A busy month, with our trip to Connecticut to clear out Mom & Dad’s house, but books managed to wave their pages as me, seeking to soothe my sore muscles and aching heart with an escape to wonderland. A side note: Farmer Gary puts me to shame when it comes to level of voracious reading. While in Connecticut, he kept a pile of newspaper circulars to read when he had a few minutes. We’d canceled Dad‘s newspaper and magazine subscriptions,…
Not long after Mom and Dad moved to Madison, Connecticut in 1995, they discovered a treasure. No, it wasn’t Hammonasset Beach State Park, just a few miles away. It wasn’t the many opportunities for fresh seafood in the charming oceanfront community. And it wasn’t even the discovery that there was a Girl Scout two doors down, who would keep them supplied with Thin Mints for years to come. It was the bookstore. And not just any bookstore. An independent bookseller….
Farmer Gary and I just returned from nine exhausting days in Madison, Connecticut. I’d volunteered us to sell Mom and Dad’s house, including clearing out the house of personal belongings. Spoiler Alert: Mission Accomplished. Gary and I felt comfortable taking on this task knowing that long-time friend Rus (a semi-retired realtor who grew up in Lowell, Mass., and is a roller-coaster enthusiast) would be at the ready with advice. Plus, my husband has a subscription to the Wall Street Journal,…
There’s something about May. Gentle breezes warm the air and all shades of green decorate trees, lawns, and fields. It’s no wonder Elizabethan dramatist Thomas Dekker wrote about “The Merry Month of May” in 1599. Side note: I learned from Farmer Gary the other day that the red dots in the field next to our house are Crimson Clover. From Capote to Coward, during May I tried to keep my book choices as merry as possible. Week 1: The Prime…
One of the many goofy teases Dad used when we were kids was to never remember our ages. He knew them all, of course, but would increase or lower our age to support his ruling as a parent. “Stay up to watch Star Trek? But you’re only six years old – that’s way past your bedtime!” Uh, I was eight, nine, and ten at the time the original series ran. When I got caught peaking down the stairs, my true…
To know her was to love her. Sister Sylvia reminded me so much of my dear great-aunt Sr. Amabilis. It was uncanny. Both teachers, deeply religious, tiny, and loads of fun. I met Sister Sylvia about 30 years ago at a tourism meeting. She was smart, kind, and sort of sassy. Her home was on the hill in Ferdinand, at the Monastery Immaculate Conception. She was their Minister of Hospitality. A few years later, we built a big new roller…
We’re never at a loss for books to read in this house. Sticking to my retirement goal from nearly two years ago, I managed to find four books this month with light enough topics to not add to my sadness following Dad’s passing. Week 1: Bless Me, Father by Neil Boyd After enjoying A Father Before Christmas a number of months ago, I was pleased to download the first book in the Bless Me, Father series (free if you’re on…
There are times when reading-to-learn ultimately teaches you how little you actually know. I now wonder if an entire year should be dedicated to focusing solely on my Irish books, rather than just the month of March. While that would no doubt lead to much laughter, it might also point me toward “the drink,” which I’ve managed to avoid thus far. The Irish have not had an easy go of it, that’s for sure. Week 1: Are You Somebody? by…
Farmer Gary is a renaissance man. His decades of planting and harvesting crops have taken him into the realms of botany, nutrition, chemistry, geology, meteorology. There’s math, engineering, economics, accounting, Even a bit of stand-up comedy. “Back when they were doing some digging work over at Mom’s home place, I noticed one of the bulldozers was a Japanese brand, so I asked the mechanic how he liked working on the equipment. He told me ‘the hardest part was learning to…
February is a short and often gloomy month, so it felt appropriate to read Great Expectations for the first time. It’s a long coming-of-age story, full of Dickensian characters and coincidences. In the afterglow of reading a really good book, I tend to search for related podcast discussions and non-snooty book reviews. This episode of the Backlisted podcast provides a humorous yet sincere discussion of Great Expectations, Mr. Dickens, and even some sad, sad attempts at musical-theater adaptations. Meanwhile, here…