It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date
Hello everyone! Today is Wyatt’s birthday – he is a big time ten years old today! I am all sorts of emotional over this. We are going to the zoo (even though it is absolutely freezing today!) and then a special meal at a fancy shake place in Detroit.
Read Last Week(s):
These were both really good!
Reading This Week:
It’s Middle Grade March! I don’t usually do reading challenges because I am usually trash at them, with no discipline. This one is pretty simple with five prompts, and I think I can do it! Week one we are supposed to read a book by an author with three names – so I am picking Emily of New Moon! I love this cover btw. These are the prompts, in case anyone is interested!
1. Read a book by an author with 3 names 2. Read a book with flowers on the cover 3. Read a book that is part of a series 4. Read a book that involves travel 5. Read a book written in the 1900s
We are watching a few different things! We have been watching Murdoch Mysteries, The Great Pottery Throw Down, and we just started Dickinson. Dickinson is a fun little show, and is just silly and escapist. However, I do feel they get some of the details about Emily’s life correct, like her intimate relationship with her friend Sue, who her brother later marries. It is done in the style of the movie A Knight’s Tale, or Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes, with modern music, language, sensibilities interspersed. I am a Dickinson fan, so I hope that this show sparks interest and curiosity in young people for poetry and words and Dickinson herself, and maybe they will watch and search out more information or look for her collections of poetry.
And that is it from me today! I hope that whatever you do today, you do something that makes you smile!
Hello everyone! This morning is rainy but we had the most glorious sunrise, the most amazing shades of pink and orange. It was spectacular. So is my coffee, which is Seattle’s Best Henry’s Blend this morning. I think it is my current favorite.
I feel like today is a big exhale, like I have been holding my breath for weeks making it through all of the various plans and appointments we have had. Nothing that should have been stressful, just low key busy.
Where should I start? It’s been a minute since I wrote one of these. I will start with my own good news! I have had high blood pressure since I was 24; my dad and brother since they were 13. We just have some weird genetics. Anyway, ever since I spent a month in the hospital with pre-eclampsia when I was pregnant with Wyatt, I have been extremely anxious about having my bp taken, which when you already have a history of high blood pressure is not super helpful. It’s controlled at home, but usually in the office is ridiculous. I have to take a blood pressure log and everything with me to appointments. Well, this week my blood pressure in the office was 123/85! I think my anti-anxiety medication is working! My doctor was extremely happy as was I. My log from home reflected these have been my readings at home too, that or lower, but to have it in the office was another thing altogether. So that was my little success this week!
Ok, moving on to more fun things!
We had our scout meeting the other week and we had a blast. We are exchanging nature boxes with another pack in Oregon, who live in the desert area of Oregon, so it will be really cool to see what we receive. Our scouts spent the meeting making pages of leaves stuck with contact paper and labeled. They loved it, and they also loved the leaf rubbing station we had set up as well. It was some of the kids first time doing a leaf rubbing and they thought it was magical, which was cute. The parents enjoyed it too, actually, with one of the dads making quite a few himself. I was happy to see the plans all coming together and everyone having fun.
Wyatt and I also had a fun day out the other week! We went to see the Wild Kratt’s Live Action Show in Ann Arbor, and it was pretty neat. It was Wyatt’s first show like that and he loved the being able to yell and cheer and interact with the rest of the audience and Chris and Martin. My only complaint about the whole day was the theater’s interpretation of wheelchair seating. I bought wheelchair seats and it literally was a regular seat where the arm raised up, and then Wyatt’s wheelchair, his only way to move around, was moved into the hall. We were also the last seat in the last row of the theater but that wasn’t terrible on its own, I guess just the idea of that is how they prioritize disabilities. What if there had been an emergency situation? What if I had not been able to transfer him on my own? It just felt extremely low effort on the part of the theater for accommodations for the disabled community. However, all that aside, Wyatt did have a good time and I did as well. It was nice just to have that moment and first with him.
This week we also went to the orchard and pumpkin patch! I look forward to this trip all autumn! We picked our pumpkins out and drank some hard cider (well not Wyatt), bought some apples for baking a pie and some honey, and just in general had a great time. They didn’t have doughnuts the day we went but that is ok, I think this weekend we will take a little drive to the Halloween bakery, although I haven’t told Billy and Wyatt that yet, it will be a surprise. After our pumpkin hunting, we took a walk on Grosse Ile, foraging for things to put in the scout nature box.
This month has been so full. Full of fun and family moments, watching the football game with my dad and stepmom eating our bowls of fancy ramen, a nice long massage, reading with Wyatt, sitting out on the deck for the ramp in the sun with Billy and Wyatt and Devin and my nieces. Stitching in bed while watching tv at night, our comfy cozy cinema nights, just all those little things that make up most of our days. It is apt maybe that this month is so full feeling, in tune with the season of harvest. A long time ago, when people still lived mostly off the land, this time of year would be their richest in food, as they laid up their food for the winter. We are reading about this right now in Wyatt’s read for history, The Birchbark House. I do like that the mom thought about those times they would need a little something extra too though.
I too often need a little sweetness to remain strong in spirit.
I fell in love with poetry on the laps of my mom and dad, snuggled up close, as they sang nursery rhymes to me, and then later on, Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky and yes, Dr. Seuss too. Poems like Ickle Me Pickle Me Tickle Me Too tripped across the room, enchanting me with their rhythms and of course humor; my dad read The Owl and the Pussycat to me every single night before bed. And who, old or young, doesn’t love Listen to the Musn’ts. Even after my parents stopped reading Silverstein to me, my cousin and I used to spend family holidays curled up in a corner, reading Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic together, and we still talk about these poems sometimes.
As I got older, I didn’t read as much poetry anymore. Then my senior year of high school I took an Advanced English class where we spent a whole semester on poetry, and I fell in love all over again. I was introduced to Emily Dickinson, Edward Arlington Robinson, T.S. Eliot, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and Dorothy Parker, who I discovered on my own that year. I wanted to be Dorothy Parker, with her sharp. clever wit. I wanted to be a big time journalist, and sit at the Algonquin Round Table. (Ok, I still want to do that) I started smoking – yeah, I started smoking not due to peer pressure or anything, but because all my favorite writers and authors did it- and she even influences me a bit now. A craft cocktail bar opened up in Detroit about 8 or so years ago, and what did I order? A whiskey sour, like my old idol Dorothy Parker. I no longer smoke, but I do still enjoy a whiskey sour every now and again.
Last Friday my husband, Wyatt, and I stumbled into an art show celebrating the beauty of the spoken and written word, titled Pose and Poetry. For the entire month of April, works of art inspired by poems are on display, as well as a night of open mic spoken word. We had attended a Free Spirit Fair in the same building, and saw the exhibit going on, and decided to check it out too. I am so glad that we did. I loved it. There was this beautiful, delicate piece of artwork, a sculpture of glass shaped into a little nest, with strips of Dickinson poems tucked throughout. It was exquisite and lovely and I adored it. I can’t stop thinking about it really. Dickinson is a favorite of mine, and this piece was really a gorgeous tribute to her work.
Patrons were encouraged to participate as well, by writing a line from a favorite poem and sticking it to the window. I of course had to do this too. The problem was, which of my favorites would I leave a line from? Degrees of Grey in Phillipsburg flitted through my mind, and I considered Hope is the thing with feathers by Dickinson but she was already so beautifully represented. But in the end there was no other poem I could have chosen besides The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, my very favorite of them all.
These days I read a lot of Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry; different poets affect us at different points in our lives, and right now, Oliver and Berry hit me where I am. I think there is a poet or two out there for all of us, even in some of us. Or maybe just a singular poem that calls to us, even just a line that sings to our soul. What do you think? Is there a poet or poem that you love? Feel free to drop a line in the comments! I would love to read who or what speaks to you.
Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.. 