I went back to work this week, so I am now splitting my days between the office and home. That has cut into my reading time, but, never mind, I'm ranging far and wide.
Here are the latest titles that have moved from library to home and back again:
29. Redwood and Wildfire by Andrea Hairston (Hairston is an African-American science fiction/fantasy author; this is a reread of a novel my son Sam gave me when he heard Hairston speak at PSU several years ago)
30. Black Ink: Literary Legends on the Peril, Power, and Pleasure of Reading and Writing, edited by Stephanie Stokes Oliver (excerpts from African-American and other Black writers' works running chronologically from Frederick Douglass to Barrack Obama, this one blew me away. W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Alice Walker, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, James Baldwin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: the list goes on and on. One of the most emotional excerpts was from Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, where he recounts the immediate impact of the end of the Civil War in former slaves of all ages finally having the opportunity to obtain an education: "...it was a whole race trying to go to school." I read that and started crying from the sheer weight of that moment. Poet Nikki Giovanni says it best in in the Foreword: "Black Lives Matter. Black Ink reminds us of why.")
31. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History by Danzy Senna. (I got introduced to Senna through Black Ink; this is her memoir of making sense of her tangled biracial history)
32. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (translated from the Swedish, this is a fun novel that several of the oncology nurses and staff were reading late last fall)
33. The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story by Edwidge Danticat (another Black Ink introduction, this work is half memoir of the death of Danticat's mother from ovarian cancer and half an examination of how writers, especially women writers, write about death in fiction and in memoir)
Last week Warren's son David was over to share a meal. At some point in the evening the picture book Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel came up. David was a little hazy on whether he remembered that book, so Warren found a reading of it on YouTube and we all watched and listened. Warren said "add that to your list." "But I didn't read it," I responded. We had a brief debate about whether it should go on the list, and I finally told Warren I'd list it with an asterisk and no number. So:
*Mike Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton (a childhood classic: what more can I say?)
Saturday, February 24, 2018
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
I Am Not Alone
There is a line in the movie Shadowlands that has always stuck with me: "We read to know we are not alone."
Never have I felt the truth of that sentence more than while reading This Fine Place So Far From Home. Subtitled Voices of Academics From the Working Class, it is a 1995 collection of essays by academicians who all grew up in working class families. Working class poor, blue collar working class, working class.
Reading the authors' experiences and observations, I was able to recognize and acknowledge my own trajectory in ways I rarely have. Their words let me put my life sharply into perspective.
I am always the other.
I come from a working class family; my dad was a skilled machinist. On either side of my family tree is a long line of laborers back many, many generations. My siblings and I all graduated from high school; that was a first in my dad's immediate family and only one generation removed from my mother's (neither of her parents graduated from high school, although she and her siblings did).
There were not a lot of models in the family for further education. There was an uncle who completed an education degree on the GI Bill following World War II, another uncle who took some college classes through the same vehicle, and one cousin (out of 25 or 26) who went on to college and completed a degree.
And there was my older brother. He had an abysmal GPA as a high school student, but Dale had very high SAT scores and was a swimmer, so his coach worked hard to get him accepted into Kalamazoo College, a small liberal arts college in Michigan. Dale didn't even complete his freshman year, dropping out a few weeks shy of the end of the year with failing grades. "The professors didn't know anything," he said. "They didn't have any real world experience." Looking back 47 years later and after reading This Fine Place, what I suspect sank my brother was the chasm between the working class kid he was and the middle class and professional upbringings of the other students and professors surrounding him. How did he begin to bridge the gap between our family life and discussing The Great Gatsby?
So enter me. I went off to the University of Chicago on a combination of scholarships and federal loans (which I signed for myself). I had a couple of hundred bucks in my wallet, thinking that would get me through the year. Who knew books were so expensive? I was totally at sea. A moment that still sticks with me? My roommate Katrina, who came from vastly different circumstances, had a long phone call every few weeks with her parents. (In those long ago pre-cell phone days, they had an agreed-upon system where she would call collect, they would "refuse" to accept the charges, then call her back directly at the pay phone in the dorm lobby.) I never talked to mine once on the phone; I received letters, often vituperative, from my mother. I doubt it crossed any of our minds to talk long-distance (think of the expense) ever.
After I went away to college, I did not live with my parents again until many, many years later. After I left for college, I did not receive financial assistance from my parents (until decades later, when I was too sick to work). That was just the expectation in our home: you were on your own.
Despite some rough spots, some of my own making, and some wrong turns, I eventually finished college and law school. But I never lost the sense of alienation and loneliness, both within my family and within academia. Having gone away to school, I was an outsider when I was back home; having come from the working class, I was an outsider at school.
I married up, that first time, but never fit quite into my in-laws' professional surroundings, a fact that I was constantly reminded of both in what was said and in what was not said. I married again, this time to an immigrant who grew up poor after coming to this country and resented that poverty. Now I am married to a man who grew up middle class.
I asked Warren, as I turned over this essay in my head, about his college years. He lived at home, he commuted to Ohio State, his parents and a music scholarship paid for his tuition. He worked summers, but not during the school year.
"What about clothes when you were in college?"
Warren reflected a moment. His parents, he said. "I was still part of the family."
"I was still part of the family." My parents did not buy me clothes or shoes after I went to college. It would have been the same had I gone to work after high school or into the military, as my two younger brothers did. That was part of being responsible for yourself after graduating from high school. Writers in This Fine Place made similar observations about their experiences. In many working class families, you are on your own once you hit adulthood.
I think of my own children, who grew up in a family just hanging onto the middle class by our fingernails. There was never quite enough money (huge quantities of it going into alcohol); we never quite managed to give Ben and Sam the financial support they really needed. They weren't deprived, but it could have been better. To a large extent, their trajectories mirrored mine: on their own once they went to college (Ben) or moved out (Sam). Ben, who went off to an expensive small liberal arts college (paid for, like his mother before him, with financial aid and school loans), once observed that, except for the students from 3rd world countries at Reed, he was the poorest student there. I don't doubt it. Sam, who has been self-supporting since turning 18, recently commented that he wished he had had a much better exposure to what traditional 4-year and community colleges had to offer before he made some of the educational choices he did. They are both making it, but they have had their own financial and class struggles along the way.
When I facilitate workshops on implicit bias, one of the group exercises we do is a social identity wheel. A social identity wheel is a way to explore how you see yourself. What markers (gender, race, religion, for example) are important to how you identify yourself? I always identity myself first as working class—before race, before gender, before education, before anything.
My friend Katrina (the same Katrina of above) discussed my explanation of the social identity wheel with her husband, who objected to my self-identifying as working class. I do not have her letter at hand (and with it being upstairs, it is for all intensive purposes out of reach), but I remember that among his objections were that I was bright and well-educated. When I co-facilitated an implicit bias workshop at court and shared my identity, I saw disbelief on the faces of some of my co-workers. They may have been thinking the same thing as Katrina's husband. April? Working class? But she's bright. And well-educated....
Yes, I am. And so is my son Sam, who is now a welder. The working class contains lots of us who fit that category.
I always identify as working class. Because that is what I am and that is what I will always be, no matter how far I come from my childhood.
And after reading This Fine Place, I know I am not alone.
Never have I felt the truth of that sentence more than while reading This Fine Place So Far From Home. Subtitled Voices of Academics From the Working Class, it is a 1995 collection of essays by academicians who all grew up in working class families. Working class poor, blue collar working class, working class.
Reading the authors' experiences and observations, I was able to recognize and acknowledge my own trajectory in ways I rarely have. Their words let me put my life sharply into perspective.
I am always the other.
I come from a working class family; my dad was a skilled machinist. On either side of my family tree is a long line of laborers back many, many generations. My siblings and I all graduated from high school; that was a first in my dad's immediate family and only one generation removed from my mother's (neither of her parents graduated from high school, although she and her siblings did).
There were not a lot of models in the family for further education. There was an uncle who completed an education degree on the GI Bill following World War II, another uncle who took some college classes through the same vehicle, and one cousin (out of 25 or 26) who went on to college and completed a degree.
And there was my older brother. He had an abysmal GPA as a high school student, but Dale had very high SAT scores and was a swimmer, so his coach worked hard to get him accepted into Kalamazoo College, a small liberal arts college in Michigan. Dale didn't even complete his freshman year, dropping out a few weeks shy of the end of the year with failing grades. "The professors didn't know anything," he said. "They didn't have any real world experience." Looking back 47 years later and after reading This Fine Place, what I suspect sank my brother was the chasm between the working class kid he was and the middle class and professional upbringings of the other students and professors surrounding him. How did he begin to bridge the gap between our family life and discussing The Great Gatsby?
So enter me. I went off to the University of Chicago on a combination of scholarships and federal loans (which I signed for myself). I had a couple of hundred bucks in my wallet, thinking that would get me through the year. Who knew books were so expensive? I was totally at sea. A moment that still sticks with me? My roommate Katrina, who came from vastly different circumstances, had a long phone call every few weeks with her parents. (In those long ago pre-cell phone days, they had an agreed-upon system where she would call collect, they would "refuse" to accept the charges, then call her back directly at the pay phone in the dorm lobby.) I never talked to mine once on the phone; I received letters, often vituperative, from my mother. I doubt it crossed any of our minds to talk long-distance (think of the expense) ever.
After I went away to college, I did not live with my parents again until many, many years later. After I left for college, I did not receive financial assistance from my parents (until decades later, when I was too sick to work). That was just the expectation in our home: you were on your own.
Despite some rough spots, some of my own making, and some wrong turns, I eventually finished college and law school. But I never lost the sense of alienation and loneliness, both within my family and within academia. Having gone away to school, I was an outsider when I was back home; having come from the working class, I was an outsider at school.
I married up, that first time, but never fit quite into my in-laws' professional surroundings, a fact that I was constantly reminded of both in what was said and in what was not said. I married again, this time to an immigrant who grew up poor after coming to this country and resented that poverty. Now I am married to a man who grew up middle class.
I asked Warren, as I turned over this essay in my head, about his college years. He lived at home, he commuted to Ohio State, his parents and a music scholarship paid for his tuition. He worked summers, but not during the school year.
"What about clothes when you were in college?"
Warren reflected a moment. His parents, he said. "I was still part of the family."
"I was still part of the family." My parents did not buy me clothes or shoes after I went to college. It would have been the same had I gone to work after high school or into the military, as my two younger brothers did. That was part of being responsible for yourself after graduating from high school. Writers in This Fine Place made similar observations about their experiences. In many working class families, you are on your own once you hit adulthood.
I think of my own children, who grew up in a family just hanging onto the middle class by our fingernails. There was never quite enough money (huge quantities of it going into alcohol); we never quite managed to give Ben and Sam the financial support they really needed. They weren't deprived, but it could have been better. To a large extent, their trajectories mirrored mine: on their own once they went to college (Ben) or moved out (Sam). Ben, who went off to an expensive small liberal arts college (paid for, like his mother before him, with financial aid and school loans), once observed that, except for the students from 3rd world countries at Reed, he was the poorest student there. I don't doubt it. Sam, who has been self-supporting since turning 18, recently commented that he wished he had had a much better exposure to what traditional 4-year and community colleges had to offer before he made some of the educational choices he did. They are both making it, but they have had their own financial and class struggles along the way.
When I facilitate workshops on implicit bias, one of the group exercises we do is a social identity wheel. A social identity wheel is a way to explore how you see yourself. What markers (gender, race, religion, for example) are important to how you identify yourself? I always identity myself first as working class—before race, before gender, before education, before anything.
My friend Katrina (the same Katrina of above) discussed my explanation of the social identity wheel with her husband, who objected to my self-identifying as working class. I do not have her letter at hand (and with it being upstairs, it is for all intensive purposes out of reach), but I remember that among his objections were that I was bright and well-educated. When I co-facilitated an implicit bias workshop at court and shared my identity, I saw disbelief on the faces of some of my co-workers. They may have been thinking the same thing as Katrina's husband. April? Working class? But she's bright. And well-educated....
Yes, I am. And so is my son Sam, who is now a welder. The working class contains lots of us who fit that category.
I always identify as working class. Because that is what I am and that is what I will always be, no matter how far I come from my childhood.
And after reading This Fine Place, I know I am not alone.
Monday, February 19, 2018
Books And More Books
The advantage of being housebound is that I have no guilt in spending hours and hours reading.
Here are the newest books to add to the "finished reading" list:
24. The Lost City Of The Monkey God by Douglas Preston (the 21st century discovery of La Ciudad del Jaguar in Honduras and more about the parasitical disease Leishmania than I ever wanted to know)
25. Danny The Champion Of The World by Roald Dahl (more anarchy from Dahl; thank you, Amanda, for the great recommendation!)
26. Everything Here Is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee (sisters, life, love, alienation and mental illness in one beautifully written novel)
27. Crǣft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Landlands (a well-written, thoughtful exploration of the historical role and deeper meaning of crǣfts (yes, "crafts" but not "crafts") and what we have lost in our modern world by abandoning them)
28. This Fine Place So Far From Home: Voices of Academics From the Working Class, edited by C. L. Barney Dews and Carolyn Leste Law (this work moved me so deeply that I am writing a separate post about it)
I also read about four-fifths of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, a collection of essays by Columbus writer Hanif Abdurraqb. Many of the essays are reviews of rap, hop hop, emo (yes) and other music genres I am largely unfamiliar with; Abdurraqb ties the music reviews with observations of his life and modern America through the eyes of an African-American man. I bogged down in the music reviews, but caught the other essays, including "My First Police Stop" and "They Will Speak Loudest of You After You've Gone." Just superb writing. And thanks to Abdurraqb, I am now introduced to Chance, the Rapper and his most excellent release Coloring Book. (Yes, Anne Konarski Anderson, you read it here first!) Because I didn't finish every essay, I'm not adding this to my list, but I came damn close.
Warren continues to shoulder the household, the Symphony, and me. Not to mention run to the library as reserved books become available. My love and appreciation of him are boundless.
Saturday, February 17, 2018
My Laura Ingalls Moment
This is a photo from the summer of 1958, when our hometown celebrated its sesquicentennial. There were several days of parades and pageants celebrating our community's humble pioneer beginnings. Men grew beards and women dressed in sunbonnets and full-skirted dresses.
I'm the child on the left, waiting while my mother adjusts my outfit. I am holding hands with Kathy, who was a few years older and the oldest daughter of my mother's best friend. Kathy looks adorable. I am pouting.
I posted this photo on Facebook in response to cousins asking about another family sesquicentennial photo, one which I could also explain.
Margo pounced on my post immediately. She saw what I had not seen in all the decades I have had that picture:
Of course it was my friend Margo who responded immediately. Margo with whom I have had long discussions about the Little House books, ranging from "what about toilets?" (Caroline Fraser addressed that burning question in her new, absolutely sublime biography of Wilder: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder) to shaking our head over Pa scarfing down pancakes and bacon with the Wilder boys while Ma and the girls starved during the long, hard winter. Margo, my Little House comrade in arms.
Clearly some things are just meant to be.
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
An Update From Laid-Up Land
I am six days out from my surgery to repair a torn tendon in my right foot. The surgery went very well. It remains to be seen whether I undid the surgery when I took a hard fall in the middle of the night two days later, coming down full force on my poor foot. The medical professionals told me that in 95% of the cases, no damage is done, but I have to wait several weeks until I am in physical therapy for them to assess whether I am in that unlucky 5%.
Other than that, recovery has gone well. Due to my tendency to bruise easily (courtesy of myeloma and lots of treatment), I am covered in bruises, including, to my dismay, several around my left knee where the compression sock that one is advised to wear ends. I get around with a hands-free crutch and a knee caddy (a scooter) which my longtime friend Katrina advised me to get. I don't know if that is the best advice Katrina has ever given me, but it certainly ranks high on the list!
For the first few days post-surgery, my dear sister-in-law Margaret was here to keep me company. That was a godsend in more than one way. She and I are very close and I relish any opportunity to spend time with her. She was also invaluable in that Warren had rehearsals, an educational session, and a concert that were scheduled months before my surgery and could not be scrubbed. Margaret kept me company while Warren took care of those matters; she even took me to the post-fall medical appointment so I could be assessed.
Warren, of course, is doing yeoman's duty taking care of the household, taking care of the Symphony, and taking care of me. I worry about adding to his load, which is never light, but he dismisses my concerns. I will admit: it is very hard to be this constrained.
And there have been visitors to break up the quiet: Tonya, Cindy, Roger. I even hosted Poetry Night on Monday.
So what am I doing in the rest of my leisure time? Reading, of course. Here are the titles I have finished since my last post:
18. Mathilda by Roald Dahl (anarchy at its best. I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts to ban Dahl's book)
19. Grant by Ron Chernow (a masterful biography of Ulysses Grant; I was convinced after finishing it that he is our most underrated president ever)
20. This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jenkins (another entry from the reading list of women of color authors; superb writing guaranteed to make you think not just twice but three or four times)
21. Heart Berries by Teresa Marie Mailhot (a heart wrenching, gut wrenching memoir by an indigenous author who weaves together her tribal history, family history, and personal history into this telling)
22. Feel Free by Zadie Smith (essays by a powerful writer, also one of the titles on the women of color reading list)
23. Ariel/The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath (thank you again, Frieda Hughes, for rescuing your mother from frozen martyrdom. Hughes's strong, deftly written preface explains the layout of the original British edition of Ariel, the original US edition of Ariel, and the differences thematically and chronologically between those editions (laid out by Ted Hughes) and Ariel as laid out in complete manuscript by Plath)
I am in the middle of a most unlike nonfiction work called The Lost City of the Monkey God. I kid you not.
Life will change again this Friday when I go into a cast. It will still be non-weight bearing, so I will still be reliant on the crutch and the scooter. Next Tuesday I hope to return to work. I will not be in the schools for several more weeks, but this will at least put me back in the mix.
One step (well, one hop, or one scoot) at a time.
Other than that, recovery has gone well. Due to my tendency to bruise easily (courtesy of myeloma and lots of treatment), I am covered in bruises, including, to my dismay, several around my left knee where the compression sock that one is advised to wear ends. I get around with a hands-free crutch and a knee caddy (a scooter) which my longtime friend Katrina advised me to get. I don't know if that is the best advice Katrina has ever given me, but it certainly ranks high on the list!
For the first few days post-surgery, my dear sister-in-law Margaret was here to keep me company. That was a godsend in more than one way. She and I are very close and I relish any opportunity to spend time with her. She was also invaluable in that Warren had rehearsals, an educational session, and a concert that were scheduled months before my surgery and could not be scrubbed. Margaret kept me company while Warren took care of those matters; she even took me to the post-fall medical appointment so I could be assessed.
Warren, of course, is doing yeoman's duty taking care of the household, taking care of the Symphony, and taking care of me. I worry about adding to his load, which is never light, but he dismisses my concerns. I will admit: it is very hard to be this constrained.
And there have been visitors to break up the quiet: Tonya, Cindy, Roger. I even hosted Poetry Night on Monday.
So what am I doing in the rest of my leisure time? Reading, of course. Here are the titles I have finished since my last post:
18. Mathilda by Roald Dahl (anarchy at its best. I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts to ban Dahl's book)
19. Grant by Ron Chernow (a masterful biography of Ulysses Grant; I was convinced after finishing it that he is our most underrated president ever)
20. This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female and Feminist in (White) America by Morgan Jenkins (another entry from the reading list of women of color authors; superb writing guaranteed to make you think not just twice but three or four times)
21. Heart Berries by Teresa Marie Mailhot (a heart wrenching, gut wrenching memoir by an indigenous author who weaves together her tribal history, family history, and personal history into this telling)
22. Feel Free by Zadie Smith (essays by a powerful writer, also one of the titles on the women of color reading list)
23. Ariel/The Restored Edition by Sylvia Plath (thank you again, Frieda Hughes, for rescuing your mother from frozen martyrdom. Hughes's strong, deftly written preface explains the layout of the original British edition of Ariel, the original US edition of Ariel, and the differences thematically and chronologically between those editions (laid out by Ted Hughes) and Ariel as laid out in complete manuscript by Plath)
I am in the middle of a most unlike nonfiction work called The Lost City of the Monkey God. I kid you not.
Life will change again this Friday when I go into a cast. It will still be non-weight bearing, so I will still be reliant on the crutch and the scooter. Next Tuesday I hope to return to work. I will not be in the schools for several more weeks, but this will at least put me back in the mix.
One step (well, one hop, or one scoot) at a time.
Friday, February 2, 2018
Updates: Books and Money
Back at the start of January, I wrote about money and what I thought 2018 would hold both in terms in income and outgo. Well, January is two days behind us and here is where things stand.
Combined groceries and household (soap, sandwich bags, shampoo) for January; $159.44. Of that, $147.60 represents food, $11.84 is what we spent on household items. So I came in under the $175.00 a month I dreamed about but was skeptical I would hit.
The surprise item was eating out. I commented in that earlier blog that we rarely ate out, which is true. That being said, we ate out twice (one lunch, one breakfast) in January. Those meals, along with two post-chemo fast food stops (so we both can get some lunch in us before Warren heads back to his office and I head home to unwind) and a cup of tea with a friend at a local coffee shop, came to a whopping $44.14 ($4.00 of which represented tips). Holy smokes! For us, that's a huge amount. (I'm not being facetious. That is a huge amount for us for a month, unless we are on the road to/from Mayo.)
However, I can say with pretty good certainty that the February figure for eating out (including take out) will be significantly less because in the last two weeks we also got to the bottom of my foot issues. The MRI revealed a badly torn peroneal tendon in my right foot (it's around the ankle). Next Thursday I go into surgery to have it repaired. I will be housebound and non-weight bearing for a week, then back at work and non-weight bearing for three more weeks, and then in a weight bearing boot for another three to four weeks after that. There's not going to be a whole lot of coffee dates, let alone lunch or dinners out. (Let's face it: there will be ZERO coffee dates during that time!)
I'm glad the food costs in January were so low, because I have already shelled out a lot of money for doctor appointments, equipment, and my 2018 out of pocket (met) and personal deductible (almost met) for my medical insurance. Ouch.
Good thing there are books. Because reading is what I plan on doing that week I am housebound. Since posting my first ten titles of 2018, I have added to the list. To wit:
11. The Cliff Walk by Don J. Snyder (Subtitled A Memoir of a Job Lost and a Life Found, this was a reread)
12. Corazon de Hojalata/Tin Heart by Margarita Saona (the author's poems about her heart failure and eventual transplant, in Spanish and English)
13. So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (Read. This. Book. This is one of the 46 titles by women of color I referenced in my last book post)
14. Elmet by Fiona Mozeley (a deftly written, disturbing modern tale set in Yorkshire)
15. Planting Dandelions: Field Notes From a Semi-Domesticated Life by Kyran Pittman (quirky essays by a writer I first met in the pages of Good Housekeeping)
16. Reset: My Fight For Inclusion and Lasting Change by Ellen Pao (Pao fought her termination by a major Silicon Valley venture capital firm; although her lawsuit for gender discrimination was not successful, I read this book thinking "yeah, you lost the battle but you have made major offensive progress in the war.")
After finishing Pao, I started the massive (MASSIVE) tome, The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume I: 1940-1956. For someone like me, who has read most if not all of the Plath biographies, having her letters published without extensive editing and suppression, has been a revelation. Kudos to Frieda Hughes, the daughter and only surviving child of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, for releasing this collection, which takes Sylvia from childhood to her marriage to Hughes. I feel like I am reading and hearing a Sylvia Plath whom I could only catch glimpses of before. Just reading her letters to Ted after their secret marriage gave me a whole new perspective on and appreciation of just how much in love they were and how from the outset they were each other's critics and editors.
The Plath letters weighed in at 1339 pages (not counting the introduction and forward). The book is so imposing and heavy that when I accidentally dropped it on my foot (my left foot, fortunately, not the right), I limped around for 20 minutes.
I finished Plath last night, bringing my 2018 totals to 17. I am two-thirds of the way through Matilda, by Roald Dahl. I have read very few of Dahl's books, including this one, so this has been fun. And as I type out these words, I know that there are three books at the library just waiting to be picked up and two more en route (from branches) that should be in later today or tomorrow. That should get me to the surgery next week and into my convalescence.
Onward to February!
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