The Best

Here’s the trail of breadcrumbs. Chuck subscribes to The New York Times. That means in addition to the Sunday newspaper being delivered to our home, we also get full digital access. My favorite way to read the Times is on our iPad. Near the beginning of December I clicked on the Times icon. Before the edition refreshed I spotted an article about a blogger with the phrase “big ideas”. Then it disappeared and the new edition filled in. Some searching brought me back to the article which had caught me eye. Here’s the piece.

When I finished that article about 28 year old Maria Popova I clicked through to her website “Brain Pickings”. I was hooked. I quickly added the site to my RSS feeds and followed it on Twitter and Facebook.

Tonight I e-mailed my sister Gail in Georgia and mentioned it to her. That was when I realized I had never posted about Brain Pickings here. For which, I sincerely apologize!

Calling Maria Popova a blogger may be technically true but she is more accurately an editor, a collector, a curator, a librarian of all that is interesting. But not interesting the way CNN Headline News or USA Today are when you are stuck in an airport on a layover. Nor is Brain Pickings interesting the way BuzzFeed and Gawker can be. Brain Pickings is classier, deeper and draws you in with beauty, history and brilliance.

Brain Pickings has a separate page called The Literary Jukebox. Ms. Popova pairs a song with a quote or a poem. Sounds devilishly simple doesn’t it? I don’t believe it is and once again she makes it something special. Here is my absolute favorite combination which joins
John Steinbeck and Natalie Merchant. I find it both inspiring and beautiful.

Not every single Brain Pickings post is fascinating to me. But I am always happy to see the yellow avatar pop up in my streams. And I find it comforting to know that someone is working so assiduously to bring important and wonderful things to the attention of an ever widening audience.

Happy Chanukah!

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah. We lit the candles, read the story and sang the songs. But I’m afraid the latkes will have to wait another day or so until things slow down around here.

They will slow down, won’t they? ;o)

Here’s some useful information which I posted last year:
: : As always, Chabad.org has an a great and exhaustive section of their website devoted to all things Chanukah - from history to how to light the menorah/chanukiah.

: : And the best book to guide you through the Festival of Lights is still “Haneirot and Halalu, These Lights Are Holy” edited by Elyse D. Frishman and illustrated by Leonard Baskin.

A Freilichen Chanukah!

Give A Book

Isn’t it wonderful to lose yourself in a book for a little while?

Back in 2009 I posted links to some veterans and armed forces charities. I recently learned of another one called “Books For Soldiers” which is just as simple as the name implies: you send books to soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.

For more information go to Books For Soldiers.

The Book Cover

As promised, a photo of my version of the Reversible Journal Cover.
It was well received. ;o)

Book Cover

I needed to make a book cover out of fabric. I had been thinking about winging it - my usual strategy! And heaven knows that once upon a time I wrapped all my textbooks with brown paper bag covers. (I also used the glossy store bought ones with ivy league college and university logos emblazoned on them. However inspiring they may have been, the brown paper bag ones lasted longer!)

Anyhoo, I Googled to see if I could find a good design. I found several. But if I was not going to wing it, I needed a really good tutorial. By good I mean clear and easy to follow directions, coupled with very good images to follow. I found a nifty one which, by the description, should have been way too complicated: “A Reversible Journal Cover”. It wasn’t! Lara Cameron in Melbourne, Australia posted the directions, complete with illustrations. I’m a visual learner so that was important. You have to look very closely at those illustrations but she really does spell everything out and make it quite simple: basically four rectangles of fabric and six seams.

Full disclosure: I neglected to double a measurement as advised in Step 3. That was my own darn fault for reading too quickly. But it actually worked out just fine. On my next one I will double that measurement as advised to give the “pockets” where the book cover slips in, better coverage.

What Worked

I was lucky. I knew I would be hospitalized and having surgery several weeks ahead of time. As a result, I was able to prepare and figure out what I needed. Besides finding a brilliant, compassionate surgeon, here’s what worked for me:

: : I purchased and read quite a bit of Peggy Huddleston’s book “Prepare for Surgery, Healer Faster”. I did not follow all of her advice, but I found it very useful. I did listen to her companion relaxation CD - a lot - (which I loaded onto our iPod) and found that to be tremendously helpful throughout the entire process. I listened to it when I felt my anxiety begin to rise in the weeks leading up to the surgery and in the hospital at night when I couldn’t sleep. (Both are available on Amazon here and here.)

: : I created a folder in iPhoto called “Favorite/Special People & Places”. I dragged in photos of family, friends, Bar Harbor, Acadia, favorite digi-scrap layouts and so on. I loaded that folder onto our iPod. Many, many times I flipped through those photos, each of which made me smile. Connecting visually with the people, places, memories and moments I love made me feel good and calmed me down. It also helped me think ahead to what I would like to do after my recovery.

: : I reached out to the people in my life who I could count on. Chuck was naturally and rightfully at the top of that list! I knew I needed kind, well intentioned and funny people pulling for me, each in their own unique way. I sent out the call and the responses bowled both of us over.

: : As soon as I went into surgery, Chuck began sending group e-mail updates to those close friends and family members who were part of my “team”. That kept them informed and their responses were tangible support to Chuck while he waited. When I was out of the recovery room, Chuck continued the updates and the responses cheered us both immensely.

: : I remembered to be me. I made sure to engage positively and with good humor with every person I came in contact with. I wanted to be sure that I would not be just another number. I wanted to connect with the people responsible for my care. Coping with life’s challenges through laughter is one of my favorite strategies. Kidding around with my surgical nurse on the way to the operating room; joking with my nurses over profoundly embarrassing personal moments - that guaranteed I was not a number! I was Lee.

: : I walked. Before surgery back in 1987, my sister Gail advised me to get up and walk as soon as I was able. It was good advice then and now has become the gold standard for post-op recovery advice. This time I would emerge from my room, wrapped in my robe, one hand on my IV pole, the other on my incision and slowly but surely travel up and down the hallway. I did so at any hour of the day or night, always encouraged by the nurses and Chuck.

I was lucky.
I remain filled with gratitude for extremely good health care, fine health insurance, excellent nurses, generous friends and family and my understanding husband.

Positive Ripples

We attended a beautiful funeral service yesterday. The woman who passed was 97. She was part of our greater extended family, but we had only been in her company a few times. As we listened to the Rabbi, her daughters, granddaughters and a friend of long standing eulogize and reminisce, we got to know Rose better. It may be trite to say that we laughed and we cried, but we did both. We were grateful to be able to listen to how Rose lived her life and appreciate that every day, through every action, Rose chose to be positive. It put us in mind of the philosophy of Randy Pausch. In fact, Rose and her late husband had been deeply affected by Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning”.

As all of us were helping to lay her physical body to rest by placing the first few shovels of earth on her casket, Rose was still teaching, still influencing those around her. What a wonderful legacy she left - even to those of us who did not know her well before yesterday.

Down The Rabbit Hole

In a brief but staggering piece over at The Daily Beast, John Avlon provides an early report on the results of a new Harris Poll. (The complete results will be released tomorrow.) The poll looked at what Republicans believe about President Barack Obama. Some examples:

- 24% believe Obama “may be the Antichrist”
- 67% believe Obama is a Socialist
- 45% believe Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
- A “high percentage” believe Obama is a “racist” and “anti-American”

I shouldn’t have been shocked. But I was.

The 2008 campaign became ugly. The 2009 summer of the angry town hall meetings was far uglier. It was not just citizens, but elected officials; political leaders who were in the thick of the hate speech. But we are absolutely down the rabbit hole now (replete with Mad Tea Parties). We’re witnessing huge numbers of distortions, flat out lies, fear mongering, bigotry and calumny. What induces the feelings of disorientation and nausea, akin to that of funhouse mirrors, is that these outrageous falsehoods are being wrapped in the flag and declared patriotic.

We have to learn the truth and speak the truth, not “to power” as the Quakers advised, but to the power of the lies. Because, unfortunately, this is not Alice’s dream, but our new, strange reality.

Thank You Mr. Parker

Robert Brown Parker, author, died at his desk Monday.
I thoroughly enjoyed all of his books.
I refer you to this report in the New York Times by Bruce Weber. He does a far better job than I ever could in summing up Mr. Parker’s life.
For even greater appreciation and background on Robert B. Parker, I recommend this article, also from the New York Times, by John Kifner.

Thank you Mr. Parker.
Your work will live on.
But you and the further adventures of all of your wonderful characters shall be sorely missed.


My earlier post on Mr. Parker

I Turned In My Elf Badge

The hush-hush project which had me working overtime as an elf was a success. I made a photo book for my niece and her husband of their wedding day. When Carrie and Al opened it they were both surprised and happy, which was exactly what we had hoped for. After scads of research (bordering on the obsessive!) which included familiarizing myself with their websites and Googling lots of reviews and testimonials, I settled on Blurb to work with. These days there are a number of self-publishing outfits on the web. Shutterfly seems quite popular, especially in the digital scrapbooking world. But I didn’t want to upload my photographs to their site and then work on-line. Lulu was once almost exclusively text based, but has rapidly expanded their range. MyPublisher struck me as sophisticated as well as full service and was my second choice. But I chose Blurb because their site was welcoming, easy to navigate and intuitive. Plus, I was able to download their “BookSmart” software and work on the book on my computer. They offer templates and pre-made layouts for use. You can also create your own designs and templates. Or use a combination of the two. Blurb’s “BookSmart” software was a little difficult for me to work with initially. But after a couple of false starts and a few trips to their on-line “Help” pages I got it all sorted out. I ended up using some of their templates and creating several of my own. Because the book I made was photo rich, I decided against using any of their decorative layouts.

Once Al and Carrie’s 40 page book was completed I checked and rechecked unto the nth degree. I did follow Blurb’s advice and order just one copy, even though they were running some good pre-Christmas specials. Waiting was difficult! But as soon as it arrived and Chuck and I had a chance to look at it, appreciate the quality and feel the weight of the premium paper we had requested, I went directly to the website and ordered the other copies. Happily, they were offering substantial shipping discounts. Blurb allows you to keep your book “Private” and send folks an invitation link. That flexibility was another selling point for me. Here are some wedding photo books other people have published which will give you an idea of what you can do. I already have lots of ideas for other books I would like to create. And I would definitely use Blurb again.

Yiddish Proverb

In freydn iz a yor a tog, in leyden iz a tog a yor.
In happiness a year is like a day,
in suffering a day is like a year.


Translation and transliteration by Marvin Zuckerman and Marion Herbst from “Learning Yiddish In Easy Stages”

It Started With A Baseball Cap

Yesterday we drove out to the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was a powerful, fascinating, wonderful experience. We have known about the Center and have been meaning to go for a long time. But it was a chance meeting that finally got us off the dime. We had stopped by Wild Willy’s in Worcester for a quick meal last week. I noticed a man in the next booth wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. Here in “Red Sox Nation” that’s anything but unusual. Except in this instance “Red Sox” was written in Yiddish! I pointed it out to Chuck who approached the gentleman and asked where he had gotten the cap. He smiled, said the National Yiddish Book Center and asked if we had been there. When Chuck said no, not yet, the gentleman said “You’ve got to go.” But it wasn’t an off-hand remark. He said it in such a sincere, intense and thoughtful way, it struck as quite remarkable. As soon as we got home we looked up the center, found the hat and spent quite a bit of time exploring the website. The more we read and the more we thought about the gentleman’s advice, we knew we had to go as soon as possible.

The National Yiddish Book Center is located on the campus of Hampshire College. It’s a beautiful wooden building both outside and in. On a less rainy day, the gardens and grounds will deserve exploration. From a visitor standpoint, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. We followed the easily self guided tour of what is a cross between a museum, a library and a cultural inheritance. We watched a brief video which explained how the Center came to exist. It all began around 1980 when Aaron Lansky was studying Yiddish. But he couldn’t find enough books. He posted a few signs around his neighborhood and soon elderly Jews were contacting him, delighted by his interest and relieved to pass the books on to someone who would value them; treasure them as much as they did.

During World War II, one of every two Yiddish speakers in the world was killed. Countless volumes of Yiddish books were destroyed. Hebrew was the language of scholars and religious services, but Yiddish was the language of the home and commerce. Beyond the staggering human toll, to lose half of the speakers of a language was a huge blow to the thousand year old shared culture of Jews in every corner of the globe. It was especially wrenching after the time between the wars when Yiddish literature had flourished. When the State of Israel was established, Hebrew, not Yiddish was made the national language. This hotly contested decision dealt a further blow to the language. So by the time a young student in his twenties was studying Yiddish in the 1970s, nearly all the books were out of print and many thought it a dead or surely dying language.

Aaron Lansky’s book “Outwitting History” (Also available here) chronicles how the collection grew from a few boxes of Yiddish books to over 1.5 million at the center today. Please don’t be intimidated if you don’t read Yiddish in the original or if you don’t speak Yiddish. Because most visitors are in the same situation, the center is full of English language, bilingual and transliterated signs and exhibits. Their goal is to open Yiddish back up to the world. All are made welcome and admission is free.

We all know and use lots of Yiddish words: bagel, goy, schlep, nosh, kvetch, chutzpah, feh!, klutz, oy vey!, shmaltz, latke, lox, shmuck, yente, shtick, maven, dreidel... just to name a few. Visiting the National Yiddish Book Center provides a history, a context and a greater depth of meaning to why Yiddish words, books and music remain vital today. It also sparks a determination not only to protect the past, but to encourage a Yiddish renaissance.

Tooth #3

I don’t know how people choose their professions. I imagine some emerge from the womb, daimon in tow (as in James Hillman’s “The Soul’s Code”) and are firmly on their life’s path just past toddlerhood. Some follow in a parent’s footsteps. Others take a circuitous route, trying on one job after another until, like Goldilocks, they find the one which is just right. Some never seem to find their calling.

Happily, our endodontist found his rightful calling. I’ve covered my dental phobias before. I know there are very bad dentists, adequate dentists and exceptional ones. Now I know an exceptionally good endodontist - and that’s not the medication talking! Dr. V. is as Chuck described: intelligent, patient, skilled, compassionate, a natural teacher and he has a sense of humor. Despite Chuck’s reassurance and Chuck being welcomed in the room during my root canal, I was still quite anxious. That anxiety manifested itself as a combination of a deer-in-the-headlights look, nervous laughter, lame jokes and sweaty palms. When Dr. V. sat down after his initial examination to tell me there was a possibility I might lose the tooth entirely, my nervousness ratcheted up several notches. It was during the ensuing discussion about my options that he became aware I was “pre-medicated”. To which he responded: “This is you on Valium?”. “Yes” I said. And then I hit him! Well, it was more like I slugged him gently in the arm amid much laughter and a significant amount of righteous indignation on my part. I mean, I was not curled up in the fetal position in a corner. Nor was I still sitting in the car outside the office. I was in the chair, having signed a consent form to let him do a freakin’ root canal. They give medals for that sort of bravery - don’t they?

Well, the tooth was able to be saved. The root canal was remarkably pain free. Dr. V. is a big proponent of topical anesthetic (Pina Colada flavored no less!) and blessed Novocaine. Truth be told, the procedure was quite interesting. I spelled questions on the palm of my hand to Chuck, who relayed them to Dr. V. He in turn answered each one. Yes, we are a couple of odd ducks and even our personal quirkiness did not phase Dr. V. He just rolled with it - lame jokes, painful puns and all. I told you, the guy is good at his job and we are both very, very grateful.

inFLUenza

Chuck and I went to get our seasonal flu shots today. Knowing there would likely be a crowd, we both brought along books to read. The line was indeed long. For about 45 minutes we shuffled along, noses in our books. Except of course when folks stopped to chat and to tell us we were smart to bring books with us!

: : If you live in Massachusetts you can locate a flu clinic by clicking on this link.

: : For other states, check out the Flu Clinic Locator over at the American Lung Association’s website. Because the ALA seems to be focusing on commercial based clinics at drugstores, you can also try Googling “public flu clinic” along with the name of your state.

: : If you’d like to learn more about seasonal influenza, as well as the H1N1 virus, check out flu.gov. It’s a very good, user-friendly website with a wealth of information.

Idiots

Dan Kennedy of Media Nation and Northeastern University, has an excellent piece in The Guardian this week. Using Charlie Pierce’s book “Idiot America” as a framework, Kennedy takes on “The Birthers” - the idiots who refuse to believe that President Obama was born in Hawaii. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941) wrote: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” This fight requires more than just sunlight. Kennedy and Pierce make the case that we need to speak the truth clearly and repeatedly to those who spread lies loudly and vociferously.

Thank You Mr. Parker

It is a relief to throw oneself into a good book. It need not be a heavy, ponderous, thought provoking book, but it must be absorbing and well written. When I’m looking for something which will instantly draw me in I choose Robert B. Parker. Yes, he’s the same Parker of “Spenser” fame. I’ve enjoyed his Spenser detective novels and his one-offs, especially “Double Play”. But my current favorites are the books in his Sunny Randall series. Two features of note in any Parker novel: great dialogue and attention to small, illuminating details. Considering the brevity of many of his books, those are significant achievements and emblematic of his talent.

Eight Random Things

While we were out in Washington State, George tagged me with the meme: “Eight Random Things About Me”. I knew I couldn’t focus on the task well enough until we returned home. Now we’re home, so here goes:


: : I went to Catholic school for grades one through eight. Then I moved on to a public high school. But for college I returned to a Catholic school - all girls on campus, mixed gender in the classroom.

: : I’ve worn glasses since I was two years old. I tried contact lenses in college, but always felt like I had something in my eyes. Ummm, I did! Plus, I felt not enough like myself and somehow under-dressed without my glasses on.

: : As a young child, I loved the Bobbsey Twins series of books by the pseudonymous Laura Lee Hope. I then became hooked on the Trixie Belden series. My preteen romantic favorites were the Janet Lambert series about the Parrish Family, especially Penny Parrish. Swoon and sigh...

: : Truly good bread and butter and other savory delicacies will always trump sweets for me. Although chocolate - really good, dark chocolate - is a major food group. Really.

: : For as long as I can remember, I’ve been afraid of the dark. But as I’ve aged, the fear continues to diminish. However, we do own many flashlights and I do dearly love my salt lamps which burn around the clock.

: : My grandmother, Gagee, hoped I might become a nun. But I never, ever felt the calling - not even a teensy pull - as so many young Catholic girls do. My cousin became a nun, so Gagee had that, for a time. My Cuz left and is now happily married with children. Different callings for different times.

: : “It’s A Wonderful Life” is my favorite movie, ever, bar none. We watch it every year and every year it’s fresh and new and deeply, comfortingly, familiar.

: : Several years ago, I jumped through a few hoops and now, legally, my name consists of what I consider my real first name: Lee, followed by my maiden name and then my husband Chuck’s last name - no hyphens thank you! My parents named me Lee Ann (which someone in my family still spells incorrectly!); middle name Marie. But when I went to high school, I signed all my registration documents “Lee” because I liked the way it felt. I still do.

Now I’m supposed to tag eight people, but I’d prefer to keep this open ended and ever so slightly loosey-goosey. So you’re all invited to share “Eight (more or less) Random Things About Yourselves”, in the comments or on your own blog, or Twitter one thing at a time!

Thank you George. This was fun!

What We’ve Been Up To

We’ve been busy around here the last several days. Friday we headed north to the Peterborough Players Theatre up in New Hampshire to see Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”. Chuck read a review in the Wall Street Journal, of all places, which prompted him to check on tickets. We were in luck. They had two seats on the aisle available. The 200 seat theatre in a converted barn is air conditioned, has comfortable seats, which most importantly are staggered and well raked. I doubt there is a bad seat in the house. The play was very well done. I have read “Our Town” several times and, as a student, played “Mrs. Webb”. The play is as important to me as the book “A Lantern In Her Hand”. They each deal with the sweet, simple details of living a life across the full range from birth to death and beyond.

Saturday, Sunday and today we continued the de-jungle-fication of our property. This intense push was prompted by our previous successes, our desire to continue to make improvements and the impending arrival of our roofer (Yay!) and a building wizard who will help even up our front porch (Yay!). So, we’re tired but happy and now have a huge truck parked snug up against the house to receive the old roof. We also have staging in place and all the roofing materials have been delivered. This summer’s rainy weather has been tough on our roofer’s schedule, but he’s confident he’ll have the worst of our five surfaces cleared and newly shingled, before the vestiges of Hurricane Hannah arrive this weekend.

Sometimes We Lose Things

Sometimes we lose things, especially as a family.

Many of my ancestors came to America from Ireland in the middle of the 19th Century. In the years leading up to and following The Great Famine, family on various branches left their Irish homeland to seek better for themselves and especially better for their children. Another branch of my family left Scotland in the late 19th Century and found their way to America. But it is possible that many of their roots can be drawn back to Ireland, perhaps in one or more of the waves of immigration that happened between the two areas. One more branch apparently left Denmark, also at the end of the 19th Century and settled in Massachusetts and then in Rhode Island. Still another branch probably originated in France and first emigrated to Canada and later to the United States.

A surprising number of my ancestors all found their way directly to Rhode Island. They may have come from rural or urban areas back home, but most lived and worked in the cities. Many of the men and some of the women found work in the factories of Rhode Island. Their lives were difficult. Their education was minimal. It took multiple generations before a high school diploma was the norm. Another generation beyond that before college educations were possible and eventually routine.

So it’s not surprising that things got lost along the way. Religion stayed intact because the Roman Catholic Church was thriving here in the United States. But other traditions fell by the wayside. Language, while predominantly English, lost its native accent as brogues and burrs were replaced with New England regional accents. But within contemporary accents and expressions, one can still hear echoes of the influence of myriad Irish and Scottish voices who settled here.

Sadly, within my family, oral histories also became truncated. By the time I sat down with my father and my maternal grandparents in the 1970s, they could sketch out the stories of relatives they had known personally, but ancestors beyond a certain point of recognition, were already hazy. I have to assume that the daily responsibilities and challenges of keeping body and soul together, left little time for stories from back home. But it is just as likely that back home may have been fraught with pain. We also had our fair share of estrangements, including a multi-generational one of vague origin from my Scottish born relatives. What Dad, Mom, Gagee and Gramps knew was the countries their families had come from. But even there, errors would eventually be found. Gagee used to tell me I had German ancestors. That was because her stepfather, the only Dad she had ever really known, had been of German descent. The family story of my paternal grandfather Alexander was a memorable one, which unfortunately proved apocryphal. We had always been told that Grandpa had been conceived in Scotland and born in the United States. Turns out, his parents and older siblings emigrated from Scotland to America two years before he was born.

Besides language, accents and oral history, other traditions such as cooking changed. Sometimes this was due to a lack of availability of ingredients from home. But it seems likely that more often than not, poverty dictated what could go in the soup pot and in the lunch pail. I also imagine that there was the typical desire to assimilate with the larger, dominant culture. Within my family, there was a strong theme of putting our best foot forward to the world. Members of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations often referred to folks both within and outside of our family as ”Lace Curtain Irish”. It meant folks who didn’t have two nickels to rub together, but hung lace curtains in their windows to give the appearance of prosperity to the neighbors. They may have used the term dismissively, but I felt there was a whole lot of the pot calling the kettle black in their usage!

By the time my parents were raising up a family, their children, my sisters and I, were minimum third generation Americans. First and foremost, we were a thoroughly mid-20th Century, just barely middle class, all American family. Tied for second, we were decidedly, absolutely, Roman Catholic. Thirdly, we were of Scottish, Irish, Danish and French descent. The family recipe box had recipes clipped from American magazines, newspapers and off the backs of packaged products from grocery store shelves. Meals ran the gamut from corned beef and cabbage to meatballs and spaghetti to hot dogs and hamburgers to all kinds of seafood. We weren’t just part of the melting pot, we were eating out of it!

So it was with great delight that I learned about “Maw Broon’s Cookbook”. The discovery was serendipitous in a way possible only in this technologically advanced, early 21st century time. A few weeks ago, I was reading Sue’s blog. She and her son Jake were traveling on an extended vacation from their home in South Africa to a number of countries. One part of their journey brought them to visit family in Glasgow, Scotland. While the entire trip was fascinating, greater Glasgow is where my paternal great-grandparents lived before coming to America. One of the photos Sue uploaded to her blog showed her and Jake standing in front of a Borders Bookstore in Glasgow. In the bookstore’s window was the “life size” image of a cartoon character called Maw Broon. I did some Googling and learned that “The Broons” (The Browns if spoken without the Scottish accent) were created by Dudley D. Watkins in 1936, during the depths of The Great Depression. The Broons were a Scottish family living in a fictional town, inspired by Glasgow and Dundee.

The typical internet search led me link by link to Maw Broon’s Cookbook (United Kingdom link). The description alone intrigued me. Holding the artfully aged and cleverly created book in my hands left me smitten. The conceit of Maw Broon’s collection of recipes is that it was a gift from her soon-to-be mother-in-law on her wedding day. The book has been digitally ”tattered” and “stained” and contains recipes and tips held in place by yellowing “tape”. The period script penmanship is sometimes difficult to decipher, especially as the recipes are also written in dialect, but that just adds to the charm.

Maw Broon’s Cookbook doesn’t heal my family’s estrangements. Nor does it tease out any more truth from my beautifully gnarled family tree. Reading Maw Broon’s recipe for Fish Pie reminds me of the recipe I created for Finnan Haddie Pie. But not even Maw Broon’s Cookbook can transform my own family’s recipe box filled with tips and recipes from Better Homes and Gardens and the Providence Journal Bulletin. But reading recipes for Porridge, Beef Tea, Stoved Tatties and Black Bun makes me feel connected to members of my family named Mary, Elizabeth and Madelyn. Holding this cookbook, reading the recipes and notes aloud in my best Scottish burr, enables me to cleave a bit tighter to part of my family and its heritage. It has helped me to find, something we lost.

Bound - To Be Determined

Chuck and I recently watched a television report on high end bookbinding on “CBS Sunday Morning”. The exquisite bindings by Herb Weitz and Jamie Kamph were dazzlingly beautiful and tremendously expensive.

That prompted Chuck to pose the following question:
If you could choose one book to have bound in a fabulously deluxe, once-in-a-lifetime way, what book would you choose?

Would it be a childhood favorite - perhaps the book one of your parents read to you at bedtime?
Would it be the first book that turned you on to a new genre or a new way of thinking about life?
Would it be something you wrote yourself?
Would it be a religious text?
Would it be your favorite cookbook?

I confess, I can’t decide. Neither can Chuck!
I thought about my favorite dictionary; The RH2 - The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged.
I thought about the book of poetry that my poem “Two Days In August” was published in.
Or perhaps “A Lantern In Her Hand “ by Bess Streeter Aldrich, which was the first stunningly powerful book I ever read as a child.
Then again, maybe “Gone With The Wind” which I read every summer all through junior high and high school.
Oh my! There are so many wonderful possibilities!

What book would you choose?