WALKING CONTEST

I love this video by Daniel Koren.  I read about it first in the book, "The Art of Noticing" by Rob Walker. The message is so perfectly delivered in its video form and it's a message that everyone can relate to.

BRUNCH WITH MY PARENTS

I'm going to shift the purpose of this blog from primarily documenting life happenings, to a place where I can share ideas and inspiration. I've gotten back-logged with life event posts that I have meant to write about from the last few months of 2019, but those will be captured in the Chatbooks I've been making and printing for each season.  I've been more interested these days in posting creative prompts that I am mulling over.  I will still post life things but won't feel pressured to do so if I have something else I'd rather share instead. This is me giving myself the permission!

These photos here are from a brunch that I had with my parents a few months ago on a Saturday morning. It is always a pleasure and privilege to converse with them. They are traveling now, and I've been inspired by my mom's photos and my dad's drawings as they explore new places.

I've also been inspired by a lot of good writing lately. In particular, two very different styles: Lionel Shriver and Jacqueline Woodson.  What Mark Twain said about how a good writer treats a long sentence rang particularly true for Shriver's writing:  "At times [she] may indulge [herself] with a long one, but [she] will make sure there are no folds in it, no vagueness, no parenthetical interruptions of its view as a whole; when [she] has done with it, it won't be a sea-serpent with half of its arches under the water; it will be a torch-light procession." 

A BIRTHDAY CAMPING TRIP

Scenes from a backpacking camping trip last September of women and some of their children: the sturdiest and dreamiest bunch I ever did see.

PUFFED SLEEVES

source

I've been reading Anne of Green Gables with the girls at bedtime and we are all enjoying it thoroughly.  I came across this dress today and look at those puffed sleeves! 

"Well, how do you like them?" said Marilla.

Anne was standing in the gable room, looking solemnly at three new dresses spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which Marilla had been tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer because it looked so serviceable; one was of black-and-white checkered sateen which she had picked up at a bargain counter in the winter; and one was a stiff print of an ugly blue shade which she had purchased that week at a Carmody store.

She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike--plain skirts fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and skirt and tight as sleeves could be.

"I'll imagine that I like them," said Anne soberly.

"I don't want you to imagine it," said Marilla, offended. "Oh, I can see you don't like the dresses! What is the matter with them? Aren't they neat and clean and new?"

"Yes."

"Then why don't you like them?"

"They're--they're not--pretty," said Anne reluctantly.

"Pretty!" Marilla sniffed. "I didn't trouble my head about getting pretty dresses for you. I don't believe in pampering vanity, Anne, I'll tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they're all you'll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and Sunday school. I'll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to tear them. I should think you'd be grateful to get most anything after those skimpy wincey things you've been wearing."

"Oh, I am grateful," protested Anne. "But I'd be ever so much gratefuller if--if you'd made just one of them with puffed sleeves. Puffed sleeves are so fashionable now. It would give me such a thrill, Marilla, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves."

"Well, you'll have to do without your thrill. I hadn't any material to waste on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things anyhow. I prefer the plain, sensible ones."

"But I'd rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and sensible all by myself," persisted Anne mournfully.

"Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your closet, and then sit down and learn the Sunday school lesson. I got a quarterly from Mr. Bell for you and you'll go to Sunday school tomorrow," said Marilla, disappearing downstairs in high dudgeon.

Anne clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.

"I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves," she whispered disconsolately. "I prayed for one, but I didn't much expect it on that account. I didn't suppose God would have time to bother about a little orphan girl's dress. I knew I'd just have to depend on Marilla for it. Well, fortunately I can imagine that one of them is of snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and three-puffed sleeves."

A WEEKEND AWAY IN DC

A few months ago, Ken and I left town to head north and meet my sisters, their husbands, my cousin, and my nieces at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly.  It was an appropriate place as any to send off my sister and her family, as they were preparing to move to Romania. We spent the afternoon talking around, joining part of a tour, and talking over snacks at the McDonald's before we said our final goodbyes. It's been three months since then, but it feels like it's been much longer and I miss them dearly.

That night, Ken and I spent the night in the area. We checked into the Hilton in Arlington and took a car into DC to attend a concert at The Anthem, which we thought was an impressive venue. We immediately started scheming of ways to come back. I'm recording it here so I don't forget about those plans. The concert was really fun, but more thrilling was being out and about with my best friend and having space and time to dream, adventure and hold hands.

DATE NIGHT 2020

Ken and I went on a date night the other day (first date of 2020) and these were some of the topics on the agenda. 

JENNY ODELL ON WRITING AND SHARING "HOW TO DO NOTHING"

I LOVE this talk that Jenny Odell gave about her book, "How to Do Nothing." It's really good. She talks about what it felt like to write a book about resisting the marketability and capitalistic attention economy and then have to sell the book and appropriate parts of it into sound bites and neat categorizations. She says at one point she found herself wondering, "Am I bird watching or fulfilling the image of bird watching? Am I living or am I maintaining my brand?" 

She then describes some of the positive results of putting the book out there, which included hearing from people who appreciated for specific reasons and shared their ideas and books they were reading. She found it to be a crisscrossing of different genres and types of people and it made her proud that her book was part of the conversation.  

She concludes by saying "...it turns out that this process (of sharing ideas and self in conversation) might apply to the conundrum of self-promotion as well. Because this experience of hearing from and being with others, including this conference, mimics something I described earlier, which is the uncanny sense of self I had while writing the book. In opening a connection among people or parts of history that might not have been in conversation, my ego once again disappears and I'm once again in the realm of surprise, emergence and encounter. I was never comfortable with the self-promotion because that's not how my identity works and it's not how the book got made. But I am okay being the atmospheric river that connects two places or field that provides the meeting ground for others where something new might happen." 

This last part especially resonated with me because that is often when I feel "most myself", when I can provide a loose space for conversations and connection to be made.  It's a mindset that works well with my need to be constantly growing and shedding, dreaming and questioning.  

LOGAN PRE-K PICTURES

I'll just leave you on this hump day with this preview of Logan's adorable Pre-K photos that we got a few months ago.  We couldn't narrow it down and these photos cost a small fortune, so we now just have these watermarked photos and so forever they will live in infamy.

2019 READING LIFE SUMMARY

Happy New Year! I'm afraid I am very behind on my "What I'm Reading" posts. I may have to do a compilation of the last bunch of them all in one post: behold, the consequences of procrastination!

In the meanwhile, a quick summary of books I read in 2019:

Of the 117 books I read, 56 were fiction and 61 were Non-Fiction (a pretty even distribution! unintentionally). I listened to 48 of them as audiobooks, read three of them as e-books, and read 66 as physical books.

• Favorite fiction: "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 
• Runner-up fiction: "Olive Kitterridge" by Elizabeth Strout. 
• Favorite non-fiction: "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Runner-up non-fiction: "How to Do Nothing" by Jenny Odell 

While reading last year, I made even more of an effort to be consistent about taking notes along the way (in Gmail drafts, in my Notes on my phone, in my journal or on random scraps of paper) and then summarize them afterwards.  This was supremely helpful in not only appreciating my reading life as pleasure, but for enriching my thinking life.  It helped me connect ideas better (between books, between ideas, between my thoughts and other people's thoughts, etc.) and as a result, I enjoy talking about books with others even more too.  We were consistent with book club meetings, which I look forward to every month, and due to me posting about books I read on social media I have had more book talks this year than any other year! So I will plan to keep doing that this upcoming year.  What a privilege it is to read! And what a privilege it is to be around others who read.