Beauty break, and reading

Here's a quilted piece I'm showing you with the permission of the maker, on Spoutible,  because it's a great handling of color and color progression

Just enjoy it! I could talk color theory but let's not. Just let it work on you. She's a gifted artist in quilting, and I thank her for permission to show you.

Friday morning I spent more time than I expected to on the Yeung Man Cooking recipe, 30 minute curried lentils.

 Here's the cast of characters, with substitutions. No red chili oil, so I used the same quantity of that fiery Indian condiment Gary's neighbor sent recently, no coconut cream, so I used Greek yogurt. No spinach so I omitted it. No basmati rice so I used brown.

No red lentils, so I used brown. None of it mattered, because it's strongly seasoned and  came out well.

It's a great meal but you really have to be in the mood for all the stages. Even I, usually dauntless, was a bit daunted once under way with baking the tofu, rinsing and cooking the rice, rinsing the lentils, dicing onions and mincing the garlic and hot pepper, and toasting the seeds.  Yes, did I mention crushing the cardamom pods..

I also served it differently, with the curried mixture over the rice instead of beside it.

I definitely like his idea of adding crushed cardamom pods to the rice. Very aromatic,and they come to the surface, so you can easily find and remove them.

Anyway this was good, despite many stages, and I'll do it again. Meanwhile this is enough for several meals. I like knowing I have dinner ready before I even get up in the morning.

I'm reading several books at once now and this one has eclipsed the others

It's a wonderfully written journey, head to toe, of the landscape of the human body, by a medical practitioner in several fields who is also conversant with the history of medical practice.

When I was studying life drawing I often thought that the human body was like a landscape, with hills, valleys, folds and intersections. This book reminds me very much of that experience. He's respectful of patients as well as of the mechanisms of the organs.  

One of his most stunning chapters is about the eye and how it processes light traveling across the universe in nano seconds to illuminate what we're reading.

Pretty good, but less exciting, is

A recommendation from Susan Hill as being in the style of Barbara Pym. Older widowed woman, living in a hotel happily, helping sort out, or interfere in, the lives of younger family members and a former lover. 

 It's okay, mild enough, but no resemblance to the piercing intelligence of Pym.  I don't think Hill has grasped the point of Pym. I shouldn't be surprised, since she doesn't get Austen either. 

She seems to read to find out what happens, when that's the least of your concerns with Austen or Pym. She does grasp Anita Brookner, but then Brookner's more evident, a wonderful writer, painting a clearer image of a world, and without the irony I love in Pym and Austen.

I don't think Pym and Austen are alike, just that they provoke work from the reader, as a participant, not as a passenger.

I just finished yet another reading of 

the first Heyer I ever read, as a teen, recommended by our history teacher! She was interested in the eighteenth century historical accuracy of Heyer's depiction of  France and England, and we were interested in the romance angle.

Waiting at the library are 

and 

Both are Hill recommendations or at least mentioned warmly in her year of reading book. The second is a volume of the Cazalet Chronicles which I read and loved years ago online and I think I'd like to revisit it as a paper book.

Susan Hill gave me a few good ideas, despite my carping.

Friday morning I Signed The Heatpump Contract. The Rubicon is firmly behind me, along with the contents of my wallet.

Happy day, everyone, and remember, when you're sighing about floating apostrophes, "would of" and damages being mixed up with damage

Some early decisions

My response to trauma is usually to take action. Right now I'm looking for a path to resistance.

I spent a bit of time yesterday in a local nature preserve, grateful for some changes they'd made since I was there a while ago. A new path made it easier to get to the lake. My walking is limited but I was able to navigate this.

New trail cleared. It seemed significant at this moment. It was a healing experience.

And I resolved to continue eating well, to maintain health as a resistance measure

I've pruned my blog list to remove soapboxers, gloaters and anyone who showed me their true colors yesterday from what they think is a safe place. I'll let them find out that there will be no safe place in our new world. 

I'm going to do the same with comments here. I've been open even to some that were bossy and hurtful,  thinking well, it's a viewpoint. No more. Only civil disagreement will get house room. I don't mind a challenge but I'm closed to arm waving now and snark.

I've deleted some social media, pruning my presence in others. You feel how you feel, I just don't have the energy right now to read your grief while I'm trying to process my own. 

I'm still thinking about how to resist. I already try to be entertaining here,as a respite, and I'll continue the Sock 'n Glove Ministry, all the more necessary. And my membership in helpful organizations, and food bank donations,all that.

I think my own mental health is itself a form of resistance, so I will keep calm and knit, spin, stitch,read and weave on. Being a small oasis of calm and resolve is my current goal.

Here's my current reading

I have to consider my financial future as a person heavily dependent on social security and Medicare, but not today.

And I need to consider how I use my energy and whether to blog less frequently than the daily pattern I've been in for many years.

Looks like my support of Ukraine will be a lifelong endeavor now. 

Reading, light and thoughtful

As well as the Medici history, other reading is happening all the time. Aside from an excellent YouTube audio production of Pym's Excellent Women, after an equally good one of Colin Firth and Greene's The End of the Affair, oddly dated but still very good.

Aside, after  interrupting myself, from these accompaniments to knitting, stitching and cooking, I've been reading ebooks on Hoopla.

 This one edited by Clara Parkes, whose Daily Respite emails are a great start to the day. You can sign up, free, really inventive messages daily. Google on her, she's lovely. Anyway, this is a collection of essays on stash by knitters who can write

And some light mysteries and a romance, which I transfer to Kindle, easier on the eyes, and a lot of fun.

So this is how I keep my mind ticking over. More or less.

Stormy weather and the armchair traveler 6WS

The weather, veering wildly between hot and humid and hot and downpours, is good for staying in and reading.  And here, thanks to various recommendations, is the current array, not counting what's going on in the Kindle (more Edinburgh books by Alexander whatsisname Smith).

Thanks to dogonart, and after a lengthy, months that is, wait, the library got hold of Four Seasons in Rome, a year on a fellowship there, enjoyed by Anthony Doerr, and I just embarked on it.  Very entertaining, and great fun to visit Rome by proxy without having to struggle with two babies, finding food for the family, admiring the scenery while lugging a stroller up steps, and writing a novel.  He seems to be surviving so far, though.

Then Kate H. turned me on to Diana Athill, whose most recent book is out this year, in her 98th year.  She still writes at a lively clip, though, if a bit disjointed, but she's lived an interesting life. She goes from wealth and great family houses, not hers, but related, to comparative poverty, until late middle age brought more money into her life, and she has continued on her unsentimental way, casting a penetrating but not unfriendly eye on her surroundings.  She's a lifelong single woman, with a colorful personal life and no regrets.

Pangur Ban is a retelling of that ninth century Irish poem about the monk and his white cat, presented here for kids really, but you can read it anyway. It's short, and you can spend either ten minutes or a lifetime unpacking what's in it.  

Anyone who has had an animal companion nearby while she works will appreciate the notion that the monk doesn't interfere with Pangur's work of hunting for mice and Pangur doesn't interfere with the monk's work of hunting for meaning. The illustrations are a perfect fit for the meaning, created by someone who knows his cats, as you'll see on the page where the cat gets back into the monk's cell.

This recommendation came to me via brainpickings, a wonderful, thoughtful blog which I in my turn recommend. I keep up with it on Twitter then get a weekly digest of the articles referred to through the weeks, some very good sources.

Then The Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicholson, yes, those Nicholsons, talk about well connected for sources.  She lives at Sissinghurst! that place of famous white garden fame.  She thanks half the royals for access to their papers and pix!  

The summer in question is 1911, when the tectonic plates of the political Western world were starting to shift, after the death of Victoria, but before all the treaties, all at cross purposes, were invoked by the death of the Archduke with the subsequent destruction of the world as it had been up to then, for practically everyone, mostly for the worse. 

Knowing all that, though, it's intriguing to get a glimpse into the privileged life still being enjoyed by a few, who little knew how soon it would vanish, during a summer of perfect, in fact very hot, weather.  Not unlike the weather recently in the UK, in fact, except people wore a lot more clothes then.

Just embarked on this one, and it's a bit more heavy going, what with all the historical detail and the name dropping, but still worth chugging on a bit with.

So that's the coffee table load for the day!  and I finally noticed that my title is in six words, so it fits with the Six Word Saturday theme.