2026: Saturday April 4: First Quarter Reading List

This quarter's list is a tad shorter than usual because one of the books was a tad longer. Dickens! Getting paid by the installment and just keeping on going and going and going. I thought it would never end. The only reason I read as many other books as I did is because the rest were shorter. 

Broome County Public Library

Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son. 1848. I blame this on Michael. He decided to start the year with a Dickens and I wanted to be one of the cool kids too, so I also started the year with a Dickens. Thanks goodness the library no longer charges late fees, or I'd owe them a fortune. It took forever because I could only read a few (dense) pages at a time. Parts of it were genius and incredible for their time. The brutal indictment of marriage and conventional treatments of women. The skewering of ambitious men. The absolute psycho-sexual mind games of Dombey's side kick. There were lines that made me laugh. And then there were lines where I thought, Dickens old chap, you've already said this five different ways in the past two paragraphs, we get it. Oddly enough, this hasn't put me off the man. I'm thinking Nicholas Nickleby for next January, maybe. 

Some second hand book store or another. It has been sitting on the shelf waiting for me for a while.

Willa Cather, The Professor's House. 1925. A nice little palate cleanser. Second favorite Cather after Death Comes for the Archbishop. Just a fascinating personality study with a whole crazy other story dropped into the middle of it, because Cather can do anything she wants. 

Chaucer's Books, Santa Barbara

Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox, 2011. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on here. I could tell it  was very clever but I wasn't captivated the way I wanted to be. 

Michael brought this into the house and said I might like it and it has been sitting on The Pile for over a year

Deborah Levy, Things I Don't Want to Know: On Reading. 2018. I didn't know anything about Deborah Levy before I picked this up. It is memoir, but not the kind I expected - that "on writing" subtitle was slightly misleading. Well, maybe not entirely misleading, the book is about writing, but she arrives at the topic sideways and you've almost forgotten about that part of the title by the time you get there with her. Very clever and also captivating. 

Broome County Public Library

Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic. 2011. I read this for class and I liked it less than most of my classmates, so I kept my mouth shut during the discussion. The first couple of chapters were intriguing and pulled me along, fascinated, as Otsuka played with the form and told a dynamic story. Then her POV started to wear on me and the story became relentless - you know where it is headed and it is not one of the high points of American history. And I'm apparently pretty conventional after all, because I just wanted a character to follow. But, you know, respect for throwing down something different. 

Broome County Public Library

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake. 2003. I read this for class and I'd read it before but only remembered two things about it. I didn't realize it was groundbreaking until a fellow student talked about it as something that had laid the way for other immigrant stories. I guess I just forgot how long ago 2003 was. The book was better than I remembered, perhaps because I was reading it through the lens of class discussions about writers' use of time, point of view, tension, stakes, etc, and I could see how well constructed it was. Solidly satisfying read. 

2026: Saturday March 28: A few things I did last week

Living so far away from where I grew up and where all my family is, sometimes the very fact of my youth feels like a dream. When I took a side step out of my routine to go to New Zealand for five days for Sandra's funeral, the intensity of it all both increased that dreamtime feel, and also brought me crashing back into who I am. 

So much happened it feels like I was gone for much longer. There's no way I can tell you it all, so here's a quick snapshot from each day. I'm mostly leaving out anything specific about Sandra for now, but rest assured, there was a lot of it.

Thursday: 

Peter took us to Martin's Bay, Sandra's favorite beach, at the tip of the Mahurangi peninsula. Towards the end, when she could no longer walk, Sandra and Peter would get coffees from up the road then drive down here and sit in the car watching the ocean. It is a long wide sandy expanse lined with mature pohutukawa trees, nestled between two bush clad cliffs, with a campground at one end. I get why she loved it.

Ingrid, Peter, and Nick staring out at the Hauraki Gulf

Friday

When a cousin you haven't seen in over forty years laughs so hard while saying "do you remember the camping trip when we all ate so many cherries that we all got hives and you scratched yours and had to go to hospital," you know you're home. In addition to farm-stand-cherry-induced hives, we share the experience of mothers who died far too young, and that did come up in conversation, yes. It is grounding to remember the power of connections like these.

Nicky, me, Francie (or Frankie, as her family now call her).

Then I left the lunch a teeny bit early to go visit with my college-era boyfriend who lived nearby. I got teased about this, because teasing is one of my family's love-languages. 

Saturday: 

The Warkworth A and P Show. That stands for Agricultural and Pastoral, and the closest American equivalent would be a county fair. Where do I start? Miniature pony judging? Donkey agility? (Turns out they aren't terribly agile but they seemed to be enjoying themselves). A line dance demonstration accompanied by a live rendition of Sweet Caroline? 

My aunt Anne, Ingrid, me, all appropriately hatted for the weather.

I don't usually post videos but I need to share this with you. I was genuinely in awe of the judge's knowledge, love of cattle, and public speaking skills. 

Sunday:

We were instructed to wear colorful clothing for Sandra's Celebration of Life, and I am nothing if not obedient. This was a long day with inspiring highs and challenging lows. 

Me wearing my Goodwill op shop dress, with my lovely nephew Fern

Monday:

A flat white and a long black while we discuss What It All Means at the Snell's Beach cafe before I head to the airport. 

Ingrid's drink is a long black - two shots of espresso with the hot water on the side. When are these coming to America?

Oh, and the bird count. Tuis woke me up every morning, going off like alarm clocks outside my window. There were pukekos, dotterels, variable oyster catchers, white faced herons, fantails, terns (I can't remember what kind), black backed gulls (mature and needy juveniles), mynahs (I feel like these shouldn't count, they're the starlings of NZ), mallards, canada geese. Heard all through the night but never seen were the little morepork owls (ruru). There were rumors of godwits at the next beach over, but I didn't have a chance to check them out. 

I was going to keep this shorter, but just one more - each morning I got up to watch the sunrise over the bay and walk over the headland. 

2026: Sunday March 22: New Zealand

Actually, it is very early Monday morning here in Algie's Bay. I'm about to get up and catch one more sunrise over the water. The last four days have been wonderful but exhausting and I'm almost looking forward to my Auckland - JFK - Port Authority - Binghamton haul that starts later today. 

Sharing just one photo for now, because I don't want to miss that sunrise, and I still have lots of emotional processing to do before I can write anything more coherent about the past few days of saying goodbye to my aunt Sandra.

Friday at the crematorium. Close family only. I'm towards the middle, surrounded by cousins I haven't seen in forty years but who I had instant connections with. Yesterday at the Celebration of Life there were close to a hundred people, and I was part of the eulogy line up. Met a woman who used to babysit me, It's been that kind of a trip.

2026: March 14: Sandra

One of the most faithful readers of this blog died last week. My aunt Sandra. She was my father's sister, 15 years younger than him - an age gap that I believe caused my grandmother some social embarrassment back in the day. Quite possibly Gran was the only person who actually cared, but she worried a lot about what people might say about her behind her back. Sandra was only 12 years older than me, and there was a time when we would get asked if we were sisters. She was diagnosed as a teen with Type 1 diabetes and managed it so vigilantly that she got a special certificate from the Diabetes Society for living 50 years on insulin, a feat not often achieved. 

My aunt Jill's wedding. L to R: aunt Anne, Grace (Gran), Jill, Sandra, Jack (Grandpop). The gloves! Photo from my mother's albums. 

Sandra in the early 1960s. Photo by my father. 

But the diabetes also meant she was slow to heal, and in her last few years she suffered a lot of health issues that made daily life challenging. Delicate skin meant falls and scrapes could easily lead to infection, for example, and we've known this was coming for a while. Still, it is hard to say goodbye to one of the two other people who were in the house the night my father died, back in 1989. 

And saying goodbye I am. In person! Yes, I'm taking a lightning trip to New Zealand on Monday for a week (with two of those days spent travelling), just as fuel prices and air fares soar. But what is money for if not to spend an afternoon with aunts and cousins and brothers and nephews and step-mothers celebrating a good life. 

We have been asked to wear colorful clothes. Oh, wait until you see my dress. Thank you, local Goodwill shop, it is perfect. Oh, also, I don't know if Sandra's children know that March 22 is my father's birthday. But Ingrid and I will sure remember. 

Here is a quote from one of the countless letters she wrote to me: 

“I used to worry about wasting time and think of it as a guilty pleasure. But I don’t anymore because I now know I never waste time. Everything is worthwhile. My goals are still lofty… you know, write a book etc, but I now know I’ll not get there, but I shall enjoy the process and that will be enough for me. I don’t do anything I don’t want to do. I guess it’s a case of accepting who you really are.” 

She got frustrated with things, like politicians who started unnecessary wars and walkers who let their dogs get too close to nesting shore birds and how there is sugar added to everything. She took solace in everyday beauty, in writing, in growing vegetables, in singing. She got very concerned for my physical well-being one time when I told her I didn't sing and she was visibly relieved when I admitted that of course, I do sing in the car. One of the songs I remember her singing frequently was On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at (On Ilkley Moor Without a Hat), a traditional Yorkshire song about a person who goes a courting on Ilkley Moor without a hat on, catches a cold and dies. The lyrics include these (this is a translation from Yorkshire dialect into standard English):

Then we shall have to bury thee. On Ilkley Moor Baht' at.

Then the worms will come and eat thee up. On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at.

Then the ducks will come and eat the worms. On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at.

Then we will come and eat up the ducks. On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at.

Then we shall all have eaten thee. On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at. 

I am tempted to recite these at the celebration. Sandra would probably be amused, although I'm not sure if everyone will appreciate it.  I could add some interpretation, like, you know, we carry our loved ones inside us even after they are gone. Because we do. 

Me and Sandra. 1975. Sandra made us matching dresses for Bill and Ingrid's wedding. She only bought enough material to make herself a short dress because she was saving money. She was saving money because she'd met a British sailor at a party and she was going to England to visit him. My grandfather was so upset he told her he'd disown her. But she did it anyway. Then she married the sailor and brought him back to New Zealand, and my grandfather had to eat his words, because the sailor was Peter, and everyone loves Peter. Sandra and Peter stayed married for 50 years.

Sunday March 8: Sprung

On Thursday I heard my first red-winged blackbird of the year, but hearing one doesn't fully count, so it wasn't until this morning, when I saw two, that I could confidently say Winter is on the way out and Spring is coming. The sap is rising in the maple trees, the skunks are on the move (seriously, so many skunks). We've had a ton of rain, which helped melt all the snow, and the river is so high we had to turn around on our walk this morning because water had come up over the path and we weren't wearing the correct footwear and you don't want to mess with a fast running snow melt river.

Chenango River at Otsiningo Park

Everything else in the world is insane, so it is comforting to contemplate the familiar cycles of the seasons. 

2026: Sunday March 1

Sometimes I think it would be nice to belong to a church (you know, for the community), but I'm not sure how one does that if one doesn't believe in God. My best bet might be the Unitarians, although they're so accepting and kind hearted, it could get on my nerves after a while. That's the trouble with community, you have to deal with people. 

I'm thinking about Unitarians because I went to a funeral at the local UU church yesterday for someone I knew reasonably well years ago. Well enough to give her sons and her husband hugs and to offer to help clean out the house. Not well enough that they're likely to take me up on the offer. Anyway, the minister said meaningful things about grief only existing because love exists; the husband cried and we all cried with him, then he said sweet things about Spring coming and how we had another year ahead to do good together; then we sang "This Little Light of Mine," and you know I don't sing in public, but I stood up straight and enthusiastically mouthed the words and felt energized afterwards. 

Then I wonder, if it wasn't for all the bullshit, would Catholicism be a possibility? There's lots of singing. And ritual and beauty and forgiveness. Mary, she's merciful. There are some pretty radical Catholics out there, and a tradition of lay community that sometimes tries to circumvent the very problematic hierarchy and history. But again, the whole God thing. And Jesus as divine. Etcetera. So I'll just bumble along as I am for a while longer, I guess. 

I did a quick search for "church" in my photos. Some of them are more church-y than others. 

I'm curious what religion would go with this mural that the search identified as having church-like elements. 

2026: February 22: Reading and Writing

I have not taken an English literature class since high school (I haven't taken a science class since high school either, but that's a sad story for another day). You know I read a lot, but I've never taken much time to be deliberately conscious of how something is written. Sure, I sense clunkiness, or an author trying too hard, and I've had my share of frustration parsing the nineteenth-century sentence. Reading for the beauty of the language doesn't come naturally to me and sometimes I've felt guilty for reading too fast, for not appreciating the words themselves. As if I'm disrespecting the author.

Now, though, I'm taking these creative writing classes, and part of learning to do anything involves taking that thing apart and seeing how it was put together. I am enjoying it so much, slowing down, looking at the rhythm of the words and the sentences and asking how they change or support the meaning. Dialog, time markers, imagery, character arcs etc. It's all so much fun to think about, and to talk about with other people. Seriously, I'd forgotten what it is like to have someone else point to something and have it break open my thinking just a little bit more. 

Cats don't read or write. Weird. 

Then I get to go and try things out, see if I like them, if they work for me, and then I get to kind of forget about them again while I just simply write. 

(Oh, and perhaps this should be another whole post, but I want to write like Alysa Liu skates. I'm minorly obsessed with her right now). 

Hey, trying something out here: Movie of the Month: If you get a chance to see Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, you absolutely should. The only think I knew going in was that it was a comedy, and that might be the best way to experience it. Although I already know I want to see it again.