I took a picture of my harvest each day in June and here you can see what I got a lot of.
If you’re looking for volume with very little maintenance and you live in Portland, plant raspberries. This is from one stand. I used to have three, but couldn’t keep up.
They are weeds, those briars. And their fruit is so delicious.
The peas have been delicious too.
(11 Movies Watched Total)
Teen Time Travel
Amendment Abuse
Vietnam Vets
Country out of Country
Winning Woman
Scary Shark
Space Separation
Felony Fear
Boiling Block
Teen Torment
Rewatched: Lady Bird (Still great!)
Coo
Kaela Noel
Read for Librarian Book Group
A baby is abandoned in a rail yard and a flock of pigeons lift the baby to an abandoned dovecote on the top of the building. It is here where the baby grows into a little girl.
I’m unclear how the baby got through the milk-only stage of development, as pigeons can’t supply that. I also never understood how old the girl was.
Aside from these things, this was an engrossing middle grade novel with a bit of danger, a bit of wonder, a bit of outrage, and a bit of fantastical things.
When You Trap a Tiger
Tae Keller
Read for Librarian Book Group
Two girls and their mother move abruptly to Washington state from California to spend time with their grandmother. On their way there, the younger sister Lily sees a tiger near her grandmother’s house.
Good Korean folktales and good stuff around loss and sister issues.
Tornado Brain
Cat Patrick
Read for Librarian Book Group
Frankie is getting through middle school as best she can. She doesn’t have a best friend anymore and sometimes it’s hard to communicate. But when her former best friend turns up missing, Frankie focuses her attention on figuring out where her friend might have gone.
Efrén Divided
Ernesto Cisneros
Read for Librarian Book Group
Efrén lives with his mother, father, and twin brother and sister in a tiny studio apartment. When his mother is deported to Mexico he steps up to take care of his siblings while trying to keep his life (school, friends) in balance.
Wink
Rob Harrell
Read for Librarian Book Group
Man! Middle school is hard enough without Ross getting cancer and radiation treatment that causes his eye to drop. Plus he has to wear a cowboy hat all the time.
This book is packed with interesting characters and dilemmas. It’s well-paced and engaging and I’m impressed.
We Didn’t Ask for This
Adi Alsaid
It’s Lock-in Night at an international school and the kids are excited. But when Marisa and her friends chain themselves to the doors of the school to protest the degradation of coral reefs they REALLY lock people in and plans change.
Alsaid effectively manages point of view of six characters plus a few more. Nicely done.
Heroine
Mindy McGinnis
Mickey knows where she belongs: playing softball.
When here right hip is torn from her body in a car accident, she does what she needs to do in order to start conditioning with the team. It’s not the best choice for Mickey, but it sure is in terms of plot.
Another eminently readable novel from Mindy McGinnis!
The Afterlife of Holly Chase
Cynthia Hand
Christmas in June! I loved this modern-day take on the Scrooge story, but with a teenage girl as a failed Scrooge. A great blend of the fantastic with the normal. Another great novel by Cynthia Hand!
When You Were Everything
Ashley Woodfolk
Read for Librarian Book Group
My senior year of high school, my oldest friend ghosted me, though we didn’t have a term for it then. It hurt. A lot.
Friendship breakups are inevitable, but I don’t see a lot of them in fiction. But this book has the friendship breakup front and center.
Cleo is dealing with the loss of her best and only friend. As we bounce back and forth between now and then, we see bad acting on both sides, a lot of hurt, and forging a new path. There’s also new friends and a dreamy guy.
In the author’s note Woodfolk says this was a hard book to write. Partially because it was her second published book (which are known to be difficult beasts) and partially because she had to relive all those dead friendships. I’m glad she struggled through, because this was a great read.
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know
Samira Ahmad
Read for Librarian Book Group
Oh my god, an Art History Mystery that also is grounded in the female experience! This book hit all my pleasure points, including a nice romance.
Heartstopper Vol 1
Alice Oseman
Read for Librarian Book Group
A graphic novel about two boys who *might* like each other. Maybe. There’s a ton of emotion on each page. I wasn’t clear until the end (where you get handy stats for each character) how old everyone was. They were younger than I thought.
I Believe in a Thing Called Love
Maureen Goo
High-achieving girl turns to Korean dramas to teach her how to get a boyfriend, specifically hot new art guy. This was an amusing book, with mostly predictable results.
The State of Us
Shaun David Hutchinson
Presidential election year! In this book, the two presidential candidates each have a son who is a high school senior. They meet during a lock down at a debate and though they are initially wary, they get to talking.
I don’t love alternating perspectives, but this was a good example of the technique done well. The different ways the two boys texted was amusing. Also Shaun David Hutchinson seemed to get all his feelings about the current administration out through via the villainous third party candidate.
Just Breathe
Cammie McGovern
A boy with cystic fibrosis and a girl coming back from a major depression meet at a hospital.
McGovern writes really good internal feelings.
Solitaire
Alice Oseman
Oseman wrote this when she was seventeen years old. An impressive feat! The book was published in 2015 and has multiple examples of teenagers blogging and using Facebook—both of which I feel like teenagers had moved on from by that time. I blame a lag time in publishing.
Aside from that, our main character was depressed in a very authentic way that is hard for me to read. I also felt the central mystery wasn’t very well paced.
But was it better than any book I would have written at seventeen? Most certainly yes!
Save the Date
Morgan Matson
I love me a novel with a big family. Plus, the family has comic strip counterparts because their mother has featured them in her syndicated strip since they were still small children.
This is the story of a wedding where everything goes wrong and highlights things we find when things don’t go according to plan.
No Judgments
Meg Cabot
In the past week I’ve read a book about a high school athlete who develops an opioid addition, a neurotypical middle schooler whose friend goes missing, a middle schooler who’s mother was deported, and a seventh grader with eye cancer.
I needed a break, and so grabbed this breezy romance.
Unfortunately, the traditional gender norms bugged the heck out of me and it wasn’t the respite I was looking for.
Snow Falling on Ceders
David Guterson
Little Free Library Late-Night Insomnia Read
I grabbed this from a Little Free Library to use as my time passer for those nights when I’m awake for an hour or two.
This was my first read since the 90s (when we weren’t too concerned about who was telling the story of the Japanese Internment). My recollections are that I liked it, and that it was the first time I’d really read about the event.
It retained the careful and colorful descriptions of people, places, and events. Guterson is not worried about retaining readers with short attention spans. It’s interesting how restrained the writing is that describe action or big emotional moments. Perhaps it’s that contrast that drew me in.
Normal People
Sally Rooney
A good work of fiction in that I couldn’t decide whether the main characters were better or worse off together. Also excellent in bringing up uncomfortable feelings in me.
Which made for a unpleasant reading experience.
Stamped: Racism, Anti-racism and You
Jason Reynolds
Read for Librarian Book Group
Jason Reynolds remixes Ibram X Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning into a not-history book that examines how racism has affected every facet of American life.
They explore a variety of movements and historical figures in therm of segregationists, assimilationists and anti-racists.
Jane Against the World
Karen Blumenthal
Read for Librarian Book Group
A history of abortion in the United States that keeps reminding us that controlling fertility is always harder for poor women, even today.
I found this to be an interesting and readable book! Did you know that a Rubella outbreak in the 60s loosened controls on abortion in some states? This is just one of the many facts I learned!
Because Internet
Gretchen McCulloch
Read for Northwest Editors Guild Book Group
A linguist analyzes how language changes specifically through the growth and dominance of communication via the internet.
I loved her divisions of internet people, which have more to do with when you really started using the internet, than with the year you were born. According to her categories, though I could have easily been an old internet person (one from the days of early chat rooms and coding and the like) I’m actually a semi internet person because my first regular exposure to the internet was through my work environments as an adult. Whereas one of my former co-workers born 8/8/88 fit exactly into the description of the full internet person.
There’s a thorough discussion of memes (which are something that, as a semi internet person, I’ve always been on the fringes of). McCulloch also explores how language travels.
My favorite takeaway: girls learn language from their friends and boys learn it from their mothers. Apparently, this is so common that linguists barely remark on it. Teenage girls advance the language!
Directed by Harry Elfont & Deborah Kaplan
Written by Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont
Wowee, does this standard multi-character teenage comedy capture a time.* While it’s great to reacquaint yourself with people who once were around a lot and have faded,** I’m not sure this is the greatest use of your movie-watching time.*** But if you, like me, can never resist a teen comedy and you haven’t yet seen this, well, you’ve got some homework.
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home
*My teen years encompassed 1987–1994 and aside from Say Anything in 1989 not one teen comedy was released while I was actually a teenager. This, in my memory, is the first after the drought.
**Jennifer Love Hewitt, Seth Green, Sean Patrick Thomas, Jenna Elfman. (Ethan Embry I just saw in a minor role in Blindspotting. He was great in that. A little so-so in this.)
***Though it’s a teen comedy before cell phones plus the 1990s clothing is so fun to remind you that you are glad you aren’t wearing it any longer.
At one point, there’s a distant shot showing someone doing flips in the party’s yard. That’s actually Ethan Embry. In addition to acting, he was an award-winning gymnast from a very young age.
As mentioned, I found a heap of postcards in a Little Free Library during our Irvington walk earlier this month.
Two of them had been written, sent, and received. I enjoyed reading old correspondence, and thought the internet would too. Here’s the first one.
I love that this was sent to what I assume are coworkers, and that those coworkers work at the Central Library.
V. had no idea when they wrote this, but in a mere 34 years this postcard would find a new reader.
First of all, this is a damn well written postcard. I can tell that Judy has probably been to France and talked of how fashionable people were. I hope she wasn’t too disappointed to learn of the decline. And I know that Paul likes French wine. Perhaps V. brought home a bottle to share.
And in so few sentences, so many interesting details! V. knows how to pick the best of traveling to report on.
Here is the second card:
I love that Sinclair Lewis stamp. He looks so much like an author.
I looked up the address and you can see it here. I checked Portland Maps to see if possibly MC Lamb might still live there, and found that the property is owned by Reach Community Development. I can’t tell if they owned the house in 1987 or not.
Reading this, I feel Paul’s pain. I hate when I want to send a certain image, or even certain genre of image to someone in postcard form and the museum doesn’t oblige.
It sounds like Paul spent his time well, though I can’t tell if Paul himself liked the Getty. He was excited about Benny Carter. Who, if I’ve got the right one, died in 2014. Actually, I don’t think that’s the right one. He started painting in 1991. It might be this Benny Carter. Paul could have gotten off topic and switched to musicians. Postcards can do that to you.
It’s also occured to me that this Paul might be the same Paul who liked wine on the previous postcard. But how did he get a postcard he sent?
That was a fun trip down other people’s memory lane! Thanks anonymous postcard donor. I wonder if you even know you gave away those cards.
Having celebrated our anniversary during quarantine, we knew how to make things work for Matt’s birthday. Takeout from Canard! Those fries were quite good, as was everything.
And then a peanut butter icebox pie with 4 and 2 candles for dessert!
We also played board games.
Sara sends seventeenth anniversary greetings from this historic inn. Also, as she was writing the card, the inn had just reopened after the quarantine.
Another fun fact! Sara’s mother and father (long, long divorced) stayed at this inn once in their marriage. Sara notes it’s a very charming inn.
Directed by Spike Lee
Written by Spike Lee
Spike Lee spends a lot of time letting us get to know the residents of a neighborhood block* which, by the time the big thing happens at the 90-minute mark your feeling are stronger than they would have been if the big thing happened fifteen minutes in. Aside from the tactics of the police** much of this movie felt very familiar 31 years later. The main players all turn in great performances*** and despite the fact I watched this on a not-hot day, that increasing tension of heat and city was aptly recreated.
Cost: Possibly free through one of the services? I cannot recall.
Where watched: at home
*This feature was what sunk the film for me when I first attempted to watch it in the late 90s. It’s a very slow film. It was so slow that I gave up and watched something else, or perhaps took a nap.
**Then: going in swinging with their billy clubs. Now: drawing a gun and shooting.
***You know who isn’t good at acting though? Joie Lee. Rosie Perez is also a little raw. (Though she’s great in the dance sequence that opens the film!)
The opening sequence, which featured the song “Fight The Power”, was written especially for the movie. Rosie Perez dancing to the song took eight hours to film.
Directed by Carlos López Estrada
Written by Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs
Friendship is at the heart of this film; a friendship that makes two people better and worse.* Watching the friendship between Collin (Daveed Diggs) and Miles (Rafael Casal) and choices made (now and in the past)** highlights so many contemporary issues. This is a movie where I had all the feelings, it’s laugh-while-watching-alone-funny,*** it graphically illustrates the ramifications of gentrification,**** it has a lot to say about race,***** our system of punishment, and it’s got moments of pure terror.******
Cost: Free! Google Play is not charging. Watch it today!
Where watched: at home.
*People who have been friends since they were twelve sometimes have complex friendships by the time they are in their twenties. Both people have changed so much that sometimes what links them together isn’t always the best for either of them.
**The scene where we find out why Collin had to serve time is particularly brilliant. We’re hearing about the incident from an excited bystander, but the two people who were there have different feelings.
***Watching Miles sell things provides a lot of the comedy. That beauty shop scene will stick in my brain for a very long time.
****Including the transformation of the Kwik Mart and houses torn down, with new ones inserted into the block face.
*****Collin and Miles argument about Miles not using a certain word does more to get across race disparities than forty essays.
******For people who “just don’t get” Black people’s fear of the police, this movie offers a ton of opportunities to understand why.
Collin’s alarm clock at the halfway house is set to 6:25. 625 spells out O-A-K on a phone and is also on a shirt that Collin wears.
