is hard to remember, having lived through the first Persian Gulf War, which took place during prime time viewing hours, that there had never been a televised event like this before. It took a while to realize that if the entire world could see certain aspects of the crisis live and in real time, that meant the gunmen could also see it, adapt their tactics to counter the efforts of police, and indulge in political theater for a billion-plus viewers. The movie manages to picture the madness through what feels like both fresh eyes and period broadcasting. It make you feel like you’re in the thick of it is a remarkable achievement, even though the movie ultimately thins itself out by glossing over historical and political context and treating the incident as a primer in media ethics. Well worth watching.

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

I am not into Arthurian literature, and so when I say that I very much enjoyed that, I should also add that if you are a big King Arthur fan, you might not have the same response to this. For one thing, we find out quite early that the king is missing and presumed dead, and the other is that Merlin doesn't get a candy coated Disney treatment here--he is a sexual predator with a penchant for raping young girls that he takes under his wing, which is apparently a return to tradition, but doesn't play as well now as it might once have done. The book opens with Collum, an aspiring knight hoping to join King Arthur's Round Table at Camelot, being challenged by another knight on the road, and the two engage in a heated duel. He does well and is taken in to the fold. The knights who remain now have a monumental task ahead of them: figure out who can succeed Arthur, and with Collum coming along for the ride, they work figure out how to go about identifying such a person. The non-linear adventure they embark on solving the problem of locating Arthur's successor is an examination sorts; who are the people who make up the legends and what are their motivations? It delves into questions of the nature of heroics, of leadership, of bravery, and of knowing when to hold onto the stories and when to move on from them. It's a complicated, meandering, and fascinating story.

Chez Noir, Carmel, California

I picked this out for the big splash dinner on my recent trip to the north end of the central California coast (spoiler alert--I prefer the sourthern end of the central coast--the north is just a little bit rich for my taste), and it did not disappoint. Unbeknownst to me, one of my dining companions doesn't care for high end dining. It often makes her feel belittled, which is not the look I was going for--and luckily, that did not happen here. The restaurant is actually on the first floor of the Craftsman-style house that chef Jonny Black and his wife, Monique Black, who manages the front of the house,live in. They make you feel as if you're being invited into their own home because it is their home.

The cooking draws upon French bistro fare and showcases the bounty of the California coast, with seafood, like spot-on sea bass and swoon-worthy abalone, making a big impression. If selecting from the many delectable dishes proves too difficult, opt for a set menu offering a tour of the greatest hits. For me, the abalone was unforgetable, the very best I have ever had, and I would go back to have it again and again. It is something to dream about. The next best was the agnolotti--which was on the vegetarian option side of the fixed price menu, and did not disappoint. And make sure you do not skip the the ethereal vanilla-scented canelés with an ideal balance of crisp caramelized exterior and creamy, custardy interior--better than most I had in Bordeaux!

Great Expectation by Vinson Cunningham

This story is nestled in the hope and change that many people felt when Obama was elected and came to the White House--he is a black man elected by a mostly white nation and things felt possible then. I travelled to Denmark when my son was studying aboard there, and in the SAS lounge pre-boarding there was a feeling of joy, that we could proudly travel abroad as Americans. The Danes we talked to were astounded--saying that they couldn't possibly elect a Swede, much less someone who looked so different from most of them. The hope quickly faded and it has been abundantly clear that half of us are deeply racist, that we are easily lied to, and that as a result we are in really big trouble right now. So this book, which is set within the 2008 campaign--fictionally speaking--is a bit hard to read in the face of all that. It is a story of a young campaign worker, and what the campaign trail feels like when you go from underdog to winner.

Growing Your Hair

My hair had always been the same. I grows a few inches below my shoulder when I leave it to it's own devices, which is what I had done almost all of my adult life. I cut it myself, just trimming off the ends and otherwise leaving it on its own. When I was on the verge of turning 50 I briefly though about getting a grown up hair cut, but my husband's two sisters gasped in horror and I felt like I was breaking up the band, and literally said "I'll cut it when I need chemotherapy."

And lo and behold, a decade on, I needed chemotherapy--a lot of it and for a very long time, so I was bald for two years. When that ended, I just wasn't ready to let it go back into the wild. For one thing, my cancer had a terrible prognosis and I was pretty sure I would soon be making treatment choices that would not include keeping my hair. I am so grateful to have been wrong about that, but then there were the truly trivial things. My hair was a different color (black instead of brown) and less curly--I felt completely cheated--don't people usually get curlier hair? Well, not me. So it wasn't until I was nine years out and my dad was dying that I decided to let it go once again. I am not completely back to baseline, and I am certainly loads more gray, but it overall feels like a good choice.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

This is a bit lighter hearted than a lot of this author's books, and at first I thought that made it less weighty--but then I read The Anxious Generation, and I think that this is an important reflection on where we are at nationally--well, before the take over of our democracy, that is. The story begins in 2008 within a farming community in North Dakota’s Red River Valley. The Great Recession is biting hard. Everything here that still runs, runs on sugar beets — planting them, harvesting them, trucking them, processing them. The industry has bent the whole town around the pursuit of that ubiquitous sweetener, with bitter results. The soil is depleted and instead of trying to build it up again, pesticides and genetically modified crops are the path that has been chosen. That is the background for a love triangle between Kismet, an Ojibwa teen, and two boys. Gary is the more conventional choice, although not a great one, and Hugo is less advantaged but a better person. The story is slow moving with obvious disaster written all over it, but beautifully told, and a fine addition to onve of the best American fiction writer's impressive oeuvre.

A Complete Unknown (2024)

Wow. Just wow. I first saw Bob Dylan in the early 70's when I was in high school--I was, in retrospect, lucky to have a boyfriend who was into really great music, and while Dylan had some unevenness as a performer, he is an incredibly gifted lyricist. Watching Timothee Chalomet inhabit his character for a couple of hours was amazing for me. I knew most of the story and the sequence of events--I am, afterall, a life long fan of Dylan. While I saw the Grateful Dead way way more live, I listened to Dylan's music more than any other music across my lifespan. My children know his music, at first because they had little choice, it surrounded them, and late for enjoyment. Ballads, songs that tell a story, are my favorites, and his are some of the best. So it is impossible for me to judge this a a cinematic work--I loved spending time listening to Chalomet's renditions of Dylan's songs, both musically and vocally, because it evoked all of those experiences over decades of my life, and he was pitch perfect at the details. I appreciate his dedication to his craft and how faithful to his subject he was able to be. This wasn't overwhelmingly successful on the awards circuit, but it was one of the most enjoyable movies of the year for me to watch.

Madness by Antonia Hylton

This book covers an important topic, which is that while slavery ended by law in the mid-19th century it has yet to really end and here we are in the 21st century. That is layered on top of the treatment of mental illness, the burden of racism and poverty and the toll that takes on ones mental health, and the differential treatment of blacks in the medical system are are here--but the thing that I think distracts the author is that she has a dog in the fight. She has someone in her life that suffered from inadequate treatment and that story drives a certain amount of the telling of this story, which I found a little off the target. The meat of the story is the history of an institution called Crownsville, formerly known as the Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland. Crownsville opened in 1911, the hospital itself built by the forced labor of its first patients. At its peak in the 1950s, more than 2,700 people were resident in a place that “existed along the spectrum of asylum and jail and warehouse”. While the things that happened here shared similarities with other psychiatric hospitals in terms of treatment, the conditions were appalling and they lasted longer than in other facilities. In the 93 years of its operation, 1,700 patients who died at Crownsville were buried in a field in the facility’s grounds and nearly 600 other bodies sent to universities for dissection (such as Johns Hopkins, where Henrietta Lacks' cells were harvested and sold for profit) . It finally closed its doors in 2004.

The Brutalist (2024)

This film clocks in at 3.5 hours, so maybe it is not surprising that within that kind of time frame you can pacak a lot in, but it covers so many things without specifically hammering, highlighting, or bullet-pointing them. Sure, it’s impossible to miss the commentary on capitalism and the casual cruetly of the super rich, but it’s also a story of immigration, addiction, Zionism, architecture, inequity, class, violence, and sexual predation. There are themes of generational trauma, particularly exploring the lasting impact of the Holocaust on a Hungarian-Jewish architect, László Tóth, who immigrates to post-war America, where his art and personal life are continuously shaped by his traumatic past, manifesting in his architectural designs and relationships with others; essentially, his buildings become a physical representation of his internal struggles with the trauma he carries from the concentration camps. László is a difficult man. The embodies brutalist architecture: it is stark, with clean lines, paradoxically somewhat ugly yet strangely beautiful. László is impactful, hard to like and hard to forget, all wrapped up with agony and self abuse. It is a masterful performance by Adrien Brody, whose grandmother was a Hungarian Jew who hid her ethnicity and whose mother, Sylvia Plachy, is a photographer. He said, "My mother and my grandparents owned a very similar journey of fleeing war-torn Europe and coming to the U.S. And the hardships and sacrifice and their own resilience and everything that they endured — in addition to my mother as an artist and her yearnings to leave behind a body of work of some great significance, they’re all things that are very personal to me. So I felt a deep responsibility to convey that authentically." Consider it done.

Our Evening by Allan Hollinghurst

This author is a masterful story teller. This is the story of Dave Win, a gay man of color, as he tells it in late middle age, recreating a sequence of formative or quietly significant episodes across six decades, from the 1960s to the COVID pandemic. When he is a boy at school, discovering the possibilities of music and drama, finding his own powers, shaken by encounters with prejudice and aggression, filled with unspoken ecstasies as his sensual attraction to men grows. Then he is a young actor with a subversive touring company in the 1970s; he is a lover, finding joy with his partners. He is also an only son to a single mother who knows that he is gay from the beginning and supports and loves him, their closeness outlasting all change. Dave is a gay man of a generation reaching maturity soon after decriminalization, seizing his freedoms wholeheartedly amid intolerance. He is also half Burmese, though he never met the father from whom he inherited his Asian looks, and all the racial intolerance that entails. The novel tracks the currents of gay liberation and race relations, not to mention a modern history of theatre and the arts throughout the period, and it is told unflinchingly and without rancor. Another great sweeping novel by a talented and openly gay author.

No Other Land (2024)

The documentary that could not get a U.S. distributer (it is a political hot potato) and few interviews (one of the directors is Palestinean) won the Best Documentary at this year's Oscars, as well as at many other award ceremonies. It is directed by the courageous Palestinian-Israeli filmmaking collective of Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and it is compassionate, thoughtful, and even revolutionary. It is a devastating profile of the community of Masafer Yatta (a group of Palestinian villages in the West Bank constantly on the brink of destruction), the people living in perpetual uncertainty, and the way state violence consumes entire generations. This battle is mostly seen through the young eyes of Basel. A 28-year-old Palestinian activist, filmmaker and journalist, he has spent all of his life living in the shadow of annihilation as the documentary captures how the Israeli military routinely destroys their homes with bulldozers. In every shot where we see these convoys of destruction approaching on the horizon, there is a sense of grim familiarity and impending loss seen in the faces of the people we cut to. It’s a compassionately constructed film — it never looks away from the grimness.

Bright I Burn by Molly Aitken

I loved this book, which while set in the 13th century, it feels familiar on a number of levels. Alice Kyteler was born in 1280 in County Kilkenny, Ireland. Her father was an innkeeper and a money lender. As the only child, she was schooled in these matters, which was most unusual for a woman at the time. Of course, she also was expected to marry --- and marry she did, early and then often in her remarkably long life. Alice is based on a real historical figure, but her voice and the more intimate details of her life are fictional. While Alice was prepared by both her parents with skills to successfully navigate life, Alice was abused by her father and as a result she was driven to murder him, using poisons that she learned from her mother. Her four husbands also died in turn, some under suspicious circumstances. It was these deaths, along with the growing scrutiny of Alice's success financially, that led to her being tried and convicted as a witch, the first woman in Ireland to have done so. The attitudes of those around her to her remarkable success in life seem very similar to modern attitudes, leaving me with feeling like while centuries have passed, the barriers remain.

The Nickel Boys (2024)

The book is brutal to read and I kind of dreaded watching the movie because of the intense brutality of it, literally killing black children sadistically and repeatedly, and I just wasn't sure how I could watch it unfold in living color. I was right to brace myself for the impact, it wasn't what I was expecting either. I did not know this when I watched it, but the director's previous feature was the Oscar-nominated 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening. As documentaries go, it was a lightning-strike cinematic discovery. With a certain kind of fragmented, intimate lyricism, it immersed the viewer in the details of Black life in a small Alabama town, gradually centering on a few years in the lives of two teens. It was impactful, truthful, and horrible without being overly gruesome. This one is quite different, but has some sameness as well. The stories of two Black teens confined to a brutal Florida reform school, is told from the point of view of his protagonists (which I learned from a reviewer that this is called the subjective camera, and people almost uniformly dislike it, so it is risky, but I thought it was successful in conveying the pain as well as engendering sympathy). Whitehead’s novel is sad and infuriating. It starts off as the story of Elwood Curtis, a precocious introvert growing up in a rural town in the Jim Crow–era South. He winds up at Nickel Academy after he hitches a ride with the wrong man on what would have been his first day taking classes at a nearby college. He meets the laid-back cynic Turner, a Houston native who’s on his second stint at Nickel and has few illusions about anyone’s chances of getting out of this nightmare through official means. The filme slips back and forth between their time at Nickel and the present day, and between the optimistic Elwood and the realistic Turner--the so-called reform school was modeled after the real-life Dozier School for Boys, a monstrously abusive institution from whose grounds nearly a hundred burials have been discovered in recent years, and for me, knowing the real life ending for so many who were there makes it all the more horrible to watch unfold, but this story is beautifully told in this film.

A Wilder Shore by Camille Peri

Robert Louis Stevenson was not a man who wrote about women--his novels contain few female characters and so it is hard to know how much he understood about women—but there is no doubt about the main influence on the second half of his life was his wife, and this book delineates the how of it, if not the why. Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne was a married woman from Indiana when Stevenson met her in 1876. He was 25, she 10 years older than he with a lot more life experience. At that time she was a mother of two, and soon to be separated from her genial, improvident philanderer of a husband, Sam. He went to a Nevada silver mine, she to an artists’ colony in France--he was more of a con artist, a seeker of fortune, and she was more of a seeker of knowledge. Stevenson courted her at Fontainebleau, near Paris, and he could not have been more different from the man she left behind. He had talent written all over him, for one thing. Among other qualities that appealed to Fanny and her children were Stevenson’s integrity and his irrepressible desire for adventure, in defiance of poor health. The two of them sought adventure in their time together, and that spirit is evident in the writing that he left behind. This is an unusual love story and gives a window into who the author was.