Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

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

Tea Growing in Munnar, Kerala, India

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

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

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

Chris Manchini--Just Finish It

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

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

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

The Peacock Door, Heritage Hotel, Madurai, India

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

Behind You Is The Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj

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

The Way We Speak (2025)

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

Crumb Quilts by Emily Bailey

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

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

Kaveri River, Tiruchchirappalli, India

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

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

Turkuaz Kitchen by Betül Tunç

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

Restó SCA, Buenos Aires, Argentina

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

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Claire

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

Lost Wax Bronze Casting, Tiruchchirappalli, India

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

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

When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà

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

I'm Still Here (2024)

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

Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson

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