Hi friends! Brief life update:

A good deal is happening at our house so I’ve been quite busy there, answering contractor questions about cabinets and tile. Exciting!!!

The owner of our rental house is coming back so I have been packing and reorganizing in preparation for moving yet again – some would say I’m making more of a mess.

Drum lessons continue to be awesome.

I’ve made progress with my personal training — losing inches and gaining muscle. This has been hard for me but I’m doing it, sometimes with the help of cute feline distraction.

I got rid of some of my old collages, but wanted to preserve this one here.

Our library finally reopened after almost 2 years! It felt so nice to walk in there again.

I have been sorting old cards, letters, and photos and found many treasures…

We have a 5th grader! I can hardly believe it.

I really like this that I found on Facebook:

I still have on my plate: finishing another art canvas, packing the house, getting SG off to camp, a few other trips, etc.

Kaddish.com: A Novel by Nathan Englander

A friend of mine asked if I’d read her son-in-law’s new book. Turns out her SIL is Nathan Englander! My friend also sent me this article from Grub Street to get an idea of his humor.

“Sometimes punishment is meted out to the living, not because of sin but because of a deficit of positive deeds. His misery was just the kind delivered to a son who sat idle in this world, while his own father was judged in the next.”

The premise of this book is awesome. A son who has lapsed in his Jewish faith does not care to fulfill the mourning requirement after the loss of his father, so he hires a service to say the daily prayer for him. All kinds of existential angst ensues… Recommend.

What if This Were Enough? Essays by Heather Havrilesky

Ah yes… consumerism, greed, materialism, power, monopolies, Disney, technology, etc. Havrilesky writes with savvy wit without giving advice about the cultural forces that we face today. Her first chapter on the enforced cheer of life in America today made me laugh several times in recognition of its truth. The way she takes apart our behavior and beliefs is just brilliant. I don’t recommend reading this in one sitting, unless you plan on having quite the negative outlook for the day. I found her chapter on popular TV shows very compelling.

Happy Campers: 9 Summer Camp Secrets for Raising Kids Who Become Thriving Adults by Audrey Monke and Tina Payne Bryson

When Sweet Girl came home from sleepaway camp last summer, we noticed she was much more confident and independent. So much of that is due to the relationships and connections that the staff there made with her and by them supporting and encouraging her to face challenges.

“Particularly when experiences are emotional, novel, and challenging, they literally alter the architecture of the brain. Like a muscle, when it’s used, it grows and strengthens. So when kids have camp experiences that require them to overcome fear, be flexible, handle their emotions (especially away from their parents), be persistent to master something, build relationships, and so on, it builds this important part of the brain, the MPFC [middle prefrontal cortex]… What’s more, when the structure of the brain changes, so does the function of the brain. This means that camp is one place that can play a role in how our kids function in the world, and ultimately who they become as adults.”

This book just came out this month and is written by a long-time camp director and mother with the intent to give parents the same strategies used at camp so that we can make our family time transformative. Each chapter focuses on a social or an emotional skill area, character trait, or parenting practice with the aim of helping kids cultivate self-advocacy, resilience, optimism, problem-solving, endurance, kindness, social intelligence, empathy, and independence.

The strategies “help you create a more positive and connected family culture where your children will feel accepted for who they are and have the best chance at becoming happy campers—thriving, positive individuals who feel a sense of purpose and belonging.”

The Peacock Emporium: A Novel by JoJo Moyes

A woman opens a shop and comes to terms with herself and her past. I couldn’t figure out the characters at first and I didn’t like most of them for their selfishness and pettiness. It took me awhile to get through the story, but I liked it. Many of the characters are struggling through others’ expectations and coming into their own after a long time.

“Susanna was creating something that was entirely her vision, diluted by no husband or partner. Free to do whatever she wanted, she found herself stringing bargain fairy-lights around the shelves, putting up little painted signs in her own intricate handwriting, coloring the floorboards a pale violet because the shade had taken her fancy. She arranged the tables and chairs, bought cheap from a house-clearance shop and painted with tester pots, into the kind of arrangements she would have liked when she got coffee with her girlfriends. She was, she realized, making herself a little corner of something magical, perhaps a little cosmopolitan, a place where she could once again feel at home, separate from the provincial eyes and attitudes that now surrounded her.”

“She loved … the silence, loved the feeling that she’d spent a day working for herself, loved the knowledge that the imprints she left on the shop would remain until she opened it again the next morning. She looked around almost silently, breathing in the myriad fragrances that lingered in the air… hearing in the silence the laughter and chatter of the day’s customers, as if each had left some spectral echo behind them… She rested against a stool, seeing something ahead of her other than the disappointments and restrictions she had been picturing as her future, seeing instead a place of possibilities where she could be herself, her better self.”

Figuring by Maria Popova

It’s difficult to tell you what this book is about because, well, it seems to be about EVERYTHING under the sun! Popova examines the human search for truth and what defines happiness, love, and meaning by delving into the lives of many historical figures over 4 different centuries. Popova has extensive knowledge of science, music, history, feminism, religion, … there really seems to be no limit!

“So much of the beauty, so much of what propels our pursuit of truth, stems from the invisible connections – between ideas, between disciplines, between the denizens of a particular time and a particular place, between the interior world of each pioneer and the mark they leave on the cave walls of culture, between faint figures who pass each other in the nocturne before the torchlight of a revolution lights the new day, with little more than a half-nod of kinship and a match to change hands.”

That was 1 sentence! Absolutely stunning writing.

Her point, I think: “There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.” Art inspires music inspires astronomy inspires poetry…

Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) by Rebecca Solnit

“Politics is how we tell the stories we live by: how we decide if we value the health and well-being of children, or not; the autonomy of women’s bodies and equality of our lives, or not; if we protect the Dreamers who came here as small children, or not; if we act on climate change, or not. Voting is far from the only way, but is a key way we shape the national narrative. We choose a story about who and what matters; we act on that story to rearrange the world around it – and then there are tax cuts to billionaires and children kicked off health care, or there are climate agreements and millions of acres of federal land protected and support for universities. We live inside what, during postmodernism’s heyday, we’d call master narratives – so there’s always a question of who’s telling the story, who is in charge of the narrative, and what happens if that changes.”

Oh how I love this collection of essays! Solnit begins with what I consider the best essay in her book, “The Loneliness of Donald Trump,” (see my excerpts here) and carries on addressing just about every issue we face in America today: the “ideology of isolation,” climate change, “Black Lives Matter,” Confederate monuments, Standing Rock, misogyny, privilege, cynicism. Highly recommend this one.

“The writer’s job is not to look through the window someone else built, but to step outside, to question the framework, or to dismantle the house and free what’s inside, all in service of making visible what was locked out of the view. News journalism focuses on what changed yesterday rather than asking what are the underlying forces and who are the unseen beneficiaries of this moment’s status quo.”

A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit

“Disasters provide an extraordinary window into social desire and possibility, and what manifests there matters elsewhere, in ordinary times and in other extraordinary times.”

Why does this social change occur and how can we create more opportunities for such altruism and solidarity? I have first-hand experience of this phenomenon, so I didn’t read too deeply, but I was quite interested to learn more specifically about the people and small communities that came together during the San Francisco and Mexico City earthquakes, Katrina/New Orleans, and New York City after 9/11.

“In the moment of disaster, the old order no longer exists and people improvise rescues, shelters, and communities. Thereafter, a struggle takes place over whether the old order with all its shortcomings and injustices will be reimposed or a new one, perhaps more oppressive or perhaps more just and free, like the disaster utopia, will arise.”

Please share what books you’re loving lately!