28/ Authors' Letters

I think it started with Cleveland Amory. More accurately, it started with me rescuing a little Elegant Slider turtle from a tank full of opaque green water at a pet store in New Jersey around 1970. He was so beautiful, and I wanted to give him his freedom. So my husband and three stepdaughters and I took the boat onto the big lake, and set the turtle free in the shallows. We sang "Born Free" as we watched him swim away.

(Much later I learned it wasn't a good idea to do this, as you risk exposing the lake to salmonella, but oh, well.)

I felt good about my good deed, and wanted to do more. So I wrote to Cleveland Amory, then head of The Fund For Animals, and asked what I could do for the cause. He sent back a long, handwritten letter. We lived in NJ then, and he put me in touch with a true animal activist. The next thing I knew, I was in Trenton protesting steel leg-hold traps, grateful to Cleveland.

After that there were a number of letters to and from authors. When my kids were old enough, they wrote too. The results were usually thrilling, but not always. When Gillian told Thor Heyerdahl she wanted to save the environment, he basically said, "Don't bother."

For me, one standout was Norman Cousins. We became pen pals for a time before he died, and on more than one occasion I've put to good use the advice he gave me to lighten the atmosphere in the room when a heart test is being performed. He was great. Another good experience that still rewards me is my friendship with Nancy Thayer. When I read her first novel, Stepping, my letter to her said, "Thank you for writing the story of my life." Like Nancy, I had stepdaughters, and I related to so much of the book. When she wrote back I learned she and I were the same age, and our "stepping" experiences were similar. We were pen pals for a lot of years, and now we're friends on Facebook.

I'm too tired tonight to try for three more book posts, but this seems a good way to end the month. It was a good month.

27/ Libraries - a poll

Among my fellow 365 bloggers, do you have a relationship with your library? What does it consist of? Where I grew up in Queens, a branch of the NY Public Library was located in a housing project. I went there often, as did my parents. Later, when I lived in Manhatten, a guy enthusiastically exposing himself pretty much ruined my interest in the main branch.

Here, the library started out as a store front on our small town's Main Street. The first librarian I knew there was not a real librarian in any sense of the word. She refused to give children library cards, and said I was a bad mother for not letting my kids eat her lollipops. Today, the library is contained in a beautiful old mansion with a friendly, knowledgeable staff. They know me well. I've taught various classes there, play Scrabble there every Thursday afternoon, and every three months ace (or come close to acing) Trivia Night with my intrepid team. I donate books regularly, and just as regularly buy books, movies, and audio books from their ongoing sale. The one thing I no longer do at the library is borrow anything. I just got too lax about returning things on time.

How about you?

26/ Photo Books

Mali's post yesterday reminded me that I was going to write about one of my photo books with text, but I think I'll mention several. I haven't made a lot of photo books (six total), but I'm rather proud of them. The first one was a gift for a friend famous for his jazz parties. I'd been photographing the parties for years, and one Christmas I decided to put together the best of the pictures for him. There isn't a lot of text in that one—mostly just captions—but it turned out well. So well, in fact, that he ordered a big stack of copies to give to friends, making it my most widely-read photo book.

My second book turned out well too, although it's a much more limited edition than the first.  And the most recent photo book has a lot of text too. It's the story of my parents. Here are the front and back covers.

25/ BookBub

Every day I receive an email from BookBub announcing special deals on Kindle books. Some are free, and the rest are usually priced no higher than $2.99. They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but I know I've rejected some featured books on the basis of their titles. Recent ones in this category include Special Topics in Calamity Physics; Grape, Olive, Pig; Biscuits and Slashed Browns, Apartment Therapy, and Trouble in Mudbug.

But often a book's title sends me to Amazon to read more about it, and sometimes I click Buy Now With 1-Click. The Gray and Guilty Sea and A Fifty-Year Silence were two of these.

24/ My High-School Years

I read many books during the time I was in high school, but tonight I remember relatively few.

Appointment in Samarra and others by John O'Hara
Anything by Harold Robbins and that other guy (I just remembered: Sidney Sheldon)
Banner With a Strange Device, by Arona McHugh
The Mr. & Mrs. North books by Frances & Richard Lockridge
Cape Fear, by John D. MacDonald*
All of J.D. Salinger's
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
My Cousin Rachel          "
On the Beach, by Nevil Shute
Naked Lunch, by William Burroughs
Bonjour Tristesse, by Francoise Sagan
The Haunting of Hill House and others by Shirley Jackson
Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov . . . lots and lots of sci-fi
Hawaii, by James Michener
Auntie Mame, by Patrick Dennis
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith

* Later, when I was working at Lincoln Center, so many of us in the office were John D. MacDonald fans that we had a chart posted on the bulletin board showing who had which book, and which ones each of us had read.

23/ Lyme Disease Books

I've long suspected that my kids think I'm a hypochondriac, and looking at all the health books on my shelves, it's no wonder. Anyone who lost a parent young is likely to have health concerns. My mom had just turned 38 when she died from cleaning a rug (with carbon tetrachloride), and it was a big relief for me to turn 39 and put that behind me. But a certain amount of anxiety persists. At least I channeled my worries into book buying rather than frequent trips to doctors.

And when it comes to Lyme Disease, you really have to be your own medical researcher and physician because the medical community has no consensus on treatment. The whole bunch of them, including the CDC, are at sea, and if you want to find your way to shore you better sew yourself a life jacket and learn to be a strong swimmer.

Why Can't I Get Better? by Richard Horowitz, MD
How Can I Get Better?            "              "
Healing Lyme, by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Beating Lyme, by Constance Bean
Natural Treatments for Lyme Coinfections, by Stephen Harrod Buhner
Healing Lyme Disease Coinfections                         "                 "
Unlocking Lyme, by William Rawls, MD
Checklists for Bartonella, Babesia, and Lyme Disease, by James Schaller, MD

22/ Leaving Time

I told my friend Lee that I'd given up on the Jodi Picoult book I'd tried, finding the writing immature at best, and she was surprised. She told me she just finished Picoult's Leaving Time, and found it very well written. She liked it a lot. It was my turn to be surprised, because Lee was a discerning and avid reader.

A few years later I ran across Leaving Time and picked it up. I was put off by the first sentence, which I would have edited. But remembering my conversation with Lee, I kept going. I'm so glad I did. Leaving Time is intelligently written, with unforgettable characters and a great deal of fascinating information about elephants. Picoult clearly put a lot of research into this book. I loved it.

As I read, I thought often about how it might end. But none of my speculation came close to the actual ending. It was a total surprise.

21/ The Middle-School Years

Actually, in NYC we didn't have middle school when I was growing up. Seventh and eighth grades were called Junior High. Fifth and sixth were part of elementary school. I'm trying to remember which books were assigned for reading in the Catholic convent boarding school I attended for 5th and 6th grades, but I'm drawing a blank. I do remember that my dad brought me a Reader's Digest on one of his weekly visits, and the nuns took it away from me.

At home I favored light-hearted memoirs, possibly because they provided a cheerful distraction from my motherless, homesick life at the time.

Through Charley's Door, by Emily Kimbrough
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough
The Egg and I, by Betty MacDonald

20/ Reincarnation

It may have started with The Search for Bridey Murphy, read when I was a teenager. Or maybe Jess Stearn's Yoga, Youth, and Reincarnation came first. Either way, my interest was piqued. And books that came after developed my interest into something more solid.

No Goodbyes, by Adela Rogers St. Johns
Across Time and Death: A Mother's Search For Her Past Life Children, by Jenny Cockell
Past Lives Future Lives, by Jenny Cockell
Many Lives, Many Masters, by Brian Weiss, MD
Messages From the Masters: Tapping Into the Power of Love, by Brian Weiss, MD
Children's Past Lives: How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child, by Carol Bowman
Edgar Cayce, The Sleeping Prophet, by Jess Stearn
There Is a River: The Story of Edgar Cayce, by Thomas Sugrue

There are others. But the ones that meant the most to me were two that I read not long after Jill died:  Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls, both by Dr. Michael Newton, Ph.D. Dr. Newton, who died in 2016, was a psychologist who hypnotized a large number of people and asked them not about their past lives, but their lives between lives. He questioned them in detail, and their answers were remarkably similar. These two books are the result.

I don't remember how I heard about them—so many people recommended or gave me so many books around that time—but I've bought and given away a number of copies of Journey of Souls over the years, paying it forward. The two books should be read in order, Journey first.

19/ My Bookshelves

This bookcase was pictured in photos my dad took from the earliest days of my parents' marriage. It traveled from Greenwich Village to Queens to Florida to here in Pennsylvania. The books on the bottom shelf aren't visible, but they're' there.

My dad had the bookcase below made by a carpenter in Florida. Along with my dwindling wine rack, it is directly in back of me as I sit at my desk. Like right now. Lots of books of poetry, and books about poetry and writing, health books, more books on Lyme disease than I want to think about, books on photography, and others, mostly nonfiction--including David Niven's hilarious Bring on the Empty Horses. I read his two memoirs in bed years ago, burrowing under the covers so my laughter wouldn't wake the children. To the left of center on the bottom shelf is a stack of unread magazines. When I had three little kids and I made three meals a day from scratch and I sewed some of their clothes and I grew a big garden I had time to read more magazines than I do today. Why is that?

This one is easy: A set of cookbooks on the top left, then all photo albums on that shelf. The second shelf is all songbooks. Third shelf is books on crafts, lettering, decorative painting, and some picture books written and illustrated by a close friend. Fourth shelf is more music, plus a stack of Profolio photo albums on the left and other photo albums sitting on the music books. Fifth shelf is nature field guides and other smallish books. Invisible bottom shelf is regular-size books.

It's harder to classify the next shelves. Mix of books on top. On the left side of the second shelf is a stack of rug hooking magazines. No organization whatsoever on the third shelf. In the center of the fourth shelf are smaller Profolio photo albums, and to the right of them are my older diaries. The next two shelves are mostly older cookbooks, with some Edgar Cayce and other occult stuff mixed in. The last visible shelf is all children's books on the left side and all watercolor painting books on the right. There's another shelf of children's books below, not visible in the photo. The black piece of "furniture" next to the bookshelves is my piano, repository for another stack of music books. The picture on the wall is my grandfather, in costume for Carmen. 

Not photographed are two bookshelves in my pantry: three feet of gardening books and five feet of cookbooks. Before taking the above photos I thought about tidying up the shelves but decided against it. I'm glad, because if I'd made the attempt I'd probably still be at it.

18/ James Baldwin

I just finished reading James Baldwin's Wikipedia entry. Back when I was around 18 and reading his books (Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, The Fire Next Time, Another Country), book jackets revealed as little about authors as they do today, but there was no easy way to learn more. All I remembered about James Baldwin is that he was black and gay. I didn't know his friends called him "Jimmy," and that he had many of them. I didn't know his stepfather was hard on Jimmy, treating him far more harshly than his eight biological children. I didn't know he lived most of his life in France, visited often by those friends. And before I read Giovanni's Room I didn't know how gay men had sex.

17/ Food Writing

Reading so many recent comments from fans of Anthony Bourdain's books, I was glad I'd ordered two books by Ruth Reichl because I was obviously a latecomer to food writing. But then I remembered all the cookbooks I read in the car while we drove from NYC to our weekend house in Pennsylvania in the 1960s. Those cookbooks contained way more than recipes. I read of Myra Waldo's travels, James Beard's comments on fish, Elsie Masterton's experiences running a B&B in New England, and much more. And as I said in an earlier post (I think), by the time we reached the supermarket in New Jersey, I knew what we'd be eating that weekend.

I've finished one of the Ruth Reichl books—Delicious! A Novel. I enjoyed it. Great characters, a strong NYC vibe, and lots and lots of talk about food. The other book I bought by her is one of her memoirs, Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table. I haven't started that one yet.

16/ The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, was my favorite childhood book (not counting the 48 or so Nancy Drew books). I don't know if I read it more than once, but I know I carried it around in my head for a long time.

I grew up in the city, but I heard a lot about gardens from my mom, who had grown up in the country and longed to be growing things again. Our apartment had some lovely houseplants. Before I was born, my parents created roof gardens above their apartments in Greenwich Village.

The Secret Garden isn't a gardening manual, of course, but "garden" was almost a sacred word in my vocabulary, and a secret, of course, was appealing. Judging by how often magazine covers use the word "secrets," I'd say it still is.

My mom in one of their roof gardens.

15/ Balloons Over Broadway

My granddaughter, Liz, spent a couple of days with me last month. While looking at various things on my desk (there's lots to look at on my desk . . . layers, even) she discovered some of my dad's slides that I hadn't yet scanned. They were photos of balloons from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, circa early 1950s. We had fun looking at them together.

After she left, I was emailing with a young cousin who has a 5-year-old. My cousin Barbara's daughter, she inherited her mother's artistic talent and interest in art. She pays attention to picture-book illustrators, and in one of the emails she told me she's particularly fond of author-illustrator Melissa Sweet.

Naturally, I wanted to take a look at Melissa Sweet's art, so I went to Amazon. What should pop up first but Sweet's book about Tony Sarg, the man who invented Macy's parade balloons. I'm a big believer in (and appreciator of) signs, so of course I had to buy it.

Below the cover of the book is an image from one of my dad's slides.

14/ Mrs. Mike

If I were asked to name the book I've read more times than any other, I'd answer immediately: Mrs. Mike. I read it as a kid and as a teenager. I read it again in my 20s, and I bought several copies after that to give as gifts to my grandchildren. At some point I discovered that it was based on the life of a real person. Fiction that grabs us has a way of seeming like nonfiction, so I don't know what category I put the story in when I was young. I knew only that I loved it.

I wouldn't want to read it today though, because parts are too sad. As a volunteer gravestone photographer, I can barely handle reading the old stones that tell a tale of diphtheria decimating a family, multiple siblings dying in the same week, or sometimes the same day. In Mrs. Mike you get to know the children first.

I looked to see what Wikipedia had to say about the book, and learned that it's probably much more fiction than fact. One reviewer said in 1947, "Nothing in [the book] even approaches the truth." I find that oddly reassuring.

13/ Lois Duncan - Who Killed My Daughter?

Lois Duncan, who died in 2016 at 82, was a prolific writer best known for her young-adult mystery novels. Some of these, like I Know What You Did Last Summer, were made into films. In the 1980s her youngest child, 18-year-old Kaitlyn, was shot and killed behind the wheel of her car. The police seemed satisfied to leave the investigation at "random shooting," but Lois had reason to suspect that Kait's boyfriend, 10 years older, who had come to the U.S. as one of the Vietnamese "boat people," (I hope Trump isn't reading this) was involved with Asian organized crime. Who Killed My Daughter? is the story of a mother's determination to learn the truth.

I read the book decades ago, and in looking it up this morning, I found no reference to what I remember best: Well before Kait was murdered, her mother wrote a novel that foreshadowed the crime. It's no wonder that she eventually consulted psychics in her effort to find the killer.

The killer was never found, but Lois never gave up. A sequel, One to the Wolves, describes what she and her family went through in the process. At one point they were forced to change their names and go into hiding. Their original suspicions had turned out to be the tip of an unimaginably huge iceberg. For those who read true crime, it doesn't get any truer than this.

http://kaitarquette.arquettes.com

12/ Outlander

I was in a CompuServe writing group with Diana Gabaldon when she was writing the first volume in her Outlander series. It was clear she was a very bright and knowledgeable woman (also very nice), but even after the book became a best-seller (yay, Diana!) I had no interest in reading it. As I've stated, I wasn't a romance reader, and I didn't read fantasy either. Over the years, the series' popularity grew without my participation.

Then a few years ago I was browsing my library's ongoing book sale as I always do after Scrabble on Thursday afternoons when I saw this unusually fat book pushing others out of its way on the shelf. Outlander. I thought, Why not? I paid $1 and took it home.

Well. I loved it instantly. I loved that it started out post-WWII and was set in Scotland. (My middle name is Campbell.) I loved the heroine, with her subtle, clever humor. I was fascinated with the stones. Once Claire went through them, I loved the history of that time and place. And of course I eventually loved Jamie--or, more accurately, I loved watching their relationship develop, obstacles and all.

I didn't love everything about the book . . . I could have done without the detailed description of Jamie's torture at the hands (and everything else) of the gay villain, for example. But by the time I (reluctantly) finished, I wanted to go to Scotland. I had no intention of going, and thought it was a little crazy that I'd even want to--that a book would have this effect on me. Then I read some Amazon reviews (as I often do after finishing a book) and learned that more than a few readers were so moved to go to Scotland that they actually went! I don't know what they expected to find . . . Jamie?

Anyway, my son gifted me with the entire series on my Kindle, but so far I've read only the first two books. I don't know why . . . I have a feeling if they were paper books I'd have finished them all by now, but reading 900+-page books can give you a repetitive strain injury, so that doesn't make much sense. I know two people who have read the entire series twice. At least I haven't done that. And I didn't go to Scotland.

11/ Plays

From approximately age 16 to 21, I read a lot of plays. (I guess even then I liked dialogue and disliked long paragraphs.)  Some names that come to mind are Albert Camus, Chekhov, Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Ibsen, Harold Pinter, and Eugene O'Neill, but there were others.

I liked everything. Well, I don't know if I liked everything, but I never gave up on any of them. I finished every play I started. Some people do this with books, and maybe I was like that then, but today I'm quick to abandon anything that doesn't pull me in. In my youth, however, I seemed to realize that there was a lot I didn't know, a lot I needed to learn.

These years included my Junior and Senior years of high school. There I was, failing every subject and feeling like a total loss in school—and sometimes at home—and in my room my nose would be buried in Long Day's Journey into Night or Waiting for Godot.

Much later I was reading Camus' Caligula on the subway during my morning commute to work when the garlic-reeking lunatic ripped the pearls off my neck. 

The Pearls

10/ Long Paragraphs

Like many people with active or chronic Lyme, I can't read long paragraphs. Just can't do it.  Something happens in my brain, and the words start to swim. Nothing gets processed. This has forced me to part company with a number of writers, and may help to explain why I like Robert B. Parker's books so much. Bring on the snappy dialogue!

9/ Nora Roberts

I am the admitted lowbrow of the group, and this should clinch it. Although I've written several "romances" for Woman's World, I've never been a romance reader. WW's idea of a romance is boy-meets-girl and then it's up to the read's imagination to figure out what happens next. No bodice ripping. No men with long, wavy hair cascading down their waxed chests. No heaving bosoms.

In the past, if someone asked me to name a romance author, probably the only one I could think of is Nora Roberts. She's so incredibly prolific, it would be hard to hang out in a library without recognizing her name. But I never paid attention to her zillion books. Until . . .

Around 2008, when I was listening to audio books while commuting to my last job, I happened upon a volume in JD Robb's "In Death" series. JD Robb is Nora Roberts. I've been a fan of police procedurals ever since I started reading Elizabeth Linington (a.k.a. Dell Shannon, Lesley Egan) in the 1960s. The "In Death" series has a strong police procedural theme with a couple of additions: The books take place a few decades in the future--just far enough ahead to make for some interesting technology--and the protagonist is a tough NYPD Lieutenant married to one of the richest (and handsomest, most brilliant, kindest, etc.) men in the world. They have a delightful cat. And delightful sex.

The narrator of the audio book did a great job, assigning a unique voice to each of the characters. I went on to read most of the rest in the series, and as I read the paper books I continued to hear those same voices in my head. At some point I wondered, If I like these books so much, might I not also like Nora Roberts' romance novels? I forget which one I tried, but the answer was a firm no.

Then I discovered her romantic suspense novels. The more recent the publication, the better they are, at least to my taste. I've read several. In addition to being entertained by the characters and the mystery plot, I've learned a little something about search and rescue dogs, restaurant kitchens, and smokejumpers, and more than I really wanted to know about home remodeling. When the protagonist was a photographer, I was able to confirm that Roberts does her homework. Or maybe someone does it for her. But in any case, the books are well researched.

The books are light reading for sure, but they have some substance. Most hold my interest and make me care about the characters. I like knowing the main characters will end up alive (and in love) at the end. I stopped reading literary short stories some years ago because I found so many of them depressing. Life can be hard enough without adding more reasons to be sad or anxious. I like light.

8/ Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I'm sure we've all been asked to name a book we found life-changing. My answer is always Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The primary reason for this involves insects. Most people would probably have a hard time connecting insects with life-changing, but it was easy for me. I grew up without insects in New York City, and when we bought our weekend house in rural Pennsylvania I found them repulsive and frightening. Since I encountered insects on a daily basis in the country, this was no fun—for either of us.

As I've said many times, the more one learns about something, the less scary it becomes. (There are exceptions to this, most notably the Trump presidency.) Reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, following the author as she quietly observed the smallest creatures, I learned a lot. I went on to read Edwin Way Teale's The Strange Lives of Familiar Insects.

Not only did I learn to look at insects differently, but I really looked at them. I observed. I watched. And eventually I recorded.

7/ Book Reviews on Amazon

"It is not Patterson, but still a good read."

"Murder, sexy men, crazy, mother, confusion about life choices all in one. I couldn't put it down."

"If you are in trying circumstances in real life and need distraction, this could offer it."

"It reminded me of an adventure I had that was similar, so that propelled me through this."

"When I started reading this book I thought I was going to read a travel book (that's what happens if you don't even bother to read the blurb). I must admit that I wasn't very thrilled with the prospect. So imagine how thrilled I was when I realized that the book was much more than that!"

"I love that she's human, and has to prevent herself from getting sick in the most presence of the most gruesome scenes of death and decay."

"Not full of typos."

"A black whole is approaching our solar system, suddenly a multi-generational family feud pops up, for what?"

"Raymond married out of duty. His wife died and he has a heir. He wished he loved her the way a man is supposed to love a woman. He loves another. It was to short."

"No cliffhangers, just basic writing skills, any one could write like this."

"Love to read, So I'm always looking for books to read, This book reminds me of a book out about 20 yrs ago, call Bitch Factor."

"All space science is theoretical."

"Stupid Italian family melodrama is a ludicrous match for the authors hyperbolic extinction avent."

"Maybe this was her first book. Maybe she's 12."

"Had he not used foul language or the sexy scenes I would have given it 3.5 stars."

"I don't think I read this one."

6/ Pat Conroy

After I got married and my parents moved to Florida (the next day), my dad started sending me books after he'd read them. He did this fairly regularly, and I think I read them all, even though his choices weren't always compatible with mine. (He had a fondness for historical novels in particular, and I remember when, as a teenager, I was reading Harold Robbins he assumed The Carpetbaggers was about history and expressed approval of my book selection.)

I tried to sound enthusiastic when responding to him about the books, but it wasn't always easy. Then he sent me The Great Santini. This time I could tell him how much I'd enjoyed the book, and mean it. He wrote back, "I thought it was good--but not that good."

I never lost my enthusiasm for Pat Conroy. Of his books that I've read, I haven't liked them all equally, but I haven't disliked any. The Lords of Discipline stayed with me for weeks.

5/ O. Henry

Growing up, a complete (I assume) collection of O. Henry short stories sat on my bookshelf, and I read my way through them. It's no wonder I enjoy writing stories with surprise endings. A few years back I submitted a short story with such an ending to Woman's World. It was rejected. I decided they must not have read it all the way through. So I submitted it again, this time with a cover letter that said in part, "I think you'll enjoy the twist at the end." This time it was accepted.

I wonder where those books are today. It seems inconceivable that we'd have thrown them out, but one never knows.

4/ Mothers and Daughters

In my twenties I loved Evan Hunter's Mothers and Daughters. It's not surprising . . . as a daughter who lost her mother early, even just the title called to me. Later I read most of the 87th Precinct series he wrote as Ed McBain. But Mothers and Daughters remains special. Although I've forgotten the plot and most of the characters, I'll never forget one of them: Gillian, the name I later gave to one of my own daughters.

3/ My Year With the Nuns

My Year With the Nuns is the title of a middle-grade novel I've been writing for . . . oh, about 10 years? Fifteen? It's a mixture of fiction and fact, the facts being that I, a Protestant child, was sent to a Catholic convent boarding school for fifth and sixth grades after my mother died.

Of course now I wished I'd taken notes when I was 10 or 11, but even without notes I remember quite a bit. However, putting those bits together into a book with characters, conflict, and resolution requires more confidence than I possess. I think I might be okay with the characters, and I love writing dialogue, but . . . um . . . plot? That's another story. Literally.

Here's a small excerpt:

          I unpacked my clothes and put them in the dresser and wardrobe. The dresser drawers smelled funny, as though they hadn’t been used in a long time. I got undressed for bed quickly, putting my nightgown on and taking my underwear off underneath it, in case someone opened my curtain unexpectedly.

            In bed, the rough sheets and thin blankets didn’t comfort me. Everything in the room seemed to be “just enough” and no more--just enough blankets to keep me from being cold, just enough drawers to hold my clothing, just enough light from the lamp to see where I was.

            I didn’t want to see where I was. I wanted to be almost anywhere else. I had never felt so alone in my life. Goodnight, Daddy, I mouthed silently.

2/ Midnight in Broad Daylight

I usually have two books going at the same time--an upstairs, read-in-bed book and a downstairs, read-on-my-Kindle-whenever book. Currently I'm reading a novel upstairs and (this is the unusual part) two nonfiction books about WWII downstairs. The one on my Kindle is Midnight in Broad Daylight, by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto.

It is the story of brothers born in the U.S. who end up fighting on different sides during the war--one in the United States Army, and two (reluctantly) in the Japanese Imperial Army. I don't believe I was taught in school about internment camps, about how Americans of Japanese ancestry were rounded up and incarcerated during the war, and although I heard of the concept when I grew up, this book has been a real eye-opener for me.

Amazon describes it as "a scathing examination of racism and xenophobia, an homage to the tremendous Japanese American contribution to the American war effort, and an invaluable addition to the historical record of this extraordinary time." I would add that the subject matter is timely. I hope it is widely read.

Midnight in Broad Daylight

1/ My Bookmark

I read in bed every night, and my granddaughter gave me the perfect bookmark. It's a silver spoon bent in half so that it slips over a bunch of pages. The engraving says fell asleep here. I'm going to to use it. Goodnight!

30/ I miss having a dog.

When Angel and then Wolfy died, I was without a dog for the first time in 47 years. I'd fallen twice on our icy dirt road, injuring my knees, and I was afraid the next time I'd risk breaking a hip. So at some point I'd stopped walking Angel and Wolfy. I tied a 30-ft. lead to the back door, and let them out that way. They were elderly and didn't need much exercise.

Because of that issue, with the addition of the cost of owning a dog and the complication of my cats (then five, now four), I've resisted getting another dog. But I actively miss that experience, and I'll always miss the dogs I have known and loved. Here are a few:

Music (pictured on a page from the photo book I made about 40 years of our pets)

Caroline, a true Collie-Shepherd

Thor and Thistle, brother and sister German Shepherds

Grown-up Thor

Thunder, our first German Shepherd

Holly, so spiritually connected to us

Angel

Wolfy

29/ The Old-People's Restaurant

I ate last evening at a restaurant I've been curious about for a long time because of all the cars I see in the parking lot whenever I drive by. When a friend suggested it we try it, I readily agreed. When I parked and we got out, the first thing I noticed was all the other patrons getting out of their cars. Many of the women had blue hair, and not because they were young and trendy. Some of the people used canes, and more than a few used walkers.

Inside, the ambiance was--as my daughter said today when I told her I'd had dinner there--like a cafeteria. A pop radio station played through a tinny speaker. The "wine list" listed types of wines but no vintners or vintages. The waiter explained they sold glasses of wine poured from boxes. "We don't bother with bottles." The dry Rob Roy my friend ordered came with not a twist of lemon as requested, but a lemon slice.

End of whine, because the food was surprisingly good. I had one of the specials, an entree salad with mesclun, broiled chicken, cashews, almonds, and dried cranberries. It would have included fresh mozzarella balls if I hadn't turned them down.