I've bundled up for two forest preserve walks this week. Fortunately the Kicks (S's car that I drive) stays warm so he is comfortable.
We are at the southern edge of the paper birch range. Hickory nuts. The icy snow sparkles.
All the Christmas decor is put away except for the wreath. Each year I think about going through the storage boxes and culling decorations that I didn't use this year (or last year or the year before....) Then I think what if I want to change things up next season? So I just close up the boxes and put them back in the basement closet.
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This is last year's guild round robin. (This post shows the other RR projects and my starter block.)
It will be donated to a good cause, of which there are many.
The back is an estate sale bargain. The inset strip meant I didn't have to match the print.
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I have finished both book club selections for January.
AAUW Reflections on Reading will discuss Heather Sellers' memoir next week. Sellers grew up shuttling between her alcoholic father and mentally ill (maybe schizoid?) mother. She also deals with the rare neurological condition prosopagnosia. She can see faces but she cannot remember them. She compensates by using other cues (hair, body language), though there are frequent mixups (other girls in school accused her of being snobby; greeting a complete stranger with a big hug). She doesn't get an accurate diagnosis until she is nearly 40. By that time she is a college professor and married (then unmarried) to a man who sort of understands her condition.
Sellers' story reminds me of The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls or Educated by Tara Westover: how can anyone have grown up and survived with such parents? What are the people we encounter every day dealing with?
Reading Sisters, the P.E.O. online book club, will discuss Becoming Madame Secretary on January 14. It is hard for us to imagine the precariousness of people's finances in the early 20th century and before. Social Security has ensured a measure of stability for elderly Americans (a great deal of stability to many). It was Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins who pushed the enabling legislation through to congressional approval.
Who was Madame Secretary? Born in Maine, raised in Worcester, and educated at Mount Holyoke, Frances Perkins began her career as a social reformer working to abolish child labor and to improve conditions for workers in the food industry. She was befriended by Eleanor Roosevelt and appointed to a state labor position by New York Governor Al Smith that continued under Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Roosevelt was elected to the presidency he appointed her the U. S. Secretary of Labor.
Perkins' family home in Newcastle, Maine, is now a National Historic Site.
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Linking up with Finished or Not Friday
I remember an amaryllis in a store I worked at. It always smelled to me like that old-fashioned white library paste. Do you get the same memory jog?
ReplyDeleteBird 'Pie
Good for you getting some walks in! I really must add that in to my day. Beautiful amaryllis! The ones I have grown have been mostly red! I love the Apple Blossom. Adding your two books to my list. I’ve already read the January selection for my local book club too: Kristen Hannah’s The Women.
ReplyDeleteThose both look like interesting books. Your amaryllis looks beautiful....mine isn't quite ready to bloom yet. It's extremely leggy so hopefully it won't topple over before it does.
ReplyDeleteI always liked the Apple Blossom Amaryllis. I had a friend who would only buy that color because it matcher her house. She said the other colors (other than white) all clashed with her decorating.
ReplyDeletei sent my mom an apple blossom amaryllis for her birthday last year...sigh...she loved it so..i too culled some christmas things and all the rest put away now...interesting book on perkins...for those who live solely on social security it is a subsistence life at best...meager raises eaten up by rising costs on other things like rent, food, insurance premiums...tho better than nothing...
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