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Text of the page (random words):
stula foundation does great work your friend works for a non profit that s easy donate there in their honor one less mug out there in the world one more pair of pointe shoes for a ballerina it s a win win incidentally giving tuesday is a new phenomenon it only began in 2012 the brainchild of the 92nd street y the intent was and remains lofty a way to pivot back to the values of community and gratitude celebrated on thanksgiving after black friday and cyber monday so even though you re feeling overwhelmed by the solicitations pouring into your in box think about how you can kill two birds with one stone a charitable contribution can be your gift to someone on your list 0 comments 24 august 2025 my high concept wholly idiosyncratic summer reading list top to bottom the poisoned chocolates case by anthony berkeley sandwich a novel by catherine newman butter honey pig bread by francesca ekwuyasi blood sugar by sascha rothchild the heaven earth grocery store by james mcbride the spinach king by john seabrook we almost always go to cape cod for a week at the beach in the summer and i always plan to read a lot like five six seven books last month i started thinking about the book list i knew i wanted to read catherine newman s sandwich it s set on the cape and she s a wonderful writer perusing my list of books to read a theme emerged and so the summer 2025 list snapped into place the first five are all fiction the spinach king ended up on the list because it got a great review in the nyt book review and for the title natch the five fiction books were all great in different ways the spinach king was kind of unreadable and i didn t finish it and it was the only book i bought new everything else was a used book the poisoned chocolates case is a delight instead of a normal mystery in which something happens and then gets solved this one gets solved eight different ways six ways in the original and two more in later addenda by contemporary writers excellent concept and the book is snarky witty i loved it sandwich is the perfect book to read on the first day of a cape cod vacation in the kind of rented house that you have to bring your own sheets and towels to i love catherine newman i love that she brings vienna fingers to the beach i think she would appreciate that my daughter has a pair of flip flops that we bought in an emergency read left hers home at a surf shop that were rather more expensive than the usual old navy flip flops and henceforth and still are known as luxury town because yes she still has them lo these years later i love how newman describes our beach with the sand ramp i want to know which is the good take out place i love the way her cape week is larded with the same kinds of traditions that ours is and her writing about the sandwich place between aging parents and young adult children is spot on butter honey pig bread is tasty and so well written it s a love story a redemption tale and a story of twins whose mother is complicated and it s full of food like there are almost usable recipes embedded in the text it s glorious and i want to go to her nigeria blood sugar is totally a beach read like i read it in a day on the beach the protagonist is def a little sketch and her lawyer is too but it s a fun nuanced read were the actions of the protagonist and the lawyer justified is it okay that we re rooting for some flawed humans yes we re on the beach and we re stretching our brains the heaven earth grocery store is a shaggy sprawling intricate yarn so many threads and so many characters and yet snap they come together the spinach king is a total slog i wanted to like it but i couldn t finish it it veers all over the place from horses to farming to politics to greed to frozen vegetables to clothing to vanity to social climbing to union busting when i found myself idly turning pages i decided it was time to put it aside so five and a half books in a week what s on your list 5 comments 22 june 2025 hardware store necklaces i got on the subway at the end of a workday and sat down a woman was sitting across from me scrolling through her phone she was well dressed maybe on her way to some kind of event not on the way home from work lipstick sharp blue dress with a jacket in a slightly different shade of blue blue nail polish a graphic animal ish print purse oversized glasses a dark bob and a statement necklace the necklace fascinated me the necklace is why i surreptiously took her picture look at it it s a piece of cheap hardware with a couple of carabiners and a lenght of chunky chain you could go to the hardware store and pick up all the bits you need to make your own hitching ring carabiners chain what it reminded me of was anni albers albers was a textile artist and printmaker who made a number of necklaces out of grosgrain ribbon and plain flat washers the first time i ever saw one of the necklaces on exhibit i detoured home past the hardware store and bought a pack of washers knowing that i had grosgrain at home it s easy to do but if you don t have the desire to figure it out yourself the albers foundation helpfully sells a kit who needs tiffany when the hardware store has everything 4 comments labels crafty 01 june 2025 amsonia time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future and time future contained in time past if all time is eternally present all time is unredeemable t s eliot from four quartets my sister died last week it wasn t a surprise she had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer eight and a half years previously but she had good medical care and her decline was slow and mostly manageable until it wasn t and she had a sudden and precipitous decline on saturday she was out at a local ballet performance on sunday she was in the emergency room monday hospice was called in and she died on thursday her wife and her kids and i were with her at the end hospice provided exemplary care but oh the ache a couple of days after she died i opened the newspaper and a movie review jumped off the page at me i m not a huge movie goer but sarah was and the last time i d been in a movie theater was a couple of months ago with her we saw black bag and we were the only people in the theater so in part as a way to honor sarah s love for moviegoing my daughter and i set off for a late afternoon showing of jane austen wrecked my life and it was perfect and sarah would have loved it it s half in french half in english it s set in paris with a lot at shakespeare company and also in an english country manor house turned writing retreat it has a mr darcy it has spitting llamas and who doesn t love a movie in which the frederick wiseman has a cameo somewhere along the line one character quotes wordsworth at another that best portion of a good man s life his little nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love in my head i re gendered the quote thinking of the little acts of kindness and love carried out by my sister go forth with love see a movie plant a perennial bake some breadsticks mail a postcard advocate for the voiceless volunteer with a local organzation all of these are the little acts that a good person does day in and day out and these little acts into the future honor the past go forth with love 10 comments 16 april 2025 a typeface for mrs pollifax the mrs pollifax books are delightful so when i found a copy of a palm for mrs pollifax in a little free library i took it even though i d read it six years ago and even though it was a cheap trade paperback from 1973 imagine my delight at the typography that chapter heading typeface looks just like the font i used in junior high school shop class to make personalized stationery it s kind of awful and wonderful and harkens back to old school handwriting the capital f the capital l i think it s either coronet or ribbon thanks to what the font a nifty site where you can upload an image and it ll identify the typeface also i did rather enjoy the description of golf even if greensward is one word not two in langley virginia it was mid afternoon carstairs inserted the key into the lock of his office door and entered with a sigh of deep relief he felt he had been excessively well behaved today he had risen at dawn driven bumper to bumper to the golf club awaited his turn in a milling crowd and played eighteen holes of golf under a humid 90 degree sun his doctor had told him the fresh air and exercise would rejuvenate him but instead he felt hot irritable and betrayed to a man accustomed to deploying live human beings around the world he could think of nothing more idiotic than mindlessly pushing an inanimate ball around a green sward in the sun 0 comments 06 april 2025 in which lung cancer meets a birthday today is my sister s birthday she s pretty cute eh more than 8 years ago she was diagnosed with stage iv lung cancer for the past 8 years she has worked tirelessly on behalf of lung cancer research and advocacy among other things she served as a patient representative to panels run by the congressionally directed medical research programs cdmrp what is the cdmrp from its website the cdmrp originated in 1992 via a congressional appropriation to foster novel approaches to biomedical research in response to the expressed needs of its stakeholders the american public the military and congress one of the specific and unusual aspects of the program is that they involve consumer advocates throughout the program cycle that s what my sister did for several program cycles she was even profiled on the cdmrp s website and but you ll notice i had to go to the internet archive to find her page what she said about her association with the cdmrp is the work is hard especially for someone like me who lacks a scientific background the opportunity however to participate in something so important makes all the hours spent sweating over the applications thoroughly worthwhile i feel tremendous hope for the future when i get to see what the researchers are working on and i am always honored and humbled to share a conference table with the brilliant scientists who are superheroes to me and my fellow patients to be able to provide the patient perspective on proposed research is a gift that i cherish and i take great pride in the work i have been able to do for the lcrp besides the fact that it s her birthday why am i writing about this because the current year s budget for the cdmrp is about 43 of what it was last year and lung cancer has been cut out altogether what kind of cancer kllls more people than any other by a lot lung cancer if you feel up to it please complain to your congressional representative and if you have a few spare nickels please consider a donation to lungevity thanks 2 comments 02 february 2025 in which we put our heads in the sand the other day i was rummaging around on the intertubes and i landed on a timesmachine page for a 1952 copy of the new york times what really intrigued me wasn t the newsy stuff on that page the stuff i d been looking for but that on the lower right hand corner appeared a crossword puzzle an edited by margaret farrar puzzle from 1952 being a person who really likes doing the nyt puzzle every single day in pen i grabbed the puzzle image and printed it out for my train ride home and man it is hard it is larded with things i had to look up like creator of mr tutt and governor of hawaii and senator from tacoma and it s full of uncommon archaic words like the answers to assumes presumptuously and roasted and splinter and then there was the blasé generic actress from germany i did get white house initials to be right off the bat because that answer still turns up in current puzzles though clued way differently i e w w ii hero who retired from the mil to run for president or h s t s successor or onetime white house inits all in all it was an entertaining and engaging exercise but i hope to not encounter a relative of the civet or a two year old sheep anytime soon if you d like to try here you go 1 comments older posts home subscribe to posts atom about me magpie it s a journal a scrapbook a record of my kid growing up it s about food it s about the pleasures of gardening it s where i wear my heart on my sleeve play with words and rail at the world it s where i muse and where i indulge my inner magpie i have one delightful lonely cat and not enough time to read if you d like you can email me at magpiemusing at gmail dot com view my complete profile other places other blogs i like to cook how to cook like a magpie i like taking pictures of falling down buildings and crumbling siding decay and desuetude sometimes i review stuff magpie housekeeping and i m all about disclosure department of commerce and advertising disclosure occasionally i will link to a book or something on amazon if i do so and if you click and if you then buy something i might get a commission because a s an amazon associate i earn from qualifying purchases in point of fact i haven t earned any commissions in years but i do like to provide the links so you know what i m talking about archive 2025 8 december 2025 1 august 2025 1 june 2025 2 april 2025 2 february 2025 1 january 2025 1 2024 12 december 2024 1 april 2024 1 march 2024 1 february 2024 6 january 2024 3 2023 5 may 2023 1 march 2023 1 february 2023 3 2022 4 april 2022 1 february 2022 2 january 2022 1 2021 3 may 2021 1 january 2021 2 2020 15 december 2020 1 november 2020 1 october 2020 1 july 2020 1 march 2020 2 february 2020 3 january 2020 6 2019 33 december 2019 23 november 2019 1 october 2019 4 july 2019 2 may 2019 1 march 2019 1 january 2019 1 2018 52 december 2018 1 november 2018 29 october 2018 3 september 2018 4 august 2018 2 july 2018 2 june 2018 1 april 2018 2 march 2018 3 february 2018 4 january 2018 1 2017 23 november 2017 2 october 2017 4 september 2017 3 august 2017 4 may 2017 1 april 2017 1 march 2017 1 january 2017 7 2016 64 december 2016 26 november 2016 8 october 2016 5 september 2016 3 august 2016 2 july 2016 1 june 2016 3 may 2016 5 april 2016 1 march 2016 2 february 2016 2 january 2016 6 2015 36 december 2015 4 november 2015 3 october 2015 2 september 2015 1 august 2015 4 july 2015 7 june 2015 1 may 2015 2 april 2015 1 march 2015 3 february 2015 4 january 2015 4 2014 68 december 2014 2 november 2014 7 october 2014 4 september 2014 10 august 2014 3 july 2014 8 june 2014 2 may 2014 5 april 2014 11 march 2014 3 february 2014 2 january 2014 11 2013 93 december 2013 6 november 2013 8 october 2013 3 september 2013 7 august 2013 10 july 2013 12 june 2013 8 may 2013 6 april 2013 8 march 2013 9 february 2013 8 january 2013 8 2012 144 december 2012 9 november 2012 7 october 2012 15 september 2012 12 august 2012 11 july 2012 13 june 2012 8 may 2012 14 april 2012 13 march 2012 15 february 2012 14 january 2012 13 2011 196 december 2011 11 november 2011 30 october 2011 11 september 2011 16 august 2011 16 july 2011 15 june 2011 17 may 2011 18 april 2011 17 march 2011 13 february 2011 18 january 2011 1...