Patricia Belyea and Japanese Textiles

Patricia Belyea is a well known textile artist who imports Japanese textiles and leads trips to Japan for people to both learn more about the Japanese textile philosophy and to use more of them in textile art. Her origin story in quilting is that she made a baby quilt for a coworker, and has been a quilter ever since. I myself started with making a pinwheel quilt with fabric that my grandmother had used in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's, which I tied and used on my bed in college, and I too have been quilting ever since. It is a seductive craft, especially if you love fabric, and Japanese fabric is especially luscious. She is living these days in Wauconda WA with the ground squirrels, deer, and bears--it meets the definition of frontier living, which is an area with less than 2 people per square mile. She did a Zoom lecture to our guild from her studio there. Her relationshio with the textile process in Japan extends to growing indigo herself. It’s a big story — germinating seeds the size of a dot to growing plants with bright green leaves to extracting magical blue dye. It was the second time that Patricia Belyea attempted to farm and harvest Japanese indigo at her highland home. And it worked — with a yield of 5 pounds of indigo dye!

Harriet The Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

This book, when I read it as a kid, made it seem possible to be independent, brainy, and comfortable with all that. The author illustrated the book herself, and Harriet is a decidedly unfeminine character, and one who is comfortable in her own unconventional skin. I reread it probably 50 years after my first reading, thinking that perhaps it would be a good gift for our granddaughters. Harriet is a flawed but very relatable protagonist. She is dedicated to her routine of spying on her peers and her neighbors--she is an outsider looking in. There are a lot of things that are very relatable about her, and it is not a book for tweens where everything comes out okay in the end, which is much like life itself. Harriet tells it like she sees it in her journal of spy observations, and she is not one to sugar coat it. When her fellow students get ahold of her journal and find out all the unkind things she has said, they shun her, and her struggle to figure out what to do about that is so relatable. The person she listens to best writes her a letter and tells her that sometimes you have to apologize and sometimes you have to lie. Period. Harriet struggles with that mightily. What I did not realize before I reread this is that the author herself was gay and that Harriet the Spy has a gay cult following. There is not a hint of sexual preference to my ear in the book, but Harriet is an iconoclast and an outsider, she has tomboy vibes, and she is fine with all of that, so it makes sense, but I did not know.

Don't Say Good Luck (2026)

There was an awful lot to cry about in this recently released Happy Gilmore film. The opening scene is Sophie just before her big audition for her school play, for which she’s been practicing and rehearsing diligently while occasionally eyeing a boy of interest and being supported by her best friend. She gets called back, which is deserved but she didn't knock it out of the park either, but while she is waiting her turn, her forever butt dialing her father does so unknowingly while they are receiving the devestating news that Sophie's mom's cancer has come back. Sophie pours all that pathos into her audition, and she lands the lead role, much to everyone's surprise. Having battled a cancer personally that I had not good reason to think I would beat, all the while trying to be a parent to my much older than Sophie's mom's kids I totally get trying to hold back the terrible news that this is the end while supporting Sophie spending long hours rehearsing the role of her young life. I also really feel for Sophie's daad as he tries to face losing his wife and balancing that with being the sole parent to his kids going forward. They try to bring in the grandparents briefly and while they offer a few helping hands, overall their grief at losing their daughter overwhelms their ability to be a plus and they have to leave--it is all so beleivable and while these are not the steps that I ultimately walked in my cancer journey, I shed a lot of tears then and when reliving it watching this. At this point, as my spouse occasionally says, we are too old to die young, at the time I was thinking I had something unbeatable, I had had a good lie, but I was too young for it to be over. Bring a handkerchief if you check this Netflix presnetation out.

On The Way To The Wedding by Julia Quinn

Yes, I finished the eighth Bridgerton novels, and at the end this one, all Bridgerton offspring are married! The challenge in a series of eight books, all romances and with stories that must be distinct and different from each other is that an author just runs out of gas on new and different ways to reluctantly fall in love. And so while this would likely shuffle to the bottom if I were to rank them, I very much enjoyed this book in much the same vein that I enjoyed the other seven, that is to say as light diversionary stories that kept my attention, I cared what happened, I was interested in the snippets of information about Gregory's siblings and their families, and overall I would give it a thumbs up. Gregory falls quite early on first for the obvious woman--the one everyone has their eyes on--but then settles on her best friend, which is the right choice for him. The unfortunate piece is that she is spoken for. Her uncle has promised her to another, much like a head of cattle, and so there are some shenanigans that ensue in order for him to wed her. The epilogue is a bit longer in this one, being the last as it is. And while I read right through this this summer, I won't be diving right in to the prequel just yet--though will likely get to it eventually.

Leela's Kitchen, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

My spouse and son were looking for an Indian restaurant in Cedar Rapids when they were there on a separate task, not food related, but they were going to be leaving about 9:30 or 10AM at the latest, and most restaurants were not open. This place does a traditional Southern Indian breakfast. We had traveled there two winters ago, and every morning we hada traditional South Indian breakfast—often called "tiffin"—it features warm, savory dishes made from fermented rice and lentil batters or semolina. Core items include fluffy steamed idli, crispy dosa, savory upma, and fried vada, served with coconut chutney, which is a bit on the bland side, and vegetable sambar, which can pack a punch. All of these were part of the meal, which they offered in a carry out package, and also featured a delicious lentil dal as well. Breakfast is not my favorite Indian meal of the day, but if you have a hankering for it, this is the place.

All Them Dogs by Djamel White

I read this debut novel because it was recently longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. The author is young, Irish, and interestingly, owns a tattoo business of some renown. This is a very gritty novel, which mixes toxic masculinity and a life of crime together and I wondered if tattoo artists hear a lot of stories that maybe other professions have less exposure to. In any case, this is violent and troubled, too much of both for my taste, but it is well paced and well written. On the run for five years after killing a man in a gang fight, Tony Ward has returned to west Dublin under the protection of a local crime boss. Teamed up with tall and sullen enforcer Flute Walsh, Tony is back on his home turf grafting a grim routine of collecting debts and drug dealer’s dues. Propelled through a world of old scores and hard knocks, our protagonist is a shark who has to keep moving simply to survive. But when he and Flute are called upon to kill a failing dealer, their brutal conspiracy becomes a visceral dance of desire and betrayal. Maybe part of my discomfort is connected with the overlap between these two poles of brutality and sexuality, but in the end, while I learned something, I liked but did not love this.

Love By The Tenth Date (2017)

As is so often the case in a romantic comedy, the premise is what can be a combination of annoying and what drives the plot. There are four black female co-workers of an online, upscale magazine who all have various issues within the relationship department, and it is the advice column of their boss that sets them into a dating challenge to prove to themselves and each other who can handle a real relationship. Gabby is plagued by a hurtful breakup in the past that she never completely let go. Her circle of influence that consists of three other women and two males in questionable relationships themselves, constantly give her controversial advice about how to go about building a successful relationship. All bets are on the table when Gabby is challenged to make it to ten dates with the same person. Not only is she eligible to win cash money, but she also gets to keep her job by providing a storyline that her boss, as well as the magazine’s readers will fall in love with. With renewed excitement, Gabby comes up with a plan to up her game and little does she realize that her longtime roadie, Dante, who has secretly been in love with her forever, silently wishes he wasn’t her confidant having to listen to every cringe-worthy detail of her dates. As the movie progresses all the women have various issues with preconceived ideas about love and relationships that get in the way of happiness until they are able to let go of them and let their heads take a back seat to their hearts.

The Arrogant Ape by Christine Webb

I have read a number of these sorts of books, where the reader is urged to think of things in a different way and I continue to read them, one because they show up on lists of books that are worthy of reading, and two because while I am largely in the land of the already converted, I learn a thing or two and it makes it overall worthwhile to have read, although it is slow going because my pervasive thought is yes, I agree. This is one such book. The author has spent years researching the rich social, emotional, and cognitive lives of our closest living relatives. She exposes the ways that many scientific studies are biased against other species and reveals underappreciated complexities of nonhuman life—from the language of songbirds and prairie dogs, to the cultures of chimpanzees and reef fishes, to the acumen of plants and fungi. With compelling stories and fresh research she gives us a paradigm-shifting way of looking at other organisms on their own terms, one that is revolutionizing our perception both of them and of ourselves. Is this new? No it is not. Darwin considered humans one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet one might that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that ever lived. This flawed thinking enables us to exploit the earth towards our own exclusive ends, throwing us into a perilous planetary imbalance. The opposite approach, the author posits, is a better, sustainable way of life with the potential to heal and rejuvenate our shared planet.

Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum, Mexico City, Mexico

The Tamayo Museum (Museo Tamayo) was founded by Ruffino Tamayo in 1981, when the Mexican artist donated his own works, in addition to a massive collection of international contemporary art, with the goal of showcasing 20th-century art for the public. My favorite part of the whole museum was Tamayo’s collection of his own work that he hand picked to be on exhibit in the museum. The building, designed by Mexican architects Teodoro González de León and Abraham Zabludovsky, is made of reinforced concrete and white marble stone and is located in Chapultepec Park, a vast green space in Mexico City. The low-slung design and natural tones allow the building to hide in and among the trees. Inside, glass walls and light wood floors make the gallery spaces feel contemporary, open, and spacious.

Well-curated exhibitions change throughout the year, but the focus is always on contemporary and modern art, be it painting, video installation, and mixed-media, nicely bridging the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Occasionally, there are also interactive exhibits. There are always seasonal exhibits. The museum is basically divided in half, with its permanent collection and new, temporary shows. The space itself makes for easy transitions between the wings and the central courtyard; a few steps sunken into the ground often feature sculpture.

Dominion by Addie Citchens

Dominion means supreme authority, sovereign power, or complete control over something, in this case it is the dominion of men over women--it is exercised not only through violence, but through charisma, piety and the banality of male entitlement. Set in the fictional town of Dominion, Mississippi, at the turn of the millennium, the novel follows the Winfreys, a prominent Black church family whose putative grandeur conceals a deep and hereditary decay. Sabre leads the largest congregation in the state from the pulpit of Seven Seals Baptist church, dispensing wisdom through sermons and local radio broadcasts, exuding the oily confidence of a man convinced that God speaks exclusively in his register. The longsuffering Priscilla writes those sermons, raises their five sons and silently maintains the machinery of his authority without ever receiving credit for it. Their youngest child, Emanuel – known universally as Wonderboy – is beautiful, gifted and terrifying: a prodigious athlete with the voice of an angel. Unfortunately his true nature is dark and dangerous. The action unfolds through the alternating perspectives of Priscilla and Diamond, Wonderboy’s teenage girlfriend. This is neither light nor hopeful, but it does feel real. An impressive debut novel.