About the Week

Posted on 09/06/2025 by chick
  • The kids finished their first week of school. I got up every morning at 6:00 a.m. to make sure they were out of bed and getting ready without getting in each other’s way. I’m proud of how well they managed it. I feel comfortable leaving them on their own in the mornings from now on. And thank goodness, because I am already exhausted. Me and morning just don’t mix!
  • My husband saw a bobcat in our yard!
  • I finally finished the composition piece I’d been working on forever. Now my teacher suggests I write a passacaglia. Hmm. I’ll think about it.
  • My husband has arranged for Livia to have fencing lessons, at her request. She hasn’t fenced in years, not since Covid. Previously she studied foil but will now be learning epee. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly she can catch up.
  • I think I may have fallen behind at work, but I can’t seem to care. I’ve lost all my joy in the job.
  • I gave in and bought the NYT subscription. Well played, NYT. Well played.
  • The Powerball jackpot has been over a billion dollars for the last few drawings. It’s fun to dream about becoming a billionaire overnight, and I think it’s worth a few bucks to entertain that dream. Too bad every one of our tickets so far has contained not a single winning number.
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Ode to the Library

Posted on 09/01/2025 by chick

My daughter went to the public library one day last week to hang out with her friends for a few hours. It made me nostalgic for the days, so long ago, when I used to meet up with my friends at the library. But you know, I loved going to the library whether or not my friends were there. Though I despised the card catalog (thank goodness we have better tech now!), I loved doing research, wandering the stacks, hunting for books, reading through encyclopedia articles, making photocopies. When I was there I felt this wonderful mix of emotions: freedom, excitement, the desire to absorb everything the library had to offer. I’m not sure how I would have described it then, but my adult self perceives it as the sense that the library was a window opening onto a world of endless possibilities.

I know that times have changed and that there’s far less need for the library as a center of research, but clearly it still has value as a place where young teens are allowed to go by themselves. Actually, while teen-me and my teen friends were allowed to go to the library, the library wasn’t in all ways the most welcoming place for teens. That has also changed. Our current library has a teen section, complete with TV, video games, and vending machines. A couple of times I’ve even seen teens getting pizza delivered to them at the library, something that would have caused brain aneurysms in the librarians of yore.

Anyway, I’ve always loved the public library. I loved the one I went to as a child and the one I went to as a teen, and I love the one I go to now. And maybe someday my daughter will tell me about how much she used to love going to the library, and wouldn’t that be cool?

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Found on My Desk #2

Posted on 08/31/2025 by chick

Found on my desk: a page of sheet music from a piano piece that Livia had been learning upon which I’d written a quote by Livia: “To music the music, you must ride the chord.” I’m a proud parent and naturally find my daughter highly quotable. Beyond that, as a word nerd I can’t help loving the modern trend of verbing nouns.

Related: Livia also recently taught me the words “tryhard” and “tryharding.”

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Spotting the Knotweed

Posted on 08/30/2025 by chick

The other day I walked into the great room while my husband was watching a video, which he paused when he saw me. Frozen on the screen was an image of foliage. He said, “Do you know what that is?” I looked at it for a moment and asked, “Is it knotweed?” And apparently it was. He said, “I’m always amazed at the random stuff you know.” I, basking in the praise, did not point out that it wasn’t entirely random. I’ve made a hobby out of identifying local wildflowers, and Japanese knotweed is a memorable plant. It’s invasive, destructive, and nearly impossible to get rid of, not to mention that it’s growing just around the corner (yikes!).

A couple of days later we were driving down the highway, and he asked me to point out some Japanese knotweed for him. Once he knew exactly what to look for, he kept searching for it and commenting every time he saw large clusters. I can understand that. There’s some entertainment value in the horrific discovery of how overgrown the roadsides are with invasives. So just wait until he learns to identify purple loosestrife and autumn olive and black locust and so forth. He may not be able to keep his eyes on the road!

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Paywall

Posted on 08/29/2025 by chick

Today I hit a paywall for two previously free NYT puzzles: Letter Boxed and the Mini. It put a damper on my day to have my usual round of puzzles cut short. I wasn’t terribly surprised by it, though. I’d been expecting something like that to happen. Naturally the newspaper wants people to buy subscriptions, because they need to make money. So now the question is, do I want to do that?

Pros:

  1. Supporting the puzzle makers, editors, and solving community. This is a strong pro!
  2. Supporting a major news outlet. God knows we need a free press, and if we don’t pay for it now, someday we’re going to “pay for it.”
  3. The current price is good ($18 for a year of Games or $1 per week for unlimited NYT access for 6 months). Maybe too good. It used to cost $50 for a year of Games, and I thought it was excessive to charge that much on top of the newspaper subscription. IMHO, the newspaper subscription should include everything, or at least get you a discount on the extras. But $18 for Games alone is selling themselves too cheap, and it worries me.

Cons:

  1. Spending more time on puzzles each day, as will inevitably happen if I get more access to them (like I don’t already devote enough of my time to puzzles!).
  2. Spending money on something I don’t need at a time when I should be trying to spend less.
  3. Supporting the NYT, which I’d previously quit for a reason. I trust them (mostly) to give us accurate news, but I don’t trust their motives or allegiances, which is why I added “(mostly).”
  4. It irks me to be strong-armed. They’re trying to force me to do something, and my inner rebel is like, “Screw you, I don’t need your stinking puzzles anyway!”

Hmm. Gotta think about this for a while. But I am leaning toward buying a subscription.

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Found on My Desk #1

Posted on 08/29/2025 by chick

Found on my desk: a photocopy of an epigraph from Erling Kagge’s book Walking.

You’re walking. And you don’t always realize it

But you’re always falling

With each step, you fall forward slightly

And then catch yourself from falling . . .

Laurie Anderson, “Walking and Falling”

I’d thought at first that “Walking and Falling” was a poem, but it turned out to be a musical piece. Though I like the written excerpt, the music does nothing for me. To get a better taste of Anderson’s music, I’d recommend “O Superman” (video link below). It’s arguably a masterpiece, but be warned that it’s not only strangely hypnotic, but also disturbing, and if you let it get to you, it can generate some big feelings.

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Adventures and Misadventures

Posted on 08/28/2025 by chick

Yesterday we took the kids to The Adventure Park in Sandwich, MA, on Cape Cod. Unfortunately, when we got there we could hear thunder. It wasn’t super close, but as safety experts say, “If you can hear thunder, you’re close enough to the storm to get hit by lightning.” The park’s rule–a totally reasonable one–is that nobody’s allowed on the course until 30 minutes after the thunder, and every time the sky rumbles, the clock gets reset.

Rather than wait for who-knows-how-long, we headed over to the neighboring Heritage Museums & Gardens, only to find that they were also closed due to the weather. They have indoor exhibits as well as the outdoor gardens, but I guess they close everything rather than risk people getting struck by lightning on the grounds. I can’t say I blame them. Just before we left, we saw a bolt of lighting that made us strongly feel the need to not be outdoors. So we consulted my phone for local indoor activities, and that’s how we found out about the nearby Sandwich Glass Museum.

The Sandwich Glass Museum is not a huge place, but they’ve got some great displays, including several with an audio component (those were fun!), a stunning special exhibition of glass by Josh Simpson (through October 31), glass-blowing demonstrations every hour on the hour, and a gift shop. We had a good time, except Livia, who hadn’t wanted to go to the glass museum at all. She got even more upset when we told her that we weren’t going back to the adventure park. We weren’t happy about missing the adventure park either, given that it had been our goal for the day, but we’d spent longer in the glass museum than expected, and the hour had gotten too late.

An employee of the glass museum recommended Seafood Sam’s on the Canal as a good casual seafood restaurant, and we went there for dinner. The food hit the spot. Then we headed home, promising Livia we’d take her back for her aerial adventure soon.

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Reading Report 8/24/2025

Posted on 08/24/2025 by chick
  • Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik: In this sequel to Her Majesty’s Dragon, the Chinese have claimed Temeraire as rightfully theirs, because he is a special and rare Chinese breed. The leaders of the British government, fearing war with China, try to get Laurence to give Temeraire up. He refuses. But, as a compromise, Laurence and Temeraire agree to travel with the Chinese delegation back to China. The journey, taken by sea, is a long one, and China is a big country, so there’s ample opportunity for enemies to attack, and they do. My reading experience: Maybe it was because I was reading the book in small doses, but the story seemed to drag, and for me the threat of Laurence losing Temeraire hung too heavily over everything. After the story’s end there was a preview of the next book in the series. It sounded interesting, and I may decide to read it eventually. Just not now.
  • Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman. This is a Romeo-and-Juliet type of story set in a modern, alternate-reality Britain in which lighter-skinned folks (Noughts) are discriminated against by darker-skinned ones (Crosses). Callum (a Nought teenager) and Sephy (a Cross teenager, slightly younger) grew up together and are good friends, maybe even more than friends, but society will do everything it can to keep them apart. My reading experience: The societal reversal struck me as so obvious as to be ridiculous, and I would never have read the book were it not on the BBC list. There was a lot in the book that was equally obvious or broadly telegraphed in advance, which annoyed me at the time, but in retrospect I wonder if obviousness is a plus in a book intended for a teen audience. Told in alternating first-person chapters, Callum and Sephy’s story was compelling, and the ending, at least, took me by surprise.
  • So Much by Trish Cooke and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury: This was such a pleasure to read. Family members keep arriving at a toddler’s house, and each relative spends time with the child in a different way, to his delight. It beautifully captures the joys of growing up in a tight-knit family.
  • No Kisses for Mother by Tomi Ungerer: I read this book, my first by Tomi Ungerer, because it was on the BBC list. In this story, a kitten behaves very badly, getting into fights at school, smoking cigars, and refusing to let his mother kiss him, among other things. But, at the end he does something nice for his mother, after which we readers are presumably supposed to go, “Aw! What a sweet child!” I did not. I don’t think we should teach our children that it’s fine to act badly most of the time as long as they occasionally do something nice. No praises for this book.
  • The Three Robbers by Tomi Ungerer: This book, also by Tomi Ungerer, is also on the BBC list. It starts with a frightening description of three robbers, their weapons, and their violent acts of thievery, and it ends with the robbers doing nice things for orphans. On my first reading, I felt that the happy ending didn’t make up for the dark beginning. Reading it a second time, I’m undecided.
  • The Moon Man by Tomi Ungerer: This book is not on the BBC list, but I read it because I had become sort of fascinated with Tomi Ungerer, thinking that he was clearly a popular author and, having written 100+ books, he must have written at least one that I’d like. In this story, the Moon Man (who is “curled up in his shimmering seat in space”) looks down upon the Earth and sees people dancing, and he wants to experience such fun. He hitches a ride to our planet on the tail of a falling star. Soon he finds out how aliens are treated here (poor Moon Man!). Things start to look grim, but no worries–it’s just a phase. My reading experience: This one was OK. As with The Three Robbers, I liked it a little better the second time through.
  • I Am Papa Snap and These Are My Favorite No Such Stories by Tomi Ungerer: This is collection of short, silly stories. The anthropomorphized animal characters all have funny names, and each story ends in an unexpected way (bizarre moral, non sequitur, etc.). For example, a wealthy bird couple buy a ready-made nest which turns out to be junk, and at the end the male bird muses, “Well, that’s what happens when you start spending money.” It’s a little dark and at times a tad offensive (by modern standards), but I liked it. One story even made me laugh out loud. I would consider buying a copy. So I guess I was right–Tomi Ungerer did write at least one book that I like.
  • I stayed up late last night so that I could finish reading Becky Chambers’ A Closed and Common Orbit, which I hope to write about later. I don’t have any books going at the moment, and soon I will need to choose two (one from the BBC list, one not). Contenders include The Owl Service by Alan Garnder, Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson, Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde #3) by Heather Fawcett, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson, Beethoven in the Bunker: Musicians Under the Nazi Regime by Fred Brouwers, and The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca by Tahir Shah.
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Pretty Big Spider

Posted on 08/19/2025 by chick

Today I was eating cereal in the kitchen when Marshall looked at me and said, “You have a spider in your hair.” That was alarming. “It’s pretty big,” he added.

I forced myself to remain calm. “Could you please remove it?” I asked.

My husband came into the room at that moment and, quickly realizing what the problem was, took the spider out of my hair. Then he showed it to me. It was pretty big.

If you’re wondering how I managed to stay calm, it’s because I’m allergic to insect stings and consequently I’ve taught myself to remain motionless when a bee or wasp lands on me. That skill translates to spiders to some degree. But if it had skittered onto my face, OMG, I would have freaked!

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Book Math

Posted on 08/16/2025 by chick

I always hope to read at least 52 books per year. It’s a good thought, but it’s just a thought. You can’t hope your way into anything; you have to take action. If you want to read 52 books, then you have to make a point of reading.

Today I asked myself, “How many books could I finish per year if I were to read for an hour each day?” Given that I read about a page per minute and assuming that the books I’d choose would be in the 350-page range, then I’d be able to read at least 62 books per year (60 pages times 365 days divided by 350 is roughly 62.6). And if I lived another 27 years (my theoretical life expectancy), then I could read another 1,674 books total.

Some people would say that 1,674 books is a lot. I’m not sure it is (I’ve already read so many that I feel like I ought to be able to read several thousand more). But, it seems likely that if I don’t start reading for at least an hour a day, I’m going to read a lot fewer than 1,674.

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