When I was a little girl, my sister and I filled tiny baskets with flowers and put them on the neighbor's porches. My baskets, as I recall, were always a wreck. Lots of dandelions drooping sadly, on stems too long and spindly for tiny baskets. My sister was a born decorator. She found tiny violets and candytuft - or something like.
A long, long time ago, when I lived on a farm in Door County, Wisconsin, I tried to read my way through the Sturgeon Bay Library. I walked in one day with no idea of what I wanted to read. So I started in the A's. And once I got started, well. Yes. I'm that kind of OC. Read more about Spring Reading
I've devoted space in the Bookhouse lately to subjects as seemingly varied as Mad Men, Downton Abbey, and Titanic. But to me they are variations on a theme.
I have to admit, I was taken somewhat aback when I first read of the popularity of Mad Men. The clothes! they said. The culture! The good old days!
What??? What??? Read more about Nostalgia
A recent riff in The New Yorker on the Titanic and the Paul Ryan budget reminds us of the realities of American history. That the good life Republicans miss so much came about only after WWII, the GI bill, and large, active unions. Read more about This Land Was Our Land
I know I'm an old lady now, but really. How many writers who published this year can you rattle off the tip of your collective tongues? We'll throw in 2011, just to be fair. I can name George R.R. Martin in fiction and Garry Wills in non-fiction, and I know most of my readers can name several others - including, perhaps, Barbara Stoner - but how many of them can most of us recognize immediately as household names? Read more about 1962
Last Sunday marked the season premier of Mad Men. I liked it. I didn't love it, but I liked it. It set the stage for the season. I love that the water balloons and dialog came from something real. I was living and working in Chicago in 1966. I was told once not to fraternize with a bus boy (black) who was part of a catering crew. Read more about Take a Little Trip in the Wayback Machine
It's Ostara, in the pagan calendar. It isn't actually the first day of spring. It is "mid-spring," that balancing act when day and night are very nearly the same length.
In homage, therefore, to Eostre, I can't do better than to recommend a visit to Starhawk's classic, . Read more about Another Way
Closed the back cover of two books this week - well, one was on Kindle, so it was just a matter of selecting "Menu." They had taken an inordinately long time to finish for very different reasons. Read more about Recent Reads
I think was my introduction to Loren Eiseley. I was working at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and managed to return quite a bit of my paycheck to them via their well-stocked bookstore.
One particular idea of his has stuck with me. Searching for a meaning for human beings in the world, he struck upon memory. We are the memory of the Earth, he said. We are here to record, to bear witness. Read more about Eiseley
It's a mystery to me (and a large reading public) why Caleb Carr has not followed up on his two wonderful novels (1994) and (1997). Maybe it's because the two more recent novels, and were so badly received. Nevertheless ... Read more about Caleb Carr