Fire Drill

 This afternoon I stopped by my library to return some materials and read several newspapers. I was just settling in to read an article by Larry Weber about black jelly fungus when this noise occurred. Intermittent bleeping noises sounded. Was this a fire alarm? Turns out it was a fire alarm and we all had to leave. The library empties out. The Great Clips store empties out. The pub empties out. Downstairs another restaurant empties out. And the liquor store empties out. The temperature is about 20 and the wind is blowing hard. We stand there in the cold for ten or more minutes. One elderly Asian man forgot his coat and he is shivering. Some people are doing calisthenics to keep warm. I am pacing back and forth and kicking up the snow. A man in charge of the building arrives and the alarm is turned off. I hear a beautician from Great Clips say a child in the library pulled the alarm. Then we hear the fire trucks coming down the street. A giant fire truck arrives and 3 fire fighters get out and enter the building. I look at that truck with the big wheels and wonder was kind of gas mileage it gets. After the five more minutes the fire fighters come out and we are allowed to enter the building again. I go back in and finish reading my newspapers. I realize that since I retired I have not been in a fire drill. I should have reacted more quickly. At work I was the one who scheduled the fire drill and wrote the fire drill reports.

The House We Grew Up In

Lisa Jewell wrote a very interesting  book called The House We Grew Up In. The story revolves around the Bird family. Lorelei is the matriarch of the family and she is beautiful and creative and always living in the moment.  Colin is the gangly father who teaches at a local college. Meg is the eldest child and she is pragmatic and organized. Next is Beth who is a little dreamy and quiet. Last come the twin boys, Rhys and Rory. Rhys is the youngest and the smallest. He doesn't have many friends. Rory is handsome and athletic and he has tons of friends. They live in the country, in the Cotswalds in England. They love to celebrate Easter. Lorelei will hide chocolate eggs wrapped in shiny foil in the yard and the kids go and find them. "Save the foil!" says Lorelei which is my first clue that she is a hoarder. One Easter a tragedy strikes the family and every one of them think it's their fault. As the kids grow up and move away the family grows distant. They don't speak to each other anymore. In the end the surviving members of the family do come back to the house that they grew up in. Now they are speaking to each other and loving each other. I thought the author did a nice job detailing the effect the hoarding has on the other members of the family. Meg, for example, keeps a super clean house and will take a tea cup to be washed before the person drinking the tea was finished. She wants to be the opposite of her mother. I enjoy a family drama and this was a great book.

Snow

As I was shoveling snow today I wondered how many pounds of snow I have shoveled in my lifetime. How many hours have I spent shoveling snow? How high would the pile of snow be that I have shoveled? How many driveways have I shoveled? I know I have shoveled snow in Roseville, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Fridley, Blaine, Anoka, Columbia, Coon Rapids, Ramsey, Urbank, Alexandria, White Bear Lake, St. Cloud, Duluth, Grand Marais, Elk River, Savage, Illinois, and Wisconsin. I don't always love shoveling snow. Sometimes I hate shoveling snow. This year shoveling snow isn't as wearisome because I know I will migrate south and not have to shovel snow at all which will be super awesome. Today I shoveled snow because it was snowing too hard for me to drive to the YMCA. Shoveling can be good exercise. There will be a day in the future where I will not be able to shovel snow any more. I am grateful I can still shovel snow.  

The Botanist's Guide to Parties And Poisons

 I like botany so I decided to read The Botanist's Guide To Parties and Poisons by Kate Khavari. This is a historical fiction set at London College in 1923. A brand new researcher named Saffron Everleigh is the protagonist. Saffron's father was a professor in botany at this college before he died in the war. Saffron works for Dr. Maxwell who treats her kindly and in a fatherly fashion. When she attends a party for the science department one Saturday evening she and everyone else is shocked when Mrs. Henry, the wife of another scientist, falls to the floor after drinking champagne. She is rushed to the hospital and everyone assumes she had an allergic reaction. Instead the doctor finds out that she has been poisoned. Everyone at the party is interviewed. Since Dr. Maxwell had a verbal altercation with Dr. Henry, Dr. Maxwell is put in jail. Saffron is very upset and she decides it is up to her to save Dr. Maxwell and get him out of jail. Saffron makes some good decisions and some really poor decisions. She almost gets herself killed 3 or 4 times. She is smart but impulsive. Sometimes she acts before she thinks. I liked Saffron and I liked this book.

The Personal Librarian

I just finished reading another historical fiction novel called The Personal Librarian. This story was written by two authors, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. The story is based on a real woman named Bella de Costa Greene. Originally her name was Bella Marion Greener. Her father was the first Black graduate of Harvard and his name was Richard Greener. Her father is the one who took her to art museums and got her interested in art history and the history of printing. Her father leaves the family. In the hopes of a better life for her children, her mother changes their last name from Greener to Greene, moves from Washington, D.C. to New York City. Now her mother is a single parent to five children. Her mother decides that she and her family will try to pass as white. This is a risky decision and also the reason the father left the family. Bella is the eldest and she helps support them with her salary. After high school Bella got a job at the library at Princeton. While at Princeton she meets Junius Morgan. He offers to introduce her to his uncle who is looking to hire a personal librarian. Although J.P. Morgan is known for his ferocious temper Bella does not show any fear during the interview. Her answers are sharp, entertaining, and more honest than most of the people speaking to J.P. Morgan. Bella gets the job of personal librarian to the J.P. Morgan library. She is to organize his art and books and to help him acquire more treasures. Bella does an outstanding job. Part of her duties including attending parties, the opera, and art gallery showings with the rich and famous of New York City. Eventually Bella is sent to England to acquire more treasures. She surprises everyone with her skills at negotiation. She is rewarded financially so she is able to move her family into better quarters. Bella's only worry is that someone will look into her background and discover that she is black. I loved this epic story about a truly intelligent and very brave woman.

We Were The Lucky Ones

 I just finished reading a great historical fiction novel called We Were The Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter. The book starts in 1939 is is about 3 generations or the Kurz family who live in Radom, Poland. The Kurz family are close and get together off to celebrate Jewish holidays and meals. What they went through does not make me think they were lucky but in truth they were one of the very few Polish Jews to survive the Nazi invasion. All of them were starved. Some were beaten, arrested, and jailed. Some went to work camps. Some made it to Italy to join the Polish Army and join combat to take over a hill in northern Italy. Some had to pretend to be Catholic. One member of the family, when harassed by a lady landlord about his heritage, taped a Band-Aid to his penis and pulled his pants down for her to look at. He and his wife laughed pretty hard at the look on the landlady's face. One of the younger members of the family, a girl about 6 years, had to leave her mother to live in a Catholic orphanage for a while. Her mother came to check on her and found the orphanage had been bombed. The girl's mother and another man who came to check on his son heard voices. They spent 8 hours digging through the rubble where they found two nuns, some live children, and several dead children. The 6 year old girl had come down with an infectious disease, had a high fever, and nearly died. Several members of the family had children during the war. The author based her story on members of her own family. Her grandmother was one of the middle generations of the Kurz family. None of the family lives in Radom, Poland now. Some are in Brazil, some in the United States, and several in Europe. I thought this was an incredibly interesting story.

How Can I Help?

 Today a situation arose in which I was of no help. I wanted to help. I didn't know how to help. The situation happened on my noon time walk with Offspring #2 and two hound dogs. We were walking toward UMD because the sidewalks there are not icy. Ironically we have to walk a mile of icy sidewalks to get to the clear sidewalks. As we were headed up a steep hill Offspring #2 was distracted by a dude using a kitchen broom to sweep off his car that had no snow on it. I was distracted by the sight of a wild rabbit who appeared to have one paralyzed hind leg. The two hound dogs were also distracted by this injured rabbit. The hound dogs leapt toward the rabbit which was down a hill and about to hide under a house. Offspring #2 braced their body and squatted  low because this position has worked before in Minneapolis. But Duluth is not Minneapolis. Duluth has hills.  The hounds were using the hill to their advantage. There was a tree between Offspring #2 and me. Soon enough Offspring #2 is off the feet and is being pulled through the snow the one dog had just turned yellow. The hound dogs have lost their minds and are howling like hound dogs. In the process a bird bath gets turned over and breaks. I grab one dog by the neck so Offspring #2 can get on their feet. We pull the loudly barking dogs back off private property to the sidewalk. I set the bird bath back up and try to fix it. I look at the house where the bunny lives to see a sign that reads, "Smile, you are on camera." Oh great, this will be swell to see on TicTok. Offspring #2 will mail the owner of the bird bath an explanation, an apology, and money to buy a new bird bath. Later we laughed at how useless I was in this situation. 

Malibu Rising

Taylor Jenkins Reid is the author of Malibu Rising and also The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo which I read a few months ago. This story is set, obviously, in  Malibu, California. The Riva family lived in Malibu when it was a small town. June grew up in Malibu and she helped her parents run the seafood restaurant where all the food was fried. The restaurant barely made ends meet and the work was hard. June wanted more to life than working in that restaurant. When she met Mick Riva she thought she could escape Malibu with him. Mick Riva had plans to become a famous singer. The story takes place in one 24 hour period in the lives of the four children of Mick and June. At the end of summer Nina Riva, the eldest of the four children, holds a party at her home. Although the book started in the 1960's the party happens in the 1980's. I enjoyed reading about the four siblings who are there for each other in good times and bad. 

The Wright Brothers

I listened to the audiobook by David McCullough called The Wright Brothers.  Several hours of the book were spent white knuckled in a snow storm driving back from Grand Marais. A good book can keep your mind off your troubles. This was a good book and it is no wonder that the author has won so many prizes. The Wright brothers, specifically Orville and Wilbur, were talented and curious but not well educated. They ran a printing press and bicycle sales and repair business in Dayton, Ohio. Together they got the idea of building a flying machine. They worked on the machine at home. They decided they needed more wind so they went to the national weather bureau and asked for the windiest location. The weather bureau answered with Kittyhawk, North Carolina. They took their camping equipment, machine, tools, and clothes to Kittyhawk and started building. They attached cloth to the wings. They kept records of all their experiments. Eventually the Wright brothers began to fly. A man from France offered to buy their plane. Wilbur and Orville figured they should offer the U.S. military a chance to buy it before they sold it to France. The U.S. military didn't believe the Wright brothers. So off to France they went. Many times the Wright brothers were not believed but that didn't seem to bother them. Wilbur and Orville never married although their other siblings did. Wilbur seemed to be emotionally stable compared to Orville but Orville was the engineering leader. I forget that 100 years ago it was unusual to see a plane in the sky because, in this day and age, it's unusual not to see a plane in the sky. 

The Last Bookshop In London

 Madeline Martin is the author of the historical fiction novel called The Last Bookshop in London. The story is based on true stories about London bookshops during World War Two. In this story Grace and her friend, Viv, are 18 year olds who move from the countryside. Grace moves because her mother died and her uncle kicked her out of her mother's house. Viv came along because they are best friends and her parents are overbearing. They hope to find jobs right away possibly in a glamorous department store such as Harrods. Grace got an invitation to live in London with her mother's good friend so that is where they go. Mrs. Weatherford gives them a warm welcome and so does her teenaged son, Colin. Colin works at Harrods so he puts in a good word for Viv and she gets a job. Mrs. Weatherford persuades a grumpy bookshop owner to hire Grace and he agrees reluctantly. Although it is obvious he doesn't want her there and he doesn't want her to do anything, Grace busies herself clearing at least ten years of dust from the shelves and scrubbing the floors and windows. Over time the bookshop owner comes to love Grace and Grace learns many life lessons from him. The book spans the years 1939 to 1945. The descriptions of the bombing and utter destruction are vivid. Grace starts reading books to others in the book shop and in the bomb shelters to help people pass the time and focus on literature rather than war. Grace volunteers with another grumpy man as a night time warden. If a bomb falls in their neighborhood they go to rescue anyone or to put out the flames on the incendiary bombs. I sincerely enjoyed this book and was sorry to come to the end.

Christmas Bird Count

 This evening my master naturalist group had a zoom meeting about the Christmas bird count. A guy named Jim from Two Harbors spoke for almost an hour about how much fun he has. He compiles the lists in Two Harbors but also goes with his family on New Years to do the Christmas bird count in Isabella. The one in Isabella has fewer plowed roads so cross country skiing is involved. There is a Christmas bird count in Duluth and I have the contact information for that. Or I could go to Fredenburg, the Sax-Zim bog, or Cloquet. I have lots of choices. I  have gone before and had fun so maybe I should try it again.

Between Two Kingdoms

 I read Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir Of A Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad. She wrote a gripping story of her battle with leukemia which started in college but she didn't figure it out until after she graduated even though she went to many doctors to ask why her legs were so itchy. After graduation she got a job in Paris. Her condition worsened. Her boyfriend had moved to be with her in Paris and she suddenly had to take a plane home because she was so ill. She had bought a return ticket for two weeks but she never got the chance to use it. Her parents took her in and the diagnosis of leukemia came ten days later. She started chemotherapy, her hair fell out, she got infections. Eventually she got a bone marrow transplant from her brother. She makes some decisions that I agree with and some I didn't agree with. She started a blog about her journey through illness which brought the unexpected result of useful support from strangers all over the country. At the end of the book she takes a 100 day journey from New York to the west coast and back again through the deep south. Suleika met with the strangers who offered support and gains more wisdom and understanding from them, even the man on death row in a prison in Louisiana. I really enjoyed her memoir. She is a talented writer.

Orchid

 What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word orchid? My first thought is pink. Today I drove up to the Boulder Lake Environmental Learning Center for a class on the orchids in the area given by my friend, Rueben. There are 15 orchids in the area. Some live in wet areas and some line in the dry sandy pine barrens. Sometimes the same species live in the wet areas and the dry areas. The thing that orchids need is a fungus specific to their species. I have seen some orchids around here because I went on a guided orchid hike here a couple of years ago. On that occasion we were looking at the orchids who like wetness. I was surprised to learn that orchids bloom from May through September. I thought of them as a spring flowering flower. I had a great class and to top it off, I won a book! I already read the book and it should come in handy next summer.

The Tobacco Wives

 Adele Myers grew up in North Carolina which is also the setting in the historical fiction novel called The Tobacco Wives. This story is set in a town called Bright Leaf which is the center of the tobacco world. The main character is a high school girl named Maddie. The year is 1946 and Maddie's father was killed in World War Two. With no warning, Maddie's mother wakes her up in the middle of the night and drives her to Bright Leaf to live with her Aunt who is the best seamstress in town. This is June and also her Aunt's busiest time of the year because her clients, the "tobacco wives," want dresses made for the tobacco gala in June. Maddie has spent summer months with her Aunt before. Maddie enjoys sewing and plans to study fashion design in the future. The Aunt is surprised by the sudden visit but welcomes Maddie while the mother takes off to unknown parts. Maddie starts helping her Aunt with the sewing. When her Aunt suddenly falls seriously ill with measles, Maddie tries to pitch in to finish the dresses her Aunt has started. Mrs. Winston, one of the tobacco wives, invites Maddie to move into her house temporarily and she also sets up a sewing studio with a brand new Singer sewing machine. The story is about the things the tobacco industry kept hidden from it's customers, corporate greed, and the strength and integrity of women like Maddie who won't keep secrets. Maddie especially won't keep secrets from young women who are trying to birth healthy children. This book was emotionally satisfying to read. I am sure glad I quit smoking 39 years and 11 months ago.

Nephew

Nephew is the son of one's brother or sister or brother-in-law or sister-in-law. I have a few nephews. I am feeling incredibly lucky because today, one of my nephews picked me up at my house in his warm car and took me to lunch and insisted on paying the bill. Wow. I can't remember doing this for any of my aunts or uncles. I feel honored.

Wreaths

My friends and I made wreaths on the Gunflint Trail. With balsam, spruce, pine

 and cedar boughs plus red twigged dogwood, we assembled "bouquets" of hand sized branches and attached them to the wreath blanks with floral wire. We watched a Youtube on how to make bows with 2.5 inch wired ribbon and attached them to our wreaths. Here I am holding up my finished project in her garage. We had fun making wreaths together and I think they turned out very nice.
 

Here is my wreath on my front door. All the stuff I brought back from my trip to the Gunflint trip is laying in front of my door.

Birch Lake

 Some wonderful and gracious friends of mine invited me to their beautiful home on Birch Lake which is halfway up the Gunflint Trail. When I left on Tuesday morning I had a half inch of snow at my house and they had 2 inches of snow at their house. I travel up Highway 61 and took a big left in Grand Marais. I was excited to see a snowshoe hare leap across the road. Halfway up the Gunflint I began to worry. Am I doing the right thing because this looks like a lot of snow. Despite using my heated wires in my back window I cannot see out of it because my back tires kicked up snow that covered the window. I met them at the corner of the Gunflint Trail and the county road that leads to their road. A decision was made that I would not attempt to go up their road but to park instead at the intersection of the county road and their road. They walked back to their car and asked me to follow them. I sincerely regret postponing replacing my tires. I have three nearly bald tires and one good tire due to having a flat going over the George Washington bridge in New York City 12 months ago. I could not move from the spot where I was on the Gunflint Trail. I could not move forward nor backward. My friends noticed I wasn't coming and walked back to give me a couple of pushes and I proceeded to park where they suggested. By the time I left this morning they had 20 inches of snow. With a couple more pushes, some heavy duty shoveling, and a couple cups of salt and sand, I got on my way home again. We had a good time. These friends of mine feed the birds. Chickadees and blue jays and pine grossbeaks (see picture above) get black sun flower seeds. When the Canadian jays come that walnuts are set on the deck railing for them to enjoy. This morning as I lie awake and watching the birds feed from my pillow, I saw the little hand of my friend extended and a black capped chickadee was fed from her hand. I had a wonderful adventure on the Gunflint trail walking through the deep snow, talking with friends, eating together, and enjoying winter (even though this is still fall). I have an appointment in the near future to replace my tires. Although it might have been a smart decision to postpone this visit I am glad I went.

Angel of Hope

 

Today I took my exercise walking the Lakewalk along Lake Superior.  Waves are mesmerizing to me. I can watch waves come in for a long time. I decided to take a little detour and investigate this statue which is near the Rose Garden. This is a memorial statue called the Angel of Hope. A group of grieving parents got together and decided they needed a place to remember their deceased child and heal. The parents raised the funds themselves. I think they had a wonderful idea. So far I have not lost my children and I hope I get to depart first. I can't imagine the pain of loosing a child.

The Dutch House

Ann Patchett is the author of The Dutch House. This novel is set in Pennsylvania and New York. The Dutch House is in Pennsylvania and that is where brother and sister, Maeve and Danny grew up. Maeve was 6 when she moved into the house with her father, Cyril, and her mother, Elna. Little brother Danny is born. Cyril loves the house. The children love the house. Elna hates the house and abandons her family when Danny is four years old. She moves to India. Within two weeks of her leaving Maeve almost dies. She is diagnosed with diabetes. The maid and cook raise the children and everything is going along well until Cyril decides to marry Andrea. Andrea moves in with her two children. There is marital tension from the beginning and Cyril finds reason to avoid being at home.  When Danny is 15 and Maeve is in college, their father dies suddenly. The tables have turned. All the money is left to Andrea. Andrea kicks Danny out of the house and now Danny and Maeve have no money. Danny moves in with Maeve. The strong bond between this brother and sister is amazing and I loved reading about them. I would highly recommend this book for someone who likes to read about families.

  

The Mother

Pearl S. Buck lived in China for 40 years and that is why her books about life in China are so good. The Mother is an excellent tale about a poor rural woman who is never named in the book. The woman marries an attractive man and moves into his house with his mother. The man owns a small property and rents out other land. The mother bears him a son and a daughter. After she has their third child, another son, the man decides he has had enough. He takes all the money in the house and without saying a word, leaves his family. At this time the mother is nearly 30. She is left to plant the rice and barley, to raise the children, to cook and clean and take care of his mother. Her husband was a bit of a gambler and a drinker but she did love him. Being abandoned is a shameful thing in China so she decides to take some of her money to hire a person to write a letter from him to her claiming he is working in another city and will send her money soon. The mother is strong and able to keep farming and keep her family from starving. She sacrifices so much for those that she loves. She is a flawed person and makes some mistakes but still I think she is practically a saint. This wonderful story was published in 1933.

The Signature Of All Things

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote The Signature Of All Things. This is a long story. I listened to the audio book for over 22 hours but I loved it. The story is historical fiction and a nature story covering the 18th and 19th centuries. We start out with Henry Whitacre, a young and poor boy who's father is a gardener at Kew's Gardens on England. Henry becomes a gardener and botanist like his father. The Kew Garden manager sets a teenaged Henry overseas to collect plants in South America. Eventually Henry figures out how to treat malaria with quinine and he starts his own botanical/medical business and makes a fortune. Henry decides it is time to take a wife so he heads to Amsterdam to find one. He marries the daughter of a Danish botanist and together they set sail to Philadelphia. Henry builds a huge mansion outside of town and his wife constructs a beautiful garden. They have a daughter and name her Alma. Eventually they adopt another girl and name her Prudence. Alma becomes a skilled botanist herself. She enjoys spending time identifying plants and observing nature, and studying mosses. For her first 50 years she barely leaves her yard. After 50, after both of her parents have died, she leaves most of her fortune to her sister Alma and takes off for Tahiti where she studies plants there. After three years in Tahiti she sets sail and eventually ends up in Amsterdam. She has written a paper on her observations of mosses and has proposed a theory of why some species survive and others fail. She goes to the botanical garden of her Uncle, the younger brother of her mother. He is astonished to see her. She tells him of her life and leaves her paper for him to read. She eventually is hired on at his business and lives in his house. Her Uncle begs her to publish her paper. He thinks she is brilliant. She refuses to publish the paper because she can't understand why altruism exists. She thinks of her sister Prudence. Prudence is an abolitionist. Prudence and her family live in poor conditions, eat poor food, and dress in poor clothes because of altruism. Several years later Charles Darwin offers his theory of evolution and it is the same as Alma's. I really enjoyed reading about Henry and Alma Whitacre and their travels all over the world and the interesting people they met. Even though I listened to the story for 22 hours, I was sorry to hear it come to a close.

Judge

 One kind person brought in these sunflowers to brighten up our polling place on London Road yesterday. Wasn't that nice? And I got to bring them home with me! I  love sunflowers because they are so cheerful. I worked 16 hours straight as an election judge which is no easy task as I am accustomed to not working at all anymore. By the time I got home at 10:20 p.m. I was beat. We had a great crew of women working and everything went smooth. All the voters were nice and we ended up with 759 ballots. One election judge said she figured out we had about one ballot a minute. We registered almost 300 voters too. I looked over quite a few driving licenses and passports over the day. I had one unusual voter. I went to help her when I saw the tabulating machine kick out her ballot. She had voted for every single candidate. I told her she cannot vote for everybody. She said she is neutral and wanted to vote for everybody. Also she wrote a prayer on her ballot and I said the machine will reject that because of the extra marks. She kept whispering her answers in my ear and she wasn't making much sense. She seemed to be in her early 20's. After much whispering and my answers she decided to keep her ballot and she walked out of the polling place. We had to record that behavior in our incident log. I guess she didn't understand how voting works. We had many young people voting which is nice to see. Many people told one election judge that they saw her on television. I finally asked her why she was on television. She said she was in a political ad and was not allowed to talk about the add while working as an election judge. All in all, I had a long and pleasant day and I am grateful I could sleep in late this morning.

You're Invited

Amanda Jayatissa is the author of You're Invited. In this fiction novel set partly in California and partly in Sri Lanka culminating in a lavish wedding ceremony in Sri Lanka. Everyone there seems to have an agenda. The bride has many agendas. The groom has agendas. The little sister has an agenda. The parents of the bride have their agendas. Why can't people just talk to each other openly instead of trying to control outcomes dishonestly? I guess that the open communication styles of healthy people would not make a very dramatic book. Ironically, the woman, Amaya, who was invited to the wedding really wasn't invited. The bride's sister pretended to be the bride and invited her. When Amaya is the narrator of the story I could tell she is unreliable and dark. She has obsessive and violent thoughts. Sometimes Amaya will cut herself to calm herself down. This book was a good psychological thriller and by the end I had to completely change my views on every major character. I learned enough about lavish weddings in Sri Lanka that I would definitely attend one if I ever got invited.

Peony

Pearl S. Buck's most famous book was The Good Earth which I read and enjoyed. She won a Pulitzer prize for it. This time I read her novel named Peony which is set in the 1850's in the city of Kaifeng, China. Kaifeng was a city that had a Jewish settlement. In this story Peony was a bond maid. She was sold as a 7 year old slave to a family of Jewish descent. The father in the family, Ezra el Israel, had a Jewish father and a Chinese mother. He is a merchant. His wife, Naomi, had Jewish parents. Together they had one son, David, who was about the same age as Peony. They were a kind family. Peony attended lessons with David and so she learned how to read and write. Through the eyes of Peony we learn how Jewish people were perceived by the Chinese people in the town. I really enjoyed this historical fiction accounting of the life of Peony in Kaefeng.

Never Saw That Before

Today I was walking home from my  classes at UMD. I saw this bird, a pileated woodpecker, fly up onto the door of the car below, look at it self in the mirror, and peck it's image.

Naturally the bird wouldn't do it on film. I have never seen a bird peck at it's image in a car mirror before. Well, I have seen it on film but never in person.