Covid-19 Life News

The weather has cooled again, but the chard and spinach we planted is coming up. The pear tree is in blossom and the apple trees are in bud. We have been busy with yard work. 

Covid cases in Michigan are the highest in the nation, and Oakland County has been in the 'red' zone. Our small town of under 12,000 has had over 200 cases in the last month...out of 600 total cases! And most of those are school related.

Meanwhile, people all over the state are acting irresponsibly. 

After being vaccinated, we donned masks and did a few errands, but now are back to delivery. One errand was to mail the First Lady signed handkerchiefs to the presidential libraries. 

Another poetry book I purchased arrived. Made in Detroit by Marge Piercy.

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Algonquin Books sent early reviewers a print of the cover of Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenridge. Isn't it a beauty! The book has been much touted and I recommend it.

There is an eagle in town! People have been reporting it lives on a high apartment building downtown. We have seen it on our walks.

This spring, the Mourning Doves have been hanging out in our yard. One particularly likes to sit on the edge of the bird bath! Years ago, when dad had a platform bird feeder, they were constantly in the yard. They liked sitting in the apple tree when the heat pump blew warm air in the winter. But we have not seen them in our yard for quite a few years.

Sunny the Shiba Inu and Gus the cat have really bonded. Sunny loved to play with kitten Gus, and now they are cuddle buddies. Gus was in a tunnel toy and Sunny tried to figure out how to join him!

No bed is too small to share.

Goggle is ending feedburner so anyone who read my blog via email will no longer get it! Goggle+ ended a few years back. I need to find a new way for email following but it is all very complicated. I wonder if its time to just give up on Blogger and blogging, and share via social media. I started blogging in 2008. It's a different world, now.

I have until July 1 to figure it out.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

Covid-19 Life: Gardening, New Books, Quilts

Spring has come. Daffodils and hyacinth are in bloom, as is the pear tree. The robins are splashing in the bird bath, the sparrows have a family in the bird house, and the mason bees are finding nooks in the bricks.

About one year ago we went to the local gardening center to buy herbs. It is mostly outdoors, and even indoors, the building is open and has high ceilings. Last year we only had a mask for protection; this year we had our vaccinations, too.

We bought parsley and dill and Nasturtium seeds and some tools and things.

A dozen years ago we pulled the English ivy up from under the apple trees and I put down stones. This spring, we took up the stone and are planting companion plants for fruit trees. Our oregano patch had become huge, so we divided it up and took most to plant under the trees. I sowed Nasturtium in the sunnier parts. In the fall we will transplant our bulbs under the trees. Next spring, we will see the daffodils and hyacinths from the family room patio door!

The stones are now along the house and driveway where we put the Stella d'Oro lilies when the front yard was landscaped three years ago. They have done wonderful there!

It is to rain tomorrow and I can return to machine quilting my Water Lily quilt. It is a lot of work! But it would be even more had I hand quilted it. My other projects are backing up, waiting for me to finish this quilting. But I did the first month block for Barbara Brackman's new quilt along project, Ladies Aid New York Sampler. Being from New York, I 'had' to participate! 

I am not using reproduction fabrics for this quilt. I have loads of that background fabric and need to use it. Truthfully, the fabric was once bedroom curtains in a house we lived in for 17 months! I kept it figuring I would use it some day.

A few more books have been added to my shelf.

• The Writer's Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut and the Many Lives of Slaughterhouse-Five by Tom Roston
• Among the Beautiful Beasts by Lori McMullen, the story of the early life of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, known in her later years as a tireless activist for the Florida Everglades
• Beautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang, about her undocumented Chinese immigrant family

I won A Good Neighborhood by Theresa Anne Fowler from the Book Club Cookbook.

And I purchased some poetry books for National Poetry Month. First to arrive are two books by Joseph Fasano, whose The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing I reviewed here.

Fasano shares his poetry online, as well as his music, and I have greatly enjoyed both.

We are watching Ken Burn's Hemingway on PBS. I have my grandfather's For Whom the Bell Tolls, printed in 1943, and two 1970 books I bought as a high school senior, and the short stories we bought for our son to read in school.

Here are the grandpuppies at doggy day care, looking very springy.

The quilters are meeting in the park. Most now are fully vaccinated. Years ago, I donated fan blocks I had made to the 'free table' and Bev Olson has been embellishing them with her wonderful embroidery and beading. She has created an amazing quilt from them!

And another friend dove into her fabric scraps to make a double sided quilt; Roman Coins on one side, and on the back is this very cool assemblage.(Sorry, the quilt is sideways!)

We are excited that our son and his girlfriend both received their first covid-19 vaccination this week at Ford Field! The virus is wrecking havoc in Michigan, even in our small town. We have scheduled doctor appointments over the next few weeks, but otherwise are continuing to social isolate.

But, hopefully, in a month we will be able to have a family gathering again.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

Covid-19 Life: Vaccinated! and Some Interesting Handkerchiefs Find a Home

Hooray! My spouse and I have both received our second Covid-19 vaccinations. April 8 is the day we can begin to cautiously reenter the world: missed doctor appointments are first up on the list. 

New on my TBR NetGalley shelf is

• Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: The Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change by Thor Hanson
• The Magician by Colm Toibin, fiction about the novelist Thomas Mann 
• Rooted by Lynda Lynn Haupt whose Mozart's Starling I deeply enjoyed
• Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, story of a daredevil female aviator
• Theater for Dreamers by Polly Sampson

The pandemic has motivated me to think about 'last things' and where 'things' will at last end up.

In other words, its time to find homes for some things I have collected.

First up, three handkerchiefs signed by First Ladies.

In 1993 a signed handkerchief collection belonging to Mrs Mildred Maulding was sold off on eBay. I purchased three of the handkerchiefs signed by First Ladies, including Bess Wallace Truman, Patricia Nixon, and Betty Ford. I believe I paid about $15 each.

The handkerchief signed by Betty Ford came with a letter from the White House that is dated February 5,1975. It is addressed to Mrs. Mildred Maulding, 1301 Northeast Glendale Avenue, Peoria, Illinois 60603 and is from Nancy M. Howe, Special Assistant to Mrs Ford. The letter confirmed that the handkerchief was from Betty Ford. The handkerchief signed by Bess Wallace Truman is dated 6/7/68.

The seller, Nancy Ashburst, included an appraisal of the collection in a letter dated 1993. In the collection were handkerchiefs signed by astronauts John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, James Lovell, Frank Borman, William Anders, Wally Schirra, and James McDivitt; actors and entertainers Mary Pickford, Jane Withers, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Grace de Monaco, and Richard Chamberlain; Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower, Harry S. and Bess Truman, Hubert and Muriel Humphrey, Everett Dirksen, and Eugene McCarthy; religious leaders Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale; authors Zane Grey, Pearl Buck, Edgar Guest; famous physicians Jonas Salk and Charles W. Mayo and Christian Barnard, the first transplant patient; and from the world of music, Robert Merrill, Herb Alpert, and Meredith Willson. The total collection was valued at nearly $3,000.

I would have LOVED TO BUY THEM ALL! But I did not have much to spare. These three hankies were a steal at half their appraised value.

The collector, Mildred Dorothy Maulding, was born February 6, 1897 to Charles Sturman and Minnie Alice. She married Charles DeWitt Ashby and they had two children, Charles DeWitt and Billy Dee. On June 11, 1949, Mildred married Emory Maulding.

Mildred died at age 80 in 1977. Her obituary shows she was born in Shawneetown and was buried in McLeansboro, that she was a member of the Baptist church, Eastern Star, and White Shrine.

I got in touch with the presidential museums for each First Lady and have arranged to donate the handkerchiefs to them.

I also got in touch with the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. I want to donate a rare campaign souvenir handkerchief to them, sold on eBay as a 'circus elephant' for a dollar or so. It is silk, with a Republican elephant wearing a blanket with a bit 'H' for Hoover and a 'C' for his VP Curtis.

So, a trip to the post office is also in my post-vaccination to-do list.

Next it is time to clear out some quilts. I have a double closet and a linen closet filled with them...

Covid-19 Life: Books On the Shelf and Other News

It seems that as soon as I finish a book, another...or two...come in!

Surprise book mail from Sourcebooks is The Engineer's Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood. I entered a giveaway and won it! When engineer Washington Roebling became too ill to work on the Brooklyn Bridge, his wife Emily took over his work.

New on my NetGalley shelf is quit a mix!

• Miss Kopp Investigates by Amy Stewart, the seventh Miss Kopp book
• Letters to a Young Poet: A New translation and Commentary, Rainer Maria Rilke's classic
• Americanon: An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books by Jess McHugh
• Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy whose Migrations I read last year
• After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made by Ben Rhodes
• That Summer by Jennifer Weiner whose Big Summer I read last year
• Eternal,  Lisa Scottoline's first historical fiction novel

I also signed up for a blog tour of A Theater for Dreamers by Polly Sansom; I was a little late and am waiting to hear back from Algonquin about it. It is a novel based on Leonard Cohen's time in Greece.

This week the library book club discussed Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney, who kindly stopped in via Zoom to talk to us. She is a lovely person. My second reading of this book left me more in love with Lillian than ever. One book club member said she didn't want to leave Lillian, and listened to the audiobook again!

I found some lovely tea cups to embroider through the DMC website. Here are two of the six, minus the gold thread embroidery still to come.

Next week we get our second Covid-19 vaccinations! Our later April calendar is filled with missed dentist, eye doctor, and other appointments we put off for a year.

But this last weekend, we got to puppysit our dear Ellie for a day! She is so sweet and gentle. Also, more sociable and less skittish than she was when our son brought her home from the rescue society.

Here is Ellie with Gus at our son's home. Gus loves to rough house with Sunny who is just as rough and playful.

My brother posted this post-winter pic from his cabin pond, which he called 'carnage at the frog pond.' Perhaps this spring we can visit the cabin again. Once the carnage has been cleared up!

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

Covid-19 Life: Vaccination Day!

Thursday I received my first Pfizer vaccination through Henry Ford Health Systems! As the nurse prepared my shot, I was nearly in tears with relief. In three weeks, both my husband and me will have had our second vaccination dose. And in mid-April, we will be able to begin to resume activities we had put on hold. 

We dream of simple things like visits with the dentist and eye doctor, senior hour shopping in the grocery stores, visiting indoors with our son and his girl and the grandpuppies and Gus, visiting our brothers.

The Pandemic is not over, life will not be 'normal' any time soon, and the virus is mutating, but the vaccinations along with double masks will protect us and curtail transmission of the virus.

Overall, life is quiet. We are walking outside every day now. I don't have any hand work prepared....must get on that. I have everything ready to machine quilt a project, but first I am sewing curtains for my brother's tear-drop, retro travel trailer.  He found this cool Alexander Henry fabric.

And this is his trailer!

The Robins are using the heated water bowl for a bird bath! The weather is warmer, 40 degrees today, the snow is melted. In a few weeks we will be able to bring out the hoses and the bird bath. Meantime, Robin is making do.

I bought a new vacuum cleaner because the rubber in my 1990 Royal upright is stiff and won't hold the filter bag. It would come off and the dust collect in the cloth bag! I have mostly hard flooring, but carpet in the living room and some area rugs. So, I bought a Miele canister vac. It is pretty cool!

Book mail from Little, Brown & Company is A Shot in the Moonlight by Ben Montgomery, whose last book, The Man Who Walked Backward, I read.

Bookish First Top February Reviews included my review of the Genome Odyssey! That was exciting.

I am reading April NetGalley books. Currently, The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King, whose on Monet, Mad Enchantment,  I read, and The Sound Between the Notes by Barbara Linn Probst, whose Queen of the Owls I have read, and also BookishFirst memoir Finding Freedom by Erin French. (And I am now about 60% through Barack Obama's memoir A Promised Land.)

After purchasing The Little Women Cookbook I ordered The Secret Garden Cookbook! When I reviewed these books I thought they were charming and the recipes looked very tempting.

I will end with a pic of Sunny and Gus. Moments later, I was told, Gus was chewing on Sunny's neck in play!

And I just love this pic of Ellie and Sunny begging for a walk.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

Covid-19 Life: Books, Quilts & Vaccinations

On Friday, my husband received his first Covid-19 vaccination. And next Thursday I will get my first vaccination. It is a great feeling, nearly euphoric, after a year in retreat, to know this is the beginning of the end of a very scary time.

I understand that I will be wearing masks and still being careful, but we can schedule our missed eye exams and dental checks without feeling so vulnerable.

My spring reading list has gotten grown to massive proportions! 

I have Finding Freedom by Erin French from BookishFirst. It arrived on bread making day.

I have had numerous books offered to me by publishers and my NetGalley shelf is overfull!

New on my NetGalley shelf:

• The Man He Became: Roosevelt's Rise from Polio to the Presidency, James Tobin's The Man He Became written for middle school readers. (Tobin is married to the daughter of a couple we knew some years ago. We were given autographed copies of his previous books, Ernie Pyle's War and To Conquer the Air.)
• The Coffin Ship: Life and Death at Sea during the Great Irish Famine by Clan McMahon
• Highway Blue by Alisa McFarlane, a novel about 'being lost and found'
• That Summer by Jennifer Weiner, whose Big Summer I read last year
• Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President by Ronald C. White
• The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live by Danielle Drelinger
• Thief of Souls by Brian Klingborg, a mystery
• The Remnants of Summer by Dawn Newton, a coming of age novel set in Michigan

These books join the others already on my shelves. Which, to remind you, include

• The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King
• Astrid Sees All by Natalie Standford
• The Sound Between the Notes by Barbara Linn Probst
• Eleanor in the Village: Eleanor Roosevelt's Search for Freedom and Identity in New York's Greenwich Village by Jan Jarboe Russell 
• Light Perpetual by Frances Spufford
• The Ride of her Life by Elizabeth Letts
• Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America by Scott Borchert
• The Reason for the Darkness: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science by John Tresch
• Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
• Blind Spots: Why Students Fail and the Science that Can Save Them by Kimberly Nix Berens

This is daunting!

Still, I sew on.

I finished the Nancy apron.

And I machine quilted the mushroom embroidery and vintage fabric quilt.

I have the backing for the Water Lily quilt and the Rebel Girl quilt! I am going to be a machine quilting machine.

We grew basil by seed and they are finally looking like they will survive! They are in a metal box that I painted some years ago.

This week I Zoomed to hear Diane Rehm talk about her new book through the National Writer Series. Next month I will join them again to see Imbolo Mbue, whose Behold the Dreamers and  How Beautiful We Were  I have read.

Our March library book is Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney--who will join us on Zoom!

Gus the cat got very curious when our son racked the snow off the roof.

But Sunny was chill.

I have to also have a pic of Ellie. This is from last winter when she was obsessed with squirrels.

That's all the news from The Literate Quilter.

Stay safe. Find your bliss. Spring will come and so will the end of the pandemic.

Covid-19 Life: Snow Days

I love this photo of the grandpup Sunny. She discovered the seat gave her a nice view of her domain. 

We are still waiting to be notified for a COVID vaccination. Meanwhile, winter came and left us a whole lot of snow. We are lucky; unlike some parts of the country, we did not lose heat or power or water. The stories are heart breaking.

We have a battery snowblower, which could be problematic if we lost electricity! It is light and easy to use, but not really up to tackling a heavy snowfall. 

The early robin hangs around the yard for the heated water bowl. I don't know why they return in the middle of winter!

I get the winter doldrums, which is amplified by the pandemic's necessary social isolation. The bitter cold temperatures keep me indoors, and this winter we can't go to the fitness center or mall to walk and exercise. When the temperature rises to 28 degrees, I bundle up and take a walk.

 Consequently, I am watching more television. Thank God for PBS! Right now we are enjoying Miss Scarlet and the Duke. And of course, the reboot of All Creatures Great and Small. We loved The Good Place which we watched earlier this winter, an now are watching Mr. Mayor which also stars Ted Danson with Holly Hunter. I am winding up The Good Wife, into season seven. And we are revisiting Chuck and The Gilmore Girls.

That's a lot of tv for me, and I don't even have a quilting project prepared as an excuse. Today I have to buckle down and layer the Water Lilies quilt for hand quilting.

A quilt friend gifted me a preprinted panel to make an apron. The pattern is called the Nancy, so she knew I had to have it. I am sewing it up.

My Goodreads win  Infinite Country by Patricia Engel arrived in record time!

Our library book club had a marvelous Zoom with Angie Kim to discuss her novel Miracle Creek. We were scheduled to read it and Skype with Angie a year ago. Then came the lock down and the library had to adjust and turn to Zoom meetings. Angie was a gracious, lovely person. We learned how the book was based on her own experiences and heard about her upcoming book, which we are eager to read.

My brother spent the long weekend at his cabin. The roads were bad, the snow storm caused a white out, and he discovered the propane had been left on and the tank was nearly empty! He returned home to discover the local deer had taken over the yard in his absence.

I did the taxes yesterday. And ordered more tea from Simpson & Vail, and a delivery from the drug store, and chose food for our weekly order from Imperfect Produce. 

I had a reprieve from cooking for two days; we order the $50 family special from a marvelous modern Italian restaurant in town and the food lasts us three meals. We have pizza and salad the fist night, and the pasta, salad, rolls, and green beans/broccoli the second night. And for lunch we have left over pizza and more salad. And, it comes with deserts! I had tiramisu and hubby the almond cake. The owner said in a news story that these deals have kept them open over the shut down. They do have the best, homemade pizza ever, everything is from scratch and amazing.

And so, life goes on.

My husband bakes bread and enjoys computer gaming and reading.

I keep busy with reading, quilting, writing, and reading social media and the many email newsletters I received. The quilters Zoom every week, and the book club every month. I order online for grocery and other deliveries. And like everyone else, miss family hugs and yes, I am even beginning to miss going to a store. 

Spring will come. And it will be so freeing to be able to sit outside and watch nature return to life, and take walks around the neighborhood. We can social distant visit outdoors. And, if we ever get that vaccination, we will don our double masks and venture into a store, perhaps to the bakery whose coffee cake we miss so much, or to the take-out place that sells the best pasties in Michigan.

The longer days bring hope of spring and rebirth and growth and healing.

Stay safe. Find your bliss. 

Covid-19 Life: New Books On the Shelf, Happy Valentines Day

 

My brother gave me a book store gift card for Christmas and I finally decided to use it. I bought Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell and The Address Book: What Street Addresses Revel About Identity, Race, Wealth and Power by Deidre Mask, both of which I failed to obtain as galleys or ARCs.

Not that I have nothing to read!

New on my NetGalley shelf are:

• The Reason for the Darkness: Edgar Allen Poe and the Forging of American Science by John Tresch
• Republic of Detours : How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America by Scott Borchert
• The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts. I have read and reviewed her last novel Finding Dorothy and her previous book The Eighty-Dollar Champion
• Light Perpetual a novel by Frances Spufford whose previous novel On Golden Hill I reviewed and whose nonfiction book I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination is one of my all-time favorite books.

From Goodreads I won

• Infinite Country, a novel by Patricia Engel, set in Columbia

From Bookish First is coming

• Finding Freedom by Erin French, a memoir

I am currently reading (still) A Promised Land by Barack Obama, The Arsonist's City by Hayla Alyan, and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I also need to do a quick read over of Miracle Creek by Angie Kim for book club on February 17--Angie is going to Zoom with us, too!

I finished a quilt that has been hanging around because I was not thrilled with it, it just wasn't what I had imagined it would be. It started with the fantastic fabric of dandelions which reminded me of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. I embroidered a favorite line from the book and sewed on shiny sequins representing fire flies coming from the mason jar.

Sunny and Ellie send Valentine kisses to all. Stay safe. Find your bliss.