In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
Aristotle
Exciting news everyone!
My friend Kelli, of African Kelli, has just had her first book published, and last night, her very first reading. I can only imagine the butterflies, joy, and magic in Phoenix! A dream come true.
This moment is even more special for me because it gives me hope that my book will one day be out there, too. As well, my good friend Colleen designed the cover, and rather beautifully, don’t you think?
I am hoping we can all make it a bit sweeter by buying our own copies (mine is on the way). Let’s get her to the top of the Amazon list!
Under the Same Moon, by Kelli Donley
Abena Udate was selling mangoes on a humid market day in her Mozambican village when she caught the eye of a wandering foreigner. Kidnapped and brought to live in suburban America, the African teenager struggles with the glaring cultural and social differences of her new life. Abena is expected to play along with her kidnapper’s story — she’s just another hungry child plucked from a desolate country and saved by foreign adoption — or else. As her younger brother Kupela searches for clues to explain her disappearance, Abena must decide whether to remain with a family she doesn’t love for a life of luxury, or find a way home to those she loves in a world of despair.
Support an emerging writer – buy it here!
Tags: Books
Good Monday to you all!
I hope the weekend treated you well. Ours was a slice of pie – heavenly and ever so good. The fact that I actually made a pie being the veritable cherry on top of it all, indeed.
Our weekend began in earnest on Thursday evening, as my former students and their friends came for dinner, an ever so brief game of gnome bowling (much more boring than anticipated), and lots and lots of top notch conversation. Broken record alert – I am so very proud of these young men! They are unremittingly kind, smart, thoughtful, and funny. I feel ever so lucky to have them in my life. Oh, and Matt, if you’re reading, you were the inspiration for the pie. After talking about it, I just had to have some, though mine is nectarine, not peach.
We spent our Saturday with new friends who feel quite old (but not at all elderly). We have so very much in common (crafting, gardening, a love of nature and more) and the conversation was just so easy, the best combination, really. They have a gorgeous place in the country, full of flowers, wildlife, and beautiful vistas, the very place I’ve imagined when I fancy a Cooper-Sohn retreat in the woods. Add to that the fact that we had delicious food, the company of adorable and sweet children, and a fire under the stars, well, you know. It doesn’t get much better. Thank you Twists! Oh, and p.s., if you’d like to see their lovely home and the beautiful things Beth makes, I’ve added the link to their blog – My Heartstring under friends.
Yesterday, oh yesterday I spent harvesting lavender. Which sounds much more pedestrian than it was, I assure you. Maybe harvesting isn’t the word I want. Picking? I don’t know. In any case, I spent ten hours (no exaggeration) removing the fragrant spent buds from the stems clipped in our back garden so that I might make some sachets. I never imagined it would be such an undertaking. I watched bad television, four movies, wore holes in the thumbs of a pair of rubber gloves, and felt as sweet and sleepy as Dorothy and the gang in that field full of poppies. Cross your fingers that the end product will be worth all the labor. I will most definitely post pictures if it is.
For now, it is a picture of pie, another blissful weekend gone by, and a happy week to come. Let’s enjoy it!
Another p.s. – this is post 401! How about them apples?
We’ve been rather fortunate to have seen a fine series of movies Under a Red Roof lately. I love that. There are few disappointments as severe as a film gone wrong. No possibility of that today, however, no siree.
First off is Clean. Maggie Cheung (who won a best actress award at Cannes for her portrayal) plays Emily Wang, bitchy, arrogant, spoiled heroin addict and girlfriend of fading musician Lee Hauser. They have a child, Jay, who is being raised by his grandparents while they waste their lives driving around in an ugly sedan, playing music when they can, arguing, and, of course, scoring heroin.
Emily’s life is upturned when she and Lee get into yet another argument and she flees the scene to shoot up. When she returns the following morning, the police surround the shabby hotel. Lee is dead. Emily serves time for being the source of the drugs that killed him and exits entirely directionless, save the hope that she will one day get it together so she can reunite with her son. It is an honest and oftentimes painful look at the slow progress of an addict trying to change, with great music and locations – from the stark beauty of an oil refinery in Canada, to the streets of London and Paris. As well, and in a pretty surprising role (at least to us), Nick Nolte plays the grandfather – tender, caring, and even keeled. Well played, one and all.
Quite on the other side of the spectrum is Lost in Austen, a hysterically funny adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The story follows Amanda Price, a somewhat hopeless and thoroughly modern romantic who tires of her boorish boyfriend’s ways, preferring to spend her time cozied up with the pages of her favorite novel. All goes Pete Tong when she finds Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of said novel, coming out of a secret passage in her bathroom. What ensues is a delightful voyage into the countryside as Amanda tries and fails mightily to keep the novel on course while also coping with the technology (rather lack of) in 19th century England.
It has a stellar cast, some marvelous twists, and, of course, the witty repartee one expects in such an undertaking. Here too, is a sampling of the lines that kept me in stitches:
Oh, you have standards, pet. I hope they help you on with your coat when you’re seventy.
There really are ladies who steer the punt from the Cambridge end?
The drawing up of phlegm through the nose is not the action of a lady!
Brava, Miss Price! And whenever life is gettin’ me down, I shall be sure to go ‘downtown’. Eh, Darcy?
What is neon?
Okay, I’ve cleaned my teeth with chalk and shaved my legs with some sort of potato peeler.
Tags: Movies
It takes a long time to become young.
Pablo Picasso
