COVID-19 Life: TBR, Quilts, News

I finished my embroidered cat quilt by machine quilting it on my new Bernina 570 QE! I am working on some surprise projects next.

Meanwhile, I am waiting for batting to arrive so I can hand quilt my Great Gatsby quilt.

Almost all the fabrics have arrived for my Mountain Mist Water Lily quilt. I saw this image online and it's my color inspiration.

I have read 88 books this year!

New books on my TBR shelf include two Goodreads wins:

• The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness by Emily Anthes
• The Restaurant by Pamela M. Kelley, woman's fiction about sisters in Nantucket

And from NetGalley:

• Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars by Kate Greene about her experience in a Martian-like environment
• Nick in which Michael Farris Smith imagines Nick Carraway's war experience before going to NY and meeting Gatsby
• His Truth is Marching On by Jon Meacham about John Lewis

I had to share some great photos from family members.

Below is our grandpuppy Sunny in her backyard paradise. Melissa is using her furlough to spiff up the landscaping. 

Our niece's son's Bar Mitzvah was all virtual and shared online.

Our dear friend Shirley Williams passed away last week. Here she is as a young woman with her husband. She often told me about their meeting.

During WWII, Shirley was engaged when she went to a local dance and saw a dashing young pilot. She removed her engagement ring and announced, that is the man I am going to marry. He taught her how to fly and she also had a pilot's licence.

We will dearly miss Shirley.

The Clawson library staff is back from furlough and we are working on restarting the book club as a virtual meeting!

My brother is camping on Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula on Lake Superior, on the Sunset side, and has been sharing awesome photos!

We went to the local garden center. Everyone was wearing masks, even outside. We bought some basil and pots to repot some indoor plants and some gifts.

Otherwise, we are walking in the neighborhood early in the day and staying home.

Stay safe!

The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson

I have enjoyed Erik Larson's books ever since reading The Devil in the White City. I previously read and reviewed Dead Wake and also have read Isaac's Storm. (I have In The Garden of Beasts on Kindle.)

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz is his best book ever! And the timing is perfect. The world needs to be reminded of what true leadership is and the importance of cohesive single-minded resistance in facing catastrophe.

Larson presents the cold, hard numbers of losses but concentrates on the human side of Churchill's personal family and closest aides and the experience of the common people of England.

Citizens trudged through the rubble to work after sleepless nights in air raid shelters. They planted gardens and kept farm animals to grow their own food. The volunteered their service. They lost everything and carried on.

Churchill was idiosyncratic, the Nazis delighting in making fun of his penchant for pink silk underwear and habitual clenching of a cigar between his teeth. Arriving in Washington, D.C. and staying in the White House, the president opened the door to a naked Prime Minister who quipped, I have nothing to hide, and went on to converse clad in a towel.

Churchill was fearless, watching the Blitz from rooftops, touring the devastated cities in an open car, never concerned for his personal safety. His example and his words inspired the people to find courage.

Churchill showed compassion and sorrow, he truly felt for the people he represented.

Churchill knew that Britain could not win a war against Germany. He kept up morale while desperately working to secure the American assistance that would save his country.

Drawing from her diary, Larson includes the personal life and romantic interests of the prime minister's daughter Mary Churchill. And we read of the doomed marriage of Randolph Churchill, a gambling addict and womanizer, his wife Pamela falling for the American Averell Harriman who was negotiating the Lend-Lease program.

Readers also follow Nazi leaders, whose idiosyncrasies outpaced even Churchill's. Goring liked to dress in costumes and makeup and amassed a huge collection of stolen art. Hesse traveled with a collection of pills on his clandestine flight to Britain, hoping to forge a peace agreement.

The book is everything you have heard it is.

I received an ARC from the publisher through Goodreads. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when–in the face of unrelenting horror–Churchill’s eloquence, strategic brilliance, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
by Erik Larson
Crown
ISBN-10: 0385348711
ISBN-13: 978-0385348713

Ford Times: July, 1961

Ford Motor Company began publishing The Ford Times in 1908. The last issue came out in 1993.

My brother was given a friend's parent's collection of Ford Times from the 60s and 70s. My brother gave me the duplicates. It's fun to look at the car and travel culture of my childhood.

The 5" x 7" magazine included wonderful artwork by artists including Charlie Harper. Harper's art appeared in over 120 issues of Ford Times! You can more read about it here.

Ford Times with cover by Charlie Harper

The July, 1961 edition included articles on "How to Visit a College," "Down the Canyon on a Mule," "Do Women Lack the Packing Knack?," "They Hunt for Relics of Rogers' Rangers," "Wagon Train East," "Piggyback on Penobscot Bay," "Land of a Million Years Ago" about Montana's badlands, and more. There is even an article about an early San Francisco Ford dealer!

"Wagon Train East" by Charlie Harper, and illustrated by him, is about a wagon train that went into the Cherokee National Forest

 "Piggyback on Penobscot Bay" illustrations

There was an article by Jo Copeland about how to dress to "Look as Smart as Your Car."

 Copeland talks about what she saw at turnpike restaurants as "the most bizarre outfits this side of a beatnik coffee house." Appalled, she offers suggestions on how to travel in style.

Copland calls the coat illustrated above a 'topcoat,' but I grew up calling them 'car coats.'

"When I am at the wheel, I like to wear short cotton gloves, the kind that wash and dry easily, because my hands stay cooler and cleaner. Bare hands perspire and stick uncomfortably," Copeland wrote.

I know Jo Copeland's name from collecting vintage designer handkerchiefs. I have several in my collection.

Jo Copeland handkerchief

Jo Copeland handkerchief

Learn more about Copeland at Living in Fifties Fashion and at  here

"Seeing Detroit" is about the Ford Rotunda's 25th year. The building was built for the 1934 Chicago Century of Progress Exposition. It was dismantled and relocated to Dearborn, MI.

 In November, 1962 a fire destroyed the building!

The article "How to Beat the Heat" promoted air conditioned cars but also suggested parking in the shade, the use of tinted glass, woven upholstery, opening the vent windows, and the wearing of skirts for women.

"Digger in Velvet" by Franklin M. Reck, illustrated by Charles Culver, was about moles. "He 'hears' with his snout and his tail rather than his ears. He can neither walk nor run," Reck informs. "Next time you catch one of these unrelieved nuisances, pause to admire the world's most efficient sapper with the silk fur and one-track mind."

"The Ford Times Dictionary of Automotive Terms" included expected terms like 'air cleaner' and 'additive.' Then there is 'A-bomb', a hot rod term for a Model A Ford, and 'balloon-foot,' an overly cautious driver. 'Beach buggy' was a car with oversized tires that could drive on the sand, and 'brain box' was slang for a crash helmet.

Of course, there had to be an article on a Ford car. The Falcon achieved over 32 miles per gallon in an Economy Run! Shell Oil reported that a 'skilled driver' with a 'specialized car' could get 168 miles per gallon! 

Another travel destination highlighted was Guilford, CT.

 The illustrations were by Sasha Maurer

"Comforts of Home...Outdoors" touted the latest camping gear.

Travelers would want to know the best places to eat so every issue included "Favorite Recipes of Famous Taverns." This issue included The Red Barn in Fort Scott, KS and its Heavenly Hash and Santa Cruz's Shadow-Brook's Sauce Philippe.

Heavenly Hash
1 can fruit cocktail drained
one or two sliced bananas
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup miniature marshmallows
1/2 cup halved seedless grapes
1/2 cup whipped cream
lettuce
Combine fruit, sugar, and marshmallows. Fold whipped cream into mixture and keep chilled. Serve on lettuce.
The Henry Ford includes digital copies of Ford Times found here.

Summer Lull Activities

I realize that I have no scheduled posts until July! I am working on August published books now, so that won't fill the gap. I will likely finish some non-review books before July, but not enough to keep up my usual 3 posts a week.

This summer lull is when I often get to write about whatever I want to! I have some ideas for the coming weeks.

I gained my 500 Reviews Badge from NetGalley! I joined in 2014 after my husband's retirement. I have reviewed or given feedback on 519 books.

I have galleys added to my shelf:

• Eleanor, a new biography of Eleanor Roosevelt by David Michaels
• Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth by Kate Greene offered to me by the publisher. Greene lived on a simulated Martian environment for four months!

I am currently reading 

• Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
• The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson
• A Victorian Lady's Guide to Fashion and Beauty by Mimi Matthews

I am trying to finish my UFOs--Unfinished Objects in my quilt room. This week I finished the top for The Great Gatsby, years in the making. The hand applique blocks are all adapted from 1924 magazine ads and fashion illustrations. I had one block that I deleted and called it done. I plan on hand quilting it. The fabrics were created when the last movie version of the novel came out. That's how long I have worked on this idea!

The Great Gatsby Storybook Quilt
by Nancy A. Bekofske

I ordered fabric to make a quilt I have wanted to make since 1993--the Mountain Mist Water Lilies pattern! It will be a lot of work! All of those flower petals...the bias stems in the borders...Yes, I am crazy.

Michigan is also having a 'lull' in COVID-19 cases with the lowest number reported since March 18. Gov. Whitmer's lock-down has suppressed the virus extremely well.

Restaurants and retail shops are opening up with preventative protocols--masks, limited customers, hand sanitizer, frequent cleaning. Next week hair salons will reopen. My husband has scheduled a doctor's and dentist appointment in the next weeks. Gotta make hay while in this 'lull'.

A lull in hot weather had us out weeding and mulching the gardens. We installed the front garden three years ago. The roses and geranium are now in bloom and the coneflowers in bud. On the side of the house, the day lilies are in bud and the Stella d'Oro lilies blooming.

 The little bird house was made by my brother.

In February we ordered an ottoman and it arrived last week. It is from the same company as our settees, Younger Furniture, manufactured in America. We can use it as a footstool, coffee table, or extra seating.

The library is reopening for drop offs only, so no book club yet. The community center where the quilt group meets has not reopened. We were Zooming but with nice weather are meeting in the city park. We bring chairs and social distance, have show and tell and lunch.

Sadly, just after I wrote this I learned that one of our founding members, Shirley Williams, passed at age 95 after suffering a stroke. I wrote a post about her 91st birthday here. A lady who was helping Shirley with a quilt brought it in to share. It includes photos of 36 members of the Clawson Quilting Sisters!

Shirley William's last quilt project features
the Clawson Quilting Sisters

Our grandpuppy Sunny went on an adventure with her momma who is on furlough. To fill the lull, they went camping in Ohio with a group of dog owners. Sunny learned about lake water, played with the big dogs and another puppy, and returned home exhausted and hungry.

Home Again...

Ellie stayed home with our son who works from home. She enjoyed being the only dog in the house again!

My brother takes the most beautiful photos on his nature walks. I had to share these of the Huron River at Mill Creek Park.

Last of all my news is that today is my 48th Wedding Anniversary! What a trip it has been! We are going to order a delivered meal from a favorite Lebanese restaurant.

Nancy and Gary, June 17, 1972

Fifty Years

our school newspaper, June 1970

Fifty years ago today, I graduated from Royal Oak Kimball High School. Our class reunion was cancelled due to covid-19 so a friend suggested we post photographs and memories on our class Facebook page.

I culled through my scrapbooks, mementos, school newspapers, and photographs to share.

Our Senior Class Trip

Classmates talked about the Senior Prom (which I did not attend), the senior float, school play, and our class trip.

We remembered people no longer with us, old girlfriends and boyfriends, good times.

My graduation photos. Lower left with our
exchange student from Finland, lower right
with my brother

Some admitted they couldn't participate in the class events because they worked to earn money for college, or were shy outsiders, or never found their place in the social network.

One girl, a fellow school paper staffer, wrote about the social and political conflicts that dominate her memories of 1966-1970.

My family moved after I had completed fifth grade. I was shy and had trouble assimilating into sixth grade, the highest class in my new elementary school. All the cliques had been formed. I had always had a best friend instead of belonging to a group.

I had sung in the school choir since Third Grade, taken piano lessons, and liked classical and musicals but disdained the Beatles. I was a big reader, bringing home classic children's literature I found in the school library filled with early 19th c books.

I still rejected the cool teen things in junior high, said I wanted to be a writer when I grew up, reading Jane Eyre and The Count of Monte Cristo. I liked to draw and make up stories. I wouldn't go to the school dances.

As a high school freshman, I was lonely and wanted to fit in. A friend took me up as a hobby and helped me change. I was silly, boy crazy. I listened to Simon and Garfunkel. I still played my classical music on the piano and read Les Miserables, but had expanded.

We didn't have a fancy house or a lot of money. Mom had serious health issues that sometimes left her bedridden or hospitalized.

I became totally enmeshed in high school activities, still an observer, but also finally participating. Four years of choir, from Girl's Choir to A Capella, three years of journalism, hosting an exchange student, attending all the plays and concerts, kept me busy. I read all the poetry books in the school library, wrote poetry, published some poems in the school newspaper. And every night I wrote about my day in a journal.

local moratorium protest in our school newspaper

I wanted to just be able to grow up, figure it all out, but the world infringed, as it does for every generation.

The assassination of Martin Luther King in the school newspaper

The Vietnam War, civil rights, 'generation gap', Detroit Rebellion, assassinations, the political activism going on, the body counts--it all impacted my generation. So much so, that in later years I hated to think about those teen days, it was too sad and conflicted. I even avoided the music.

Every generation has its inherited ills. Fifty years later, I feel for the 2020 graduates and the world they are facing. A pandemic threatens their economic, educational, and social future. The country is divided socially and politically, in a fight for democracy and freedom and equality being waged. Again. Still.

So much has changed in fifty years. And yet, so little.

Night.Sleep.Death.The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates

An 800 page book doesn't scare me. Some of my favorite books are whoppers.

The number of pages are irrelevant when one becomes immersed in detailed characters, propelled by foreshadowing through their actions and weaknesses, touched by universal truths of human nature.

Oates latest novel explores the impact of death on a family.
I was sucked into the story, eagerly looking forward to reading and learning more about these characters. To discover if I was right about what would come.

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. begins with the sudden death of a family patriarch. Whitey stopped to investigate what appeared, and was, a case of police profiling and brutality. He was their next victim. He did not survive.

Whitey was 67---my age. He was his wife Jessalyn's reason for existence, her lodestone; he defined her. In deep shock, she plummets into a private despair hidden behind her self-effacing thoughtfulness for others.

The children, as children do, decide what must be done, how their mother should 'be', and when her actions do not conform with expectations, they reel off into obsessions and fears and anger.

The family balance is thrown off. The children carry their individual burdens. Some believed they were 'favorite' sons or daughters, while others strove to gain their father's approval. One had given up trying.

After many months, a man enters Jessalyn's life who takes her under his care. She rejects his attentions in horror, but allows him to slowly change her, alter her, and bring her back into the land of the living.

The children are incensed, complain to each other, demand someone do something. Mom has been acting incorrectly. Mom has chosen the wrong man. Mom has a feral cat in the house.

Oh, I have seen this! The children who resent the second spouse. I myself scared off a woman who had set her sights on my newly widowed father! Yes, I did!

I was increasingly horrified as the novel got darker and darker, delving into the black hearts of these children. They are murderers and self-abusers and suicidal misfits and long-suffering, angry wives.

Each sibling must find their way out of their despair and illness. I expected Jessalyn to change into a 'modern heroine', evolving into her own woman. To leave passivity behind. She finds happiness, but not growth.

This story disturbed my sleep. It was an emotional journey.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.
by Joyce Carol Oates
HarperCollins Publishers/ Ecco
Publication Date June, 9 2020 
ISBN: 9780062797582
hardcover $35.00 (USD)

from the publisher: 

The bonds of family are tested in the wake of a profound tragedy, providing a look at the darker side of our society by one of our most enduringly popular and important writers.

Night Sleep Death The Stars is a gripping examination of contemporary America through the prism of a family tragedy: when a powerful parent dies, each of his adult children reacts in startling and unexpected ways, and his grieving widow in the most surprising way of all. 

Stark and penetrating, Joyce Carol Oates’s latest novel is a vivid exploration of race, psychological trauma, class warfare, grief, and eventual healing, as well as an intimate family novel in the tradition of the author’s bestselling We Were the Mulvaneys.

An Interview with Ashley Sweeney Author of Answer Creek

I am thrilled to share an essay from Ashley Sweeney, author of Answer Creek, a novel about a woman's trip with the Donner Party.

In my review of Answer Creek (found here), I wrote, "I was swept into the novel by the beautiful, descriptive writing. Ada is a strong, appealing character who is easy to relate to. The novel gains momentum, from the early beauty of the plains and the impressive natural formations of the West to the privations and life-threatening brutality of a mountain winter. It was a joy to read."

I asked if Sweeney would write about her novel's timeless theme and message.

***

Navigating Today’s Challenges through the Lens of the Donner Party

by Ashley E. Sweeney

Little did I know when I first started researching the Donner Party four years ago that my newest novel, Answer Creek, would launch smack in the middle of a pandemic with a strict shelter in place order. No bookstore events. No library readings. No live book clubs.

Aside from the scramble to reschedule events and learn creative ways to reach the reading public, the lessons I learned—and continue to learn—from this particular narrative resonate in this Time of Coronavirus.

Many have asked why I chose to tackle one the most difficult and misunderstood narratives in American history, the 1846 ill-fated Donner-Reed westward diaspora remembered in history for one thing only: cannibalism. Rinker Buck, in his 2015 Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, calls the Donner Party “a drama of the mundane gone madly wrong.” That was my challenge. Instead of focusing on sensational and salacious details of the Donner Party saga, I concentrated on the emigrants’ collective humanity on their misguided and horrendous journey through the lens of my protagonist, 19-year-old Ada Weeks.

Nineteenth century journalist Francis Parkman said, “Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than research.” With that in mind, I immersed myself with what Parkman calls “the life and spirit of the times” by spending a month traversing more than 2,000 miles along the Oregon-California Trail from Nebraska to California. I visited countless museums, historical markers, historical societies, newspaper offices, libraries, and bookstores to ferret out information on 19th century customs, euphemisms, transportation, animal husbandry, firearms, and cuisine (if you call salt pork and beans cuisine). But I did not take the trip for my own means and ends. I needed to walk in Ada’s footsteps and ask myself at every pivotal juncture and circumstance: What Would Ada Do?

Standing in the footsteps (and original wagon ruts) of overland travelers is something akin to the sacred. On more than one occasion, my breath caught in my throat. The most memorable experience was at a remote spot off-road near South Pass, Wyoming, where I turned 360 degrees on that treeless steppe at 7,000 feet to see nothing my protagonist would not have seen 175 years ago, no roads or fence posts or buildings—just earth and sky. Ada might as well have been standing next to me kicking at the brown grass and rustling up snakes.

And there were many other remarkable moments. Taking an authentic covered wagon ride. Standing at the base of Donner Hill and wondering how hundreds of cattle and mules and horses—and wagons—could possibly crest such a steep incline. Walking portions of the Great Salt Desert in Utah. And ending at Donner Memorial State Park in Truckee, California, where the historical portion of the narrative ends. Ada was with me the whole time, whispering, nudging, coloring my experience.

Answer Creek is a fresh re-telling of a calamitous mid-19th century disaster, but it’s particularly resonant in this time of COVID-19. Reflect that the Donner Party missed the window to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains by one day due to blizzard conditions and were forced to winter over near present-day Reno, Nevada for 124 days living in appalling conditions with no food. This, after a fateful decision to take an untraveled “shortcut” that put them a month behind on the trail. At Truckee Lake, emigrants subsisted on shoe leather, blankets, and book covers before some of the entourage felt they had no other option but to eat their dead in order to survive (only 48 of the original 91 members of the entourage lived to reach their final destination near Sacramento, California).

Along the way, Ada doesn’t miss an opportunity to help others, even if she is ill equipped or inconvenienced. And through the ordeal, she evolves from a victim to become an empowered woman living on her own in the wilds of California. Far from perfect, she challenges herself to become a better version of herself because of it.

We may be inconvenienced and frustrated—and legitimately upset— navigating life through this pandemic. Quarantining and social distancing are riddled with issues. Many of us can’t work or go to school. We can’t attend worship or shop. It’s difficult to get a doctor’s appointment or a haircut. And even libraries are shuttered. I don’t diminish the tolls of this pandemic: physical, mental, emotional, and financial. They have been—and continue to be—grave. And we are reminded daily of the many fellow and sister citizens who have lost their lives.

But for the vast majority of us, the shelter in place order has been an inconvenience—nothing more. When we put it in perspective, we are not forced to eat our clothing and shoes and bedding—let alone each other—to survive. There have been snippets of joy during the pandemic as well: Zoom choral concerts, creative art projects, more time for gardening and reading. It’s as if we’ve collectively hit the “pause” button to reorganize, recalibrate, rethink.

It’s also been an opportunity to dig deeper into our own psyches, something we are often reluctant to do (for me, it was the harsh realization that I would not have not survived the Donner-Reed journey as Ada did).

It’s also brought to the forefront two important questions as resonant today as in 1846:

• What are we doing to ease the suffering of others during this time?
• How can our reaction to any given situation evolve from victimhood to empowerment and, more importantly, who do we want to become as a result?

I love when fiction transcends reality to confront us and convict us and change us.

Ashley E. Sweeney is the 2017 winner of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for her debut novel, Eliza Waite. Answer Creek is her second novel and she is at work on a third. Sweeney lives in the Pacific Northwest and Tucson, Arizona. 

Visit Sweeney's website
https://ashleysweeneyauthor.com/

Answer Creek
by Ashley E. Sweeney
She Writes Press
Pub Date 19 May 2020
ISBN: 9781631528446
paperback $16.95 (USD)