February '25 Books

Those brutal, bitterly cold days were good for something - nine books read this month - all but three from Reese's Book Club. 

Maybe Next Time is the first book I've read by Cesca Major. For an idea of what the book is about, think Groundhog Day - the same day, over and over.

The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda is the second book I've read by this author. Both were so-so psychological suspense novels. 

The Most Fun We Ever Had is the first book I've read by Claire Lombardo. It is a multi-generational novel centered around the four daughters of a couple married in the 1970's. Sibling rivalry is a real thing but this book has too much of it for me.

Firebird and Sarah's Window are both by Janice Graham. They are books I've owned more than twenty years. Both are set in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Firebird made such an impression on me. I know I've read it several times, but it had been awhile. In my opinion, it still holds up. Sarah's Window was and still is good - just not quite as good as Firebird.

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty is the last book of her's my library has. I have enjoyed these books set in Australia.

The Club is the first book I've read by Sherry Lloyd. Let's just say I don't/can't identify with the rich and famous.

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse is set in an isolated hotel high up in the Alps. Once a hospital to treat tuberculosis patients, closed and boarded up for years, it has been renovated into a five-star minimalist hotel. An English detective and her boyfriend have been invited by her brother to attend his wedding at the hotel. As an atmospheric thriller, this one is pretty good. A who is it to the very end. My library does have another of her books. I've added it to my list.

The Secrets We Kept is Lara Prescott's first novel. I love historical fiction based on fact. During the Cold War, the CIA selects some of their typists to become spies and operatives who helped get Boris Pasternak's novel Dr. Zhivago published. This was such an interesting read, my favorite this month. 

Never Too Old To Learn Something New

I was 'yesterday' years old when I learned....something I should have known from the time I played office as a young girl and knew I wanted one day to be a secretary. Yesterday I started a new book, The Secrets We Kept, about two women secretaries in the CIA's typing pool who became spies during the Cold War. On page eight I read: "Secretary: a person entrusted with a secret. From the Latin secretus, secretum." How did I never make that connection? Me, a lover of words and their etymology.

Even my innate curiosity never caused me to delve into the meaning of the word. It had to be because I knew what a secretary was and what she did. But never did I associate the word secretary with the word secret. I feel like a dunce. But I also feel delighted. I have been a secretary. I have been/am a keeper of secrets. 

Wanting to know, to understand, to be aware also turned me into a news junkie. Eight years ago when cheeto became the top banana, I read all the headlines and stories about his most current faux pas. I would get upset, incredulous, etc. But this time around, during his second administration (and even worse actions) I skip reading anything about the turmoil he promotes, opting instead to read stories like these:

All about the plan to move the Locust Creek Covered Bridge to Pershing State Park. 

Look Bud. They're moving our covered bridge. 

We stopped at Locust Covered Bridge State Historical Site between Laclede and Meadville, Missouri in July, 2019. I wrote about it here: https://rilynam.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-natural-leafy-bower.html

Bud took and shared this photo of me on Facebook saying I was "looking for Clint Eastwood". Referencing Clint's roll as Robert Kincaid in The Bridges of Madison County.

The General John J. Pershing Boyhood Home State Historic Site is located in Laclede. I doubt my children remember stopping there to see the home of Black Jack Pershing in the mid 1970's, but I do. Just as I remember learning about his military experiences and achievements in grade school and high school. I doubt he is mentioned in today's classrooms.

Pershing State Park is three miles west and south of Laclede and covers more than 5000 acres of wetland prairie, a meandering stream, sloughs and a bottomland forest. I'm going to assume the covered bridge will be situated across the stream somewhere in those 5000 acres. 

I'm not too old to learn about the plans for the Locust Creek Covered Bridge; just too old to see it in its new location.

A "Light Snow Winter"

I don't keep track of our snowfall as I do the rain we get, but I know it has been an exceptionally snowless winter so far. It seems we will make up for that this month. Wednesday we had 7 inches of light, fluffy snow. Forecast for tomorrow is more snow, but of the heavy wet category. The amount we are to get keeps changing, so....? It is the bitter cold and way below zero wind chills that have me concerned.

February's Full Snow Moon - February 12

I had to wait for it to snow before I could share this poem by Mary Oliver:

Snowy Night

Last night, an owl
in the blue dark
tossed
an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something,
and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever is knowable – would have hurried
over the fields
to name it – the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world,
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.

Another Valentine's Day together and another beautiful bouquet from the wonderful and thoughtful Hubby Dearest. 💞

"Every love story is beautiful, but ours is my favorite." 💗

January '25 Books

 Launching a new year with an average number of books read - eight for this month.

the Husband's Secret and Apples Never Fall are by Liane Moriarty an author I have been reading my way through. It looks like I have one more of her's to get from the library.

The Blue Hour, a Good Morning America Book Club pick, is another suspenseful tale by Paula Hawkins. Her novels seem to have the most surprising endings.

On The Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton is another of the Reese's Book Club picks.

As is Outlawed by Anna North. This book is a whole new take on the Hole in the Wall gang.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak was my favorite read this month. To quote Goodreads: "A moving, beautifly written and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history and eco-consciouness." With my love of/for trees, this book was wonderful.

Wrong Place Wrong Time, also a Reese's Book Club pick, is the first novel I've read by Gillian McCallister. A hard-to keep-track-of time travel tale.

The House In The Pines by Ana Reyes is the same as the above - new author; Reese's pick. So far, I am not overly impressed by any of them.

Hopefully February's reads will be more stimulating.

What I Was Born For

To look, to listen, to ask why, to dig, to explore, to be aware, to figure out - I believe I was born with it - curiosity.

Sunset - January 30, 2019

Mindful By Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Sunrise, Nags Head, Outer Banks, NC 

Burns Supper and The Selkirk Grace

 

January 25 has always meant one thing to me - my Mother's birthday. She was born 106 years ago today.

Choosing this photo of her to share is the first time I realized how much my sister Betty looked like her.

It is also the birthday of our friend Carter. He celebrates his 53rd today. 

We became friends of his after he and Kari met when she worked at Barnes and Noble in West Des Moines.

His personality is of the "Hail-fellow-well-met" manner. I doubt he has ever met a stranger.

Well known Scottish poet Robert Burns was also born on this date in 1759. Scots celebrate Rabbie Burns Day or Burns Night with a traditional Burns Supper which begins with his Selkirk Grace:

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

Probably Burns' best known poem, and my favorite is this one:

A Red, Red Rose

O my luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonny lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun
O I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run:

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.

Putting Up With The Cold Weather

 

Cold Poem By Mary Oliver

Cold now.
Close to the edge. Almost
unbearable. Clouds
bunch up and boil down
from the north of the white bear.
This tree-splitting morning
I dream of his fat tracks,
the lifesaving suet.

I think of summer with its luminous fruit,
blossoms rounding to berries, leaves,
handfuls of grain.

Maybe what cold is, is the time
we measure the love we have always had, secretly,
for our own bones, the hard knife-edged love
for the warm river of the I, beyond all else; maybe

that is what it means the beauty
of the blue shark cruising toward the tumbling seals.

In the season of snow,
in the immeasurable cold,
we grow cruel but honest; we keep
ourselves alive,
if we can, taking one after another
the necessary bodies of others, the many
crushed red flowers.

I forget very quickly that we've had some above average temperatures this month and many normal days of moderate cold, but given a few days of bitter cold and below zero wind chills and it seems like it has been forever. 

Respite is on the way! A January Thaw! A few days of warmer temperatures. I associate a/the January Thaw with my Mom. She is the one I learned the term from and, in my mind, it always seems to happen right around her birthdate, January 25.

Beginning this afternoon our forecast for the coming week is highs in the 30's and 40's. Thanks Mom.  💛🌞

(Note: My photo is from January 16, 2022. We have had very little snow this month.)