*Croco by Azul López and Kit Maude, translator *Many Things At Once by Veera Hiranandani and Nadia Alam *Kaho’olawe: The True Story of an Island and Her People by Kamalani Hurley and Harinani Orme
Middle Grade
*D.J. Rosenblum Becomes the G.O.A.T. by Abby White *Buffalo Dreamer by Violet Duncan
Young Adult
*Under the Neon Lights by Arriel Vinson *One of the Boys by Victoria Zeller *Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories, Cynthia Leitich Smith, editor *Silenced Voices: Reclaiming Memories from the Guatemalan Genocide by Pablo Leon
Young People’s Nonfiction
*Hick: The Trailblazing Journalist Who Captured Eleanor Roosevelt’s Heart by Sarah Miller
As an eater of a lot of cheese, I approve of this message:
What cheese will you eat first to celebrate this study?
For a brief, shining moment, the Oregonian would feed me Alexandra Petri‘s humor column in the Washington Post, and those were good days. I’m glad she has a home at the Atlantic, and this reminded me of how fun she is.
Want more? I can recommend her book Alexandra Petri’s US History Important American Documents (I Made Up) as a laff riot.
We really need to move away from the tipping system.
Sara sent her thank you for her birthday gift in the form of 8 (or possibly 9) postcards. I received numbers 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 today. The rest will pile up at the post office because Matt and I will be out of town for a few days.
I find these hilarious, and Sara pointed out how it was fun that the cats were the oppressed and the dogs were the oppressor.
What’s International Analog Day? It’s a day where we spend time doing things that don’t involve technology, where we party like it’s 1903. The day was created by Shannon Downey and friends, and promoted on her Badass Cross Stich site.
Matt and I decided to celebrate.
The Wednesday before the party, I still hadn’t figured out what food we were serving. But it was a day I went into the office, and also a day I forgot to bring my phone with me when going to the office. At lunch time, I realized I didn’t have anything to read, so I went out to the new books section and grabbed a book about party food, thinking it might inspire me. Instead it gave me my entire food plan: a mug party!
What is a mug party? The author had a tiny apartment when he first moved to New York City, and liked to entertain, but found that while people were happy to perch anywhere, it was hard to deal with plates and utensils while sitting crisscross on the floor. He had a lot of mugs, so he invited party food that could be served in mugs.
Et voila! The menu! Grapefruit mules, mozzarella sticks with marinara, a very green minestrone, one-pot broccoli shells and cheese, and a seven-layer sundae bar. To this I added a crudité platter, hummus, crackers and five bowls of noshes from the bulk bins at WinCo.
I was worried about the mug situation. Due to my constant discarding, we had four. Many people had not RSVP’d, so while I could tell the people who had RSVP’d to bring mugs, I was worried we would run out if a bunch of non-RSVP’d people showed up.
But! Walking back from New Seasons to buy the mint we needed for the mint syrup, Matt said to me, “Should we bring home these two boxes of mugs?” And there, sitting out for us to take, were about 12 mugs that someone was discarding. The party gods had provided!
Matt was an excellent sous chef, and I enjoyed the food prep.
As usual, I forgot to take photos when people were actually attending, but we had a good turnout, and the food was delicious. Sadly, I forgot to put out the coconut cream whipped cream for the sundaes, but everything else went smoothly.
What did we do at our analog party? As you can see, Matt made it very easy for people to play games. We also did knitting and embroidery. And I unknit a blanket Gail was making with what turned out to be not very good yarn. Kevin brought a Lego kit to assemble.
A good time was had by all.
When the party was done, we washed the mugs, and returned them to the curb for others to enjoy.
Here’s the set for In Clay Broadway Rose’s current musical about the ceramist Marie-Berthe Cazin. Set in the 1930s, the one-woman show (Malia Tippets played Cazin) covered the artist’s life.
While musical theater is always a feat, (singing and dancing and acting all a once?) this was an impressive performance because Tippits also threw two pots on stage while singing.
This was a good window into the life of an artist I had not heard of. I do wonder if the French accent was the right choice.
Sara is quite good at finding humorous postcards. There is, for sure, a god of yarn and sticks I need to bow down to.
This image was created by Sean Tejaratchi and originally posted on Twitter. There’s another poster in the same style, if you want to go looking.
Sara reports the postcard is part of some fun sets Shawn got for her (and we now see how she finds these sorts of cards: Shawn). She reports that her grandmother might have had such a macramé.
This postcard was made by Cute Like Candy Corn, which is appropriate, as I believe Sara is a fan of candy corn. And cute postcards. You can find them on Etsy.
She reports that she had just woken up from a lovely afternoon nap.
The Albina Library has this display about Coretta Scott King. I enjoyed reading it.
This was my favorite part:
Initially, I wondered who the author of this great display was, but further research has shown that it was curated by students from a local elementary school, presumably Dr. Martin Luther King Elementary School. The quote make a little more sense in that context.
I really liked this recipe. The cake instructions were incredibly thorough, and had some good tips I will incorporate going forward. And it was my first time making ermine frosting (which is a fancy name for boiled frosting, something I’ve wondered about for years but have never made.) It was not as magical as when buttercream frosting comes together, but it was less stressful and had a just-right sweetness.
Portland Center Stage did Portland a favor by staging this play in January and February 2026. Because boy howdy, did we all need to come together and laugh.
The laughs started early when the stage manager recruited someone from the audience to help them shored up the mantel. While the stage manager ran off to get something to affix the mantel to the wall, she left the volunteer on stage. Another stage manager-type person appeared, and wanted the volunteer to sweep instead of hold the mantel, so the volunteer did. And thus it continued.
The play went terribly wrong.
While the depiction of the female characters hasn’t aged terribly well (Scantily clad catfight? Really?) the play was otherwise the most rejuvenating things I’ve encountered this winter. Everyone did a great job, but I will probably forever say, “A ledger????” in the style of Darius Pierce when I’m hunting for something I know was placed in a specific place but can no longer be found in that place.
If the Play that Goes Wrong is playing near you, do yourself a favor and attend.
