The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts

Fact is stranger than fiction. Consider the story of a woman who lost everything and was given a diagnosis of four years to live and decides to mount a horse for the first time in thirty years to ride across the entirety of America. She wanted to see the Pacific Ocean.  

She had never seen a movie or lived with electricity and indoor plumbing. She had an arthritis and a cough. She had little money. She had no map of the country, no flashlight, no cell phone, or GPS. She had no knowledge of the world. She had never traveled. Never seen a thruway. She didn't know how far south she had to travel to find warm weather.

She did have a sturdy Maine Morgan horse named Tarzan and a perky dachshund mix named Depeche Toi. And along the way, was gifted Rex, a Tennessee Walker.

Donning men's clothes, she packed up her bedroll, and with a few dollars set off in the autumn of 1954. 

What Annie Wilkins did have was faith and persistence and a dream--and the love of her four-footed companions. 

Annie found a country filled with people who believed in hospitality to strangers, people willing to care for her and her animals. She found the helpers. 

Annie also found a country on the cusp of huge changes. Cars whizzed by without consideration, people were leery of strangers, a gang harassed her, and newspapers and celebrities lionized her.

Elizabeth Letts has written beloved books including The Perfect Horse, The Eighty-Dollar Champion, and Finding Dorothy. The Ride of Her Life is another triumph, a much needed inspiration in an America that has lost its sense of community. It was a joy to read.

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

The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America
by Elizabeth Letts
Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine
Pub Date  June 1, 2021  
ISBN: 9780525619321
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

The triumphant true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion

“The gift Elizabeth Letts has is that she makes you feel you are the one taking this trip. This is a book we can enjoy always but especially need now.”—Elizabeth Berg, author of The Story of Arthur Truluv

In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie had little idea what to expect beyond her rural crossroads; she didn’t even have a map. But she did have her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness.

Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, rode straight into a world transformed by the rapid construction of modern highways. Between 1954 and 1956, they pushed through blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by them at terrifying speeds. Annie rode more than four thousand miles, through America’s big cities and small towns. Along the way, she met ordinary people and celebrities—from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan) to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers—a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher. In a decade when car ownership nearly tripled, when television’s influence was expanding fast, when homeowners began locking their doors, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rillke

I was just a year out of university when I was in a downtown Philadelphia book store and picked up a slender volume entitled Letters to a Young Poet. I read it over and over and the advice I found there helped me in my struggle through young adulthood. Forty years have passed, and I was curious to read this new translation and commentary of the Letters from the perspective of maturity.

Anita Barrows is a translator and poet, a professor of psychology and a clinical psychologist. Joanna Macy is a professor of philosophy and scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. Their commentary offers interesting psychological and social insights into the letters.

Rilke was himself a young poet of twenty-seven when cadet Franz Xaver Kappus wrote and asked him to read his poetry and for advice. Kappus had learned that Rilke had attended the his military academy and hoped for advice as he endeavored to be a poet while in the military.

Rilke had been sent to the academy because his father wanted to remove him from his mother's influence. She had given him a girl's name, Rene Maria, and put him in dresses. His father decided that he needed toughening up to prepare for a man's life.

Rilke responded to Kappus by warning that no one, nothing external, could advise him; he must look within for the answers, and in the process, he must embrace the unknown and that which is terrifying.

If his work and peers provided little inspiration, he told Kappus, "If your daily life seems to bleak--don't blame it--blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its wealth." And if all else fails, there was his childhood, "that deep well of memories."

Letter Four includes one of my favorite lines, "have patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language." He continues to advise not to seek the answers, but to live into them. 

Rilke had been influenced by the sculptor Rodin who had taught the importance of solitude for the artist. Art required looking within and being separate. An artist does not need others:"Where there is no community among people, draw close to the things that present themselves around you; they will not abandon you. The nights are there, and the winds that blow through trees and over the lands..." 

Yes, solitude is difficult, but so is love. And love, he says, is not about "merging," the goal is a "more human love" that consists of "two solitudes that protect, border, and greet each other," a love that allows personal space and growth.

Fear of the mysterious and the unknown is also good, something we should be open to and embrace. "If our world has fears, they are our fears. If it has an abyss, it belongs to us. If dangers appear, we must try to love them...Perhaps every terror is, at its core, something helpless that wants our help." 

And he advises to "let life happen to you. Believe me--you can count on life in any case." 

Trust the process, embrace that which frightens you, learn to love the unknown, and do not look for romantic love to save you. 

Rilke's advice helped me as a young woman, and it helps me as I approach my seventh decade. For the questions have only become larger, the unknown closer.

The commentators point out that the first letter from Kappus arrived as Rilke was writing The Book of Hours, in which he "reconcieveing of God as not the image of perfection but as the sacred process of seeing the brokenness of the world as a sacred act."

They see Rilke's Letter 7, to love without merging, representing Rilke's relationship with his great love Lou Andreas-Salome, and demonstrating the Jungian concept of individuation (self-realization that rises above self-centeredness). Lou studied with Freud and became the first female psychoanalyst. 

Also, in Letter 8 ("the world has fears") they find Rilke's message foreshadowing Jung's concept of the collective unconscious (shared archetypes/symbols, not personal) which Jung wrote about twelve years later.  

Barrows and Macy have eliminating sections of the letters as pontificating, or not relevant to modern readers, or because the message was badly conceived. Those segments appear in the commentary.

The translation is clear and easy to understand. 

Every generation faces a world of terrors, every person struggles to forge a path to a whole and healthy life. I believe that the Letters are still relevant and have much to offer. 

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

Letters to a Young Poet: A New Translation and Commentary

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Pub Date June 1, 2021  

ISBN: 9781611806861

hard cover $14.95 (USD)

from the publisher

A fresh perspective on a beloved classic by acclaimed translators Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875–1926) Letters to a Young Poet has been treasured by readers for nearly a century. Rilke’s personal reflections on the vocation of writing and the experience of living urge an aspiring poet to look inward, while also offering sage wisdom on further issues including gender, solitude, and romantic love. Barrows and Macy’s translation extends this compilation of timeless advice and wisdom to a fresh generation of readers. With a new introduction and commentary, this edition places the letters in the context of today’s world and the unique challenges we face when seeking authenticity

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Zero Waste Gardening by Ben Raskin

Forty-eight years ago my husband and I took a class in organic gardening and rented a plot in the seminary garden. We grew tomatoes and zucchinis and green beans and leaf lettuce and radishes and more, watering the garden from a creek nearby and mulching it with newspaper. I canned quarts of tomatoes and green beans for the winter.

clearing out the garden plot in spring 1973

Now we are in retirement and gardening again. Only one parsonage in the intervening years provided us with a garden plot; for a few years we had the best broccoli I ever ate! 

We have a small suburban yard. There is an herb garden and two raised planters for spinach, chard, and leaf lettuce. We have huge tubs for tomatoes. 

basil in my herb garden

But I want to expand my garden and I wanted new ideas. I hoped that Zero Waste Gardening would give them to me.

'Zero waste' is about sustainability, the awareness that resources are finite. Making use of everything we grow, and using the whole plant, is the focus of this book.

The presentation is very attractive with full pages with color illustrations. The contents are divided into Space (including preparation of the ground, manure, inter-planting, under-sowing, space, yield); Taste (recipes, using all the plant, food preservation, storage); and Waste (sowing and harvesting, reducing energy, water); and information on the garden plants.

The garden plants include the stock choices but also more unusual crops. Information on plants include when to sow, plant, and harvest; yield per plant; how to pick; growing tips; zero waste tips; and how to use.

There is a page on gardening tools needed and how to keep them sharp. And a full index and glossary.

I learned to use the leaves of root vegetables as food and that some seeds are also edible. I did not know that we can eat the roots of Swiss Chard. But we do eat the stems, which we cook and serve in a white sauce on toast with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

I especially liked the idea of not disturbing the soil but adding mulch to disintegrate over winter, providing soil for planting.

There are numerous ways we can participate in zero waste. For several years we have shopped with a delivery service that distributes 'imperfect' vegetables and fruits. They are too big or too small or have blemishes or are in oversupply or being phased out. 

Microgreens are all the rage now. The raised planter beds need to be thinned out, and I plan on keeping the baby plants for eating. 

We save zinnia seeds. I dry herbs. We freeze leftover veggies for soups, and dice up and freeze vegetables on the verge of going bad.

I always thought of these habits as being economically and environmentally friendly. Now I know, they are zero waste habits!

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

Zero Waste Gardening: Maximize space and taste with minimal waste

by Ben Raskin

Quarto Publishing Group – White Lion

Pub Date June 1, 2021   

ISBN: 9780711262331

PRICE $18.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Zero-Waste Gardening is your essential go-to guide to growing your own food for maximum taste and minimum waste.  

Organic gardening expert, Ben Raskin, shares over 60 unique planning-for-yield guides for key crops. Work out how to make the most of the green space you have got, what to grow easily in it, and how much you will harvest seasonally for zero waste.

Learn about the roots of organic gardening, and unearth how to plant waste-free for any size plot, from balcony containers to 5-metre-square yards. Peppered with root-to-stalk cooking techniques, and edibility tips including which crops you can eat straight away, this is a plot-to-plate handbook for everyone with a green-thumb.

Perfect for new and experienced growers, zero-food waste followers, city gardeners, and the ecologically minded, this is the only gardening book you will ever need!

Playful Free-Form Embroidery: Stitch Stories with Texture, Pattern & Color by Laura Wasilowski

Playful Free-Form Embroidery will inspire fiber artists to create their own pictorial stories. Laura Wasilowski's quilts are joyful, fun, and colorful. You can learn her techniques with the six patterns she includes in her book--and then get playing and make your own Stitched Story!

Paint the world with color! Wasilowski uses wool and wool felt for her applique and perle cotton for the embroidery embellishments. She has a gift for combining stitches and colors to create detailed, visually interesting quilts with lots of texture.

Below, ladybugs have a stairway to their nut house. 

This cheery bird on a pin cushion is adorable.

A black background always makes colors pop. It also shows up the details in the foliage. 

This sweet lamb greeting a bird would be lovely in a nursery!

What story do you want to tell? 

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Playful Free-Form Embroidery: Stitch Stories with Texture, Pattern & Color
Laura Wasilowski
ISBN: 9781617459931
UPC: 734817-114086
eISBN: 9781617459948 Book ( $19.95 )
 eBook ( $15.99 

from the publisher

From the best-selling author of Joyful Stitching, Laura Wasilowski brings 6 new hand-embroidery projects with full-sized patterns and step-by-step pictorial directions. Bright and lively project designs include a whirling paint brush, a dancing bird, tea cups tipping, flowers blooming, a fuzzy sheep, and a happy acorn nut house. With the free-form embroidery approach, you can either follow the given directions, or allow your imagination to run wild and improv your own additions—there is no right or wrong! Plus, no special tools are needed—just felt or felted wool, perle cotton #12 and #8 threads, embroidery needles, and sewing equipment. Start your stitch story!

• Stitch 6 textured projects with easy-to-follow free-form embroidery instructions
• Each project features a unique stitch combination, including some wool applique
• Finished creations are visually stunning art work that can be treasured for a lifetime

about the author

Laura Wasilowski loves fabric. Her first love was a sweet pink gingham fabric selected for a 4-H sewing project. As a college student, she discovered more exotic fabrics. And while she earned a degree in costume design, she found a new thrill - dyeing.

For many years Laura created hand-dyed fabrics for garments that she sold in boutiques across the country. It was a friendly neighbor who introduced Laura to her current flame, the art quilt. This latest love is a marriage of fabric, color, and whimsy that she truly enjoys.

Laura is married to her colorful husband, Steve. They are the proud parents of Gus and Louise. Laura lives in Elgin, IL, where she hand dyes fabric and thread for her business, Artfabrik.

Visit Artfabrik online: artfabrik.com

Moving to Wordpress!

I am finally making the switch from Blogger to Wordpress!

My blog will be The Literate Quilter still, but at

 theliteratequilter.wordpress.com

I started blogging in 2008. Over the years, Blogger has changed, not always for the better. And with the loss of Goggle+ and soon feedburner, it is time to switch.

For the next weeks I will post on both blogs. Please visit my new site and sign up to follow there!

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

Lux Aeterna. 

In the 1980s, I sang in masterworks choirs. We performed requiems, including those by Verdi and Mozart. "May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord, with thy saints in eternity, for thou art merciful. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them." The lux aeterna was always emotional, the grieving's hope that the afterlife will compensate for the suffering of life.

This past year, millions have mourned victims of the pandemic. We have lost the very old and we have lost those whose life was yet to be lived.  As someone who is nearing my seventh decade, I felt my vulnerability. I considered last things and the value of the life I have lived and the possibilities for the days that may be granted to me. At this time, reading Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford had special meaning and especially affected me. 

In 1944, a rocket hit a Woolworth's and killed 168 people, including 15 children. This real event inspired Light Perpetual.

 

Spufford begins his novel with an amazing description of a bomb exploding. 

And then, Spufford imagines the lives of  five, fictional, children who died in the explosion, jumping 15 years at a time through their lives. 

They are ordinary people living ordinary lives, with the ordinary sorrows and joys of being human. They are flawed people. Some try to do their best, while the actions of others are harmful and destructive. Their lives are just one thing after another, problem after problem.

Like ordinary people, their lives can be boring. Like ordinary people, they have fears and unfulfilled dreams. And, like ordinary people, they are here, and in the blink of an eye, they are gone. Into the light. Become dust.

It all seems accidental, how life works out. And not the way we had planned, or hoped. And then, we run out of options. We have lived our lives.

And yet. And yet. As one character faces death, he has peace and he is able to praise God for all the mundane beauty of this world. It inspired me to tears.

What a miracle life is--how we waste it! Let us praise those moments when the sunlight breaks through the clouds and warms our face and the birds are singing and someone holds our hand. Let us remember those who are gone and pray they find light perpetual.

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

I previously read the author's novel On Golden Hill, which I  reviewed here, and I loved his nonfiction book I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination.

Light Perpetual
by Francis Spufford
Scribner
Pub Date May 18, 2021   
ISBN: 9781982174149
hardcover $27.00 (USD) 

from the publisher

From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, a mesmerizing and boldly inventive novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.

Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworth's on Bexford High Street in southeast London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.

Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the life arcs of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption.

Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory and expectation, and the preciousness of life.

COVID-19 Life: Books & Quilts & More

I have now made four Cherish quilt blocks! Everyone says this strawberry themed block is their favorite so far. 

My husband ordered a signed copy of Stacy Abram's new novel While Justice Sleeps!

New on my NetGalley shelf is

• Still Life by Sarah Winman whose Tin Man I reviewed

Dad planted a spirea in the yard many years ago. This spring it is going to be magnificent!

The farm market has returned to our local park. This week I brought home rhubarb and made strawberry rhubarb short cake!

The fur grandkids are sun lovers. Lately, they have been gathering in the morning to enjoy the sunny spot in the living room. I love seeing these photos of them all together.

Ellie, Gus, and Sunny get along quite well, especially Gus and Sunny who are best buds.

Seen on my walks this week is a fairy garden with a flying pig...

and a naturalized front yard with gigantic Solomon's Seal.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.