Tuesday night’s meeting of the Charleston Modern Quilt Guild was a lively, fun meeting. Among the many visual treats, Cathy Beemer showed us the quilt she had just picked up from her longarm person. Cathy is teaching us how to make these blocks at our monthly Sit and Sew meeting. I have 1/4th of one of these blocks made and need to slow down and make at least one other 1/4th. They are so fun to make and use up solid scraps. Cathy has taken many classes with Maria Shell, and this quilt shows that influence. After it is bound, this quilt is meant to be a gift for Cathy’s nephew, which is “Wow” What A Gift of Love and Care.
I went back to Hidden Pond Nursery also on Tuesday, to look for a plant for this vacant spot in the garden. I came home with this rose–a floribunda called “Popcorn”–and three perennial Lantana that are the same color. All these plants will spread out–but not get higher than 2 feet.
It took the Maddox and a shovel and lots of will power and energy to dig the hole for this rose as there was a large vein of black clay running right through where I wanted to put it.
Hidden Pond has BEAUTIFUL container pots these days. I came home with this one so I could repot these Kalanchoe plants (Calandiva is a hybrid) my sweet neighbor Teri gave me for my birthday. They have NOT stopped blooming since mid-March.
And, I had a visit with the three hens that were loose in the Hidden Pond gardens today. Like most hens, these were very social and started hanging out with me as I walked around–making me miss the days I had some chickens of my own in Maine. These gals were very vocal and encouraging about keeping on walking.
The honeysuckle is blooming in the woods now. On my Tuesday walk, I stopped to smell this honeysuckle plant. It was heavenly–and qualifies as savoring one of the quiet moments in one’s day.
This little wildflower is growing along the sides of the path here and there. I can’t figure out what its name is.
And the very fragrant Ligustrum shrubs are blooming now. Some like this plant’s strong smell; some don’t. I do.
Wednesday was a dreaded dental day–but all went well.
And today I spent the whole morning outside–planting “Popcorn” and the Lantana and repotting the Calandiva. I fertilized, trimmed, and watered the roses and the new plants. When I came in, I showered (boy did that shower feel good) and had my dinner on the porch with my book (Jan Karon’s second in the Mitford series, A Light in the Window). Neighbor Teri came over for a porch visit catch-up, which was nice.
Lynette, a reader of my blog, suggested I might like Erica Bauermeister’s book The School of Essential Ingredients after reading my post about a movie about which I recently posted: The Taste of Things.
Boy was Lynette right on. I love this book. I am listening on Audible, but I found the sequel on my library app and have already downloaded it. I only have about an hour to go now, and I’m already planning to sit and finish sewing some binding while I listen to the last of this book.
The link below has a link the recipes taught in the book.
DIL Tami highly recommended the movie “The Taste of Things.”
I watched it that same night.
And, loved it.
It’s about cooking in France around the turn of the century, and it was so fun to watch two chefs, with beautiful ingredients and the help of one other person, produce the most gorgeous dishes. In what we could say was a primitive kitchen today.
The movie is beautifully filmed, and the love story so sweet.
Here’s a review by Roger Ebert. There were others praising the film as well, and you can google those if you like.
Former Virginia neighbor Gina sent me an interesting opinion article “defending” daytime reading–as it is apparently often seen today as being lazy or unproductive since it distracts from “more important” activities. Thus, daytime reading is seen to be a forbidden treat. Or, I suppose, an act of rebellion.
Turns out there are now “silent reading” parties where one can go to read while listening to especially chosen music. And there are Zoom reading parties online. There are small charges for these events of course. And…many of these seem, LOL, to be at night.
I read. Every day. In the daylight. My mother used to say that I would read the back of the cereal boxes at breakfast if I didn’t have anything else to read at hand. Not that she would have allowed me to read at the breakfast table –or any other meal table–anyway.
In the mornings now I read online those whom I follow to keep abreast of what’s going on in the culture. So, that may seem more like work–but it is also a deep passion for me as my background is Cultural Studies.
At my noon “dinner,” and after I’ve done whatever chores or errands I need to do, I read from whatever book of fiction I have on hand. My nearby library has a kiosk that is always filled with books one can buy for $1–books chosen around changing and timely themes. I like to get a few of those at a time–ones that look interesting for one reason or another–as then I don’t have to worry about returning them by a “times up” deadline. I usually “play them forward” or return them to the library, and I’ve found some authors I like this way and often go on to read or listen to (audio books) other books by those authors. I especially like to read a bit longer while I enjoy my dessert fruit and espresso. Having my dinner on the porch just combines all of these pleasures.
When I get well into a book, I will often take time on the couch later in the day to read further or finish a book. That is a joy. I don’t feel guilty. But I am retired–I do realize that fact. Nevertheless, I have aways read a lot–every day.
I picked up a book by Jan Karon from the library kiosk a bit ago and very much enjoyed it–an Episcopalian minister’s life in a small East Coast mountain town who goes to a coastal parish for a 6-month interim appointment before retirement (with wife and pets). This book, A New Song, turned out to be a kind of “quiet” book and is midway in a series of about 14 books. I enjoyed the humor, the values on display, and the plot. So I got hold of the first book in the series, which I have just started. I’ll see…what develops.
Gina wrote in her note that her book club is now reading The Last Castle (Denise Kieran) which is a history of the Biltmore estate in Asheville, NC. Next up in this book club is The Women (Kristin Hannah). Book clubs are great for reading good books–for the most part.
Today is VERY stormy with gale winds off and on and flash flood warnings from the national weather system. So, I will stay put, and I’m sure there will be fiction reading. And, sewing later in the day.
I remember the summer when I was 9 or 10, when we lived on Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana. That summer, my mother packed us up and took us to her home in rural Georgia as she deemed we would be safer there as polio struck mostly children and mostly in the summer heat.
As an adult, I’ve always been curious about what caused “polio” to erupt in that time frame which included that summer in my life, especially after reading that polio, the virus, had never spread so widely before that time. And I know two people of my age who had polio as children and suffered horribly then and have had permanent problems with their legs and feet their whole lives.
When I saw someone I follow online recommend this book by Forest Maready, I thought, ok, I’ll take a look and ordered it. Reading it was like following the plot of a murder mystery, and I was fascinated.
The back cover:
Maready starts with chronicling the first-recognized cases of “infantile paralysis” in the early 1800s in Europe and America. The paralysis always struck children about the time they were “teething” their first molar teeth. Horrifically, remedies involved deadly mixtures of mercury and arsenic. It is now known that mercury causes paralysis, so these remedies only made these children worse. But, why did only children get “polio” in the first place?
In 1856, Etienne Trouvelot arrived in Boston from France, bringing with him moth eggs as he raised silkworms and wanted to improve the line of silkworms he had. One type of the moth eggs he had were those of the Gypsy moth–which he dropped by accident in the yard of his American home. They hatched, and the saga of the utter destruction the gypsy moth created over time on the East Coast is now well known. By the spring of 1889 in Boston the Gypsy moths were devouring plants, starting with oak trees, and moving to food crops and fruit trees and anything they could eat. The moths were everywhere–on plants, on houses, even underfoot on the streets. Each spring, the moths spread outward in their search for food.
“Polio” means “grey.” And “myelitis” means lesions on the spinal cord. We know now that neurons inside the spinal cord come in two categories: grey matter in the center of the cord and white matter on the outside.”Poliomyelitis” means lesions in the grey matter of the spinal cord–which could only be seen in these early medical times during an autopsy. Further, lesions in the front half of the grey matter of the spinal cord cause muscle paralysis in the lower extremities, but if also in the back half, cause a loss of sensitivity/feeling. If the problem remained in the lower spine, paralysis was the problem. If the inflammation traveled up the spine, breathing problems start–and that produced the need for the iron lung that comes along eventually.
Meanwhile, people tried an arsenic poison called Paris Green to kill the Gypsy moths and other destructive insects, like the potato beetle which was impacting food production by 1874. Paris Green was sprayed directly on insects–and on food plants. Arsenic can and does cause lesions on the spinal cord. But Paris Green didn’t work well, so a mixture of lead arsenate was used on all plants, including garden vegetable plants. Later, investigators found residue from these poisons on foods, and industry hired “scientists” to do “studies” that said these poisons were not harmful.
Polio cases increased, and the term “epidemic” started being used. The first “polio epidemic” was in Rutland, Vermont, in 1894. But not all those who got this “polio” or who died from it, had the typical “polio” paralysis or other typical polio symptoms.
We now also know that many other things can cause a poliomyelitis paralysis condition. The polio virus is an enterovirus; it thrives in the gut. The coxsackievirus, echovirus, other enteroviruses (intestinal), and bacterial (like streptococcus) infections can causes poliomyelitis and its ensuing paralysis. But an infection has to get inside the nervous system to do its damage. And the question remains, how does that happen? Maready discusses some possible ways.
So why did children of teething age become sick first? One answer is that when little, their gut is next to their lower spine. As they grow, that proximity changes. But no one knows for sure.
As history advances, man invents better and better ways to spray poisons on insects and plants. After World War II, even planes are used to spray crops. And poisons, like DDT, come into the market. But this environmental situation and growing knowledge of other causes for “poliomyelitis” is ignored by “modern” medicine, which tries to find a vaccine that can prevent the polio virus itself. Meanwhile, poliomyelitis infections make the jump from rural areas to urban areas alongside the spraying campaigns and the better supply lines for fresh foods into urban areas.
My opinion: this whole story is a fascinating history. The end result is that there really is not much of a consensus on what actually happened back in the day. But true polio today from the actual virus is rare–unless it is caused by a live “polio virus” vaccine used outside of the US, which banned those vaccines for use here as they do shed and cause polio.
Plus, the famous iconic photo of dozens of iron lungs in a hospital environment was staged. There were never more than 1,157 iron lungs in operation in the United States in the 1950s. And an irony for me, also, is that when my mother took us to rural Georgia that summer, she may well have put us into more danger. I remember watching small “dustcropper” planes spray poisons over crops. But, we lived in town, and the family farm was outside the town.
Still, this journey we are on to manage crops and insects with poisons that are dangerous to mammal lives, continues unabated today. We are all living with a roulette wheel in terms of health outcomes. And “medicine” and public health are still ignoring environmental poisons while looking for vaccines for individual diseases.
The newsletter discussed the book that Janine Benyus wrote in 1999: Bioimicry. Krista writes that the book has “made its way quietly through the world ever since, in ever wider, radical ripples.”
Krista continues: “I invoke that word “radical” in its root sense — of driving back to the core. Consider basic life/design principles around which biomimicry orients — all of them at work in every moment beneath our feet, in the air we breathe, in the sky above.”
“I pay attention when I start hearing about the same thing from disparate corners. Across the last few years, I started hearing the intriguing word “biomimicry” invoked by people doing all kinds of things I would not have immediately connected with modeling from the natural world: sustainable investment; human-centric social media strategy; innovative philanthropy. And they were all also, notably, humans I experienced to be especially creative, expansive, wise — and kind.”
And then she (or the book) creates the following list:
“Nature runs on sunlight, uses only the energy it needs, fits form to function, recycles everything, rewards cooperation, banks on diversity, demands local expertise, curbs excesses from within, and taps the power of limits.”
One has to wonder how the battle between contrary forces in our culture will turn out in the end: human acquisition of wealth and power or human survival.
I’ve been captivated by the Apple TV show TED LASSO. I’ve almost finished the second season, and the third is streaming week by week now. I find myself laughing belly laughs outlaid somewhat frequently. The show is very different and I’m finding it refreshing. Lots of verbal nuggets to think about, for one thing. The characters are engaging and interesting.
Mike and Tami kept saying how much they liked this show. I have a new iPhone, so I get 3 months of Apple TV for free, and then it is about $7 a month. That’s a good deal, but there is, also, some good content there. I tend to switch out these streaming apps frequently, but I keep Amazon Prime and Netflix all the time.
Saturday saw me accompanying my 12-year old granddaughter to the finals of the Charleston County’s Battle of the Books–held at the new Wando Public Library, which is less than about 10 minutes north from me, depending on traffic lights.
Wow. That event was an eye-opener–in lots of ways. First, this library is awesome! It’s big, and it lends all sorts of items, among them sewing machines. A kiosk right up front had books for $1 that looked new–among them were 6 or 7 intriguing books on quilting. I came home with a new library card and directions of how to download the online app, “Libby,” which has awesome features. I can download audible books if I like.
The “battle” had 4 teams of 4 students who made it to the finals. Each team read 24 books, so each team member read 6 books. (I don’t know if the whole contest had the same books or if new books got added at different levels of the competition.). The librarians asked VERY specific questions about the books during 4 rounds–and the specific book for a question was not identified until the correct answer was posted to the big screen.
I listened and knitted. This project is my last ball of cotton yarn, which is a good thing as my pile of finished “towels” is overflowing its container.
The winning team answered something like 43 questions, out of a potential of 44. My granddaughters team answered 38 questions correctly. So I’d say all of these teams made a really good showing.
Dinner was at my oldest son’s house as they were leaving early Sunday morning for a college visit, and I was spending the night with them as I’ll be there for their two daughters and two dogs until Tuesday afternoon some time.
I have hand sewing to do while away from home. Yes, the quilt from hell.
And now it is Monday–and the start of a fairly busy week for me–with the possibility of the arrival of the longarm Friday.
I finished watching all 16 episodes of the South Korean drama series EXTRAORDINARY ATTORNEY WOO Tuesday night. It is hosted by Netflix.
What a treat!
Attorney Woo is on the autism spectrum. She has a photographic memory and is a genius with regard to South Korean laws. But, as she is autistic, it takes some time for her colleagues to appreciate her amazing skills as she is very different than they are.
However, over the 16 episodes, her colleagues not only learned to appreciate her, they have grown to love her and to work together to protect her. Happy endings are part of comedy and romance, and at least some courtroom dramas, and this series brings all these threads into a satisfying ending by the last episode.
The first two episodes set up the characters and then the series just takes off and soars. Each episode features a different legal issue and different issues for an autistic woman to learn to manage, but each episode also shows how the characters stretch and grow. A full range of emotions is present, and I often found myself laughing out loud or feeling really sad about how things are developing. And one learns a fair amount about South Korean culture along the way.
There are subtitles. But I think it is worth reading them in order to experience some of the very good foreign tv series that are now available on our streaming platforms these days.
There will be a season 2.
Below, is a link to Wikipedia if you want to know more:
I’m reading an author that I absolutely adore: Marisa de los Santos. She comes with some serious academic credentials, is a published poet, and is married to author David Teague who seems to write children’s books. They have also written several books together, like Saving Lucas Biggs.
Santos has, if my research is correct, 6 novels. Four of these novels are connected in some way. The first of this series is Love Walked In, and I really enjoyed it. The second book in this series is Belong to Me, and she’s hit this one right out of the ball park. I found myself reading bits at a time so it didn’t end too quickly. I just finished I’ll Be Your Blue Sky because I could not put it down and read for many hours over the last two days. I’ll be starting I’d Give Anything today. And I’ve ordered Santos’ two other novels, as I’ll want to give these books as gifts.
Santos just has the most wonderful voice on the page—so interesting and different. Someone in one of the reviews I read said that Santos introduces and follows three-dimensional characters, and I think that is true. Her characters are good, bad, beautiful, ugly, stupid and wise, all at the same time. These books are NOT romances, which the titles may suggest, though there is certainly much about the nature of love in them. And, life. (And I don’t mean to disparage romances. These novels just don’t fit that genre.)
Here’s a gift for you today. It’s a gift for me every time I walk into the kitchen.
Yesterday I mowed, and the grass is brown in many places from the drought. So today I’ll water and pick raspberries—while listening and singing along to my music. While I cooked a meatloaf yesterday for dinner (middle of the day for me), I bought more of The Zac Brown Band’s songs, so today I’ll listen to them while outside.
Have a great Sunday everyone.
Tomorrow we head into August. The summer is flying by.
She published The Unknown Beloved this year, which I bought to read for myself.
I read all the time, but in recent years, my actual reading has been nonfiction and research. I listen to fiction on Audible or our local Maine library system when I sew—as I love, love stories. Friend Linda McKinney got me to read fiction again by bringing me about 5 of her Nora Rogers trilogies—through which I ripped as if I had been starving.
And then I found Amy Harmon.
Here’s the list of Amy Harmon’s books—from the front cover of The Unknown Beloved, which is apparently a murder mystery. I will read or listen to them all. And I will hope that she writes and releases another book soon. Her historical fiction is particularly nice. I was in tears through most of From Sand and Ash.
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