May 24, 2020 at 3:17 pm (Flowers, fpj-photo-challenge, Holidays, Links, Lists, postaday, Sundays)
Tags: California, flower photography, Garden
As many countries are opening up a bit from lock-down, and I was inspired by the soft glory of spring nature in my part of the world, I thought we would indulge in some Delicate Colours! They are everywhere in nature, but also to be found anywhere you look, in for example fashion, art and architecture. — Leya
Self is always happy to participate in a Photo Challenge. Anything to distract from Shelter-in-Place, entering the third month here in the San Francisco Bay Area.
First: HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!
To everyone who has a loved one in this fight, or has lost a loved one, blessings.
Hydrangeas on Front Porch: May 2020
Iceberg Roses in Front Yard, May 2020
Looking at the Garden from the Kitchen Window, 24 May 2020. The curtains were from World Market, which has since closed.
Look at these beautiful galleries:
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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May 22, 2020 at 4:29 pm (Food and Drink, Lists, Places)
Tags: desserts, Filipino food, Fridays, indulgences, memories, nostalgia, The Philippines
- Bamboo shoots – labong
- Banana – saging
- Bottle gourd – upo
- Cabbage – repolyo
- Calamansi – calamansi
- Cashew nuts – Kasuy
- Cauliflower – koliflor
- Chickpeas – garbansos
- Chico – chico
- Chinese cabbage – pechay Baguio
- “Chinese” peas – chicharo (one of self’s faaaavorite vegetables, growing up in Manila)
- Coconut – niyog
- Corn – mais
- Cucumber – pipino
- Custard apple – atis
- Eggplant – talong
- Fern leaves – pako
- Ginger – luya
- Green snap beans – habichuelas
- Guava – bayabas
- Lanzones – lansones
- Lima bean – patani
- Long cow pea – sitaw
- Mango – mango
- Mangosteen – mangostan
- Melon – melon
- Mung bean – mongo
- Mustard – mustasa
- Papaya – papaya
- Peanut – mani
- Pineapple – piña
- Pomelo – suha
- Potato – patatas
- Santol – santol
- Squash – kalabasa
- Strawberry – stroberi (lol)
- Swamp cabbage – kangkong
- Sweet peppers – sili
- Sweet potato – kamote
- Taro – gabi
- Tomato – kamatis
- Turmeric – luyang dilaw
- Watermelon – pakwan (Dear Departed Sister loved chewing pakwan seeds)
- Yam – ubi (Ubi ice cream is the best!)
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April 24, 2020 at 4:50 am (Lists, The Economist)
Tags: essay, politics
Self will summarize the finer points:
- The corona virus has killed 31,000 Americans (This number is significantly higher now)
- Trump is “a human wedge.”
- The 2000 presidential election was “a watershed moment … the last decided by persuadable voters.”
- “Even before Trump made factionalism a governing strategy . . . ” (lol)
- “Notwithstanding Mr. Trump’s effort to give it a Chinese face (he reverted this week to calling it ‘the Wuhan virus’) . . . ” (smh)
- “Infectious diseases like density, which is one of the most reliable predictors of Democratic support there is . . . This makes Republicans more receptive than Democrats to Mr. Trump’s call for a reopening of the economy: an issue that — by pitting the certain tragedy of 17 million unemployed workers against the likelihood of additional infections — could scarcely be more polarising.”
- The differences between the Democrat and Republican response to the pandemic could not be more stark: Democrats are demanding “better, cheaper health care” while “Republican states including Texas and Ohio have meanwhile used the lockdown to try to ban abortions . . . “
On the last point, a political party that cares only about banning abortions when a virus is killing 10x as many Americans as the number of fetuses aborted annually is surely loco.
The article mentions William Barr and describes him as a “cultural warrior,” self hopes in jest. And refers to Ron DeSantis of Florida as “a Trump proxy with ratings to match.”
Stay tuned.
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April 17, 2020 at 1:33 am (Books, Flowers, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: book lists, Brideshead Revisited, English writers, fantasy, Garden, mysteries, novel, reading lists, Redwood City, Swedish writers
Some years, self reads by theme. There was the year she read only women authors. Another year, she read only memoir. She remembers the summer she decided to read everything ever written by Henning Mankell (That was a very fun summer)
Last year, hmm, she doesn’t think she had a theme last year. Looking at her reading list for 2020, it’s clear 2020 is the year for reading fiction. Just straight-up good literary fiction.
Self read twelve books so far 2020.
Here were her top reads (arranged in the order in which she read them):
- January: Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory, by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
- February: The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison
- February: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith
- End of March, beginning of April: Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
She’s currently reading her first Liane Moriarty: Big Little Lies.
She’s hoping to get into the Ruth Galloway detective series. She’s just ordered Book # 1, The Crossing Places.
Even if there were no “shelter in place,” self knows she would still be doing the same things she’s doing right now: reading, writing, watching TV, gardening, cooking, laundry.
Sharing a picture of her Fourth of July rose, just starting to bloom.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 14, 2020 at 1:37 am (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Links, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Publishers, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, causes, El Leon, Just published, Literary Magazines, Manoa, Small Press
MsAligned Vol. 3: Women Writing About Men launched in the spring. This spring. Which means, during the corona virus epidemic. But it’s out there now, out in the world.
Thank you, Editor Rebecca Thomas. Thank you, Pat Matsueda, Founder of MsAligned. Thank you, El Leon Literary Arts and Manoa Books, for co-publishing. Thank you, Shawna Yang Ryan, for the lovely Introduction. Thank you, Lillian Howan, for soliciting self’s story. Thank you, Melissa Chimera, for the beautiful front-cover art. Thank you, Carly Elizabeth Huggins, for the beautiful back-cover art.
Here’s the complete list of contributors:
Mary Archer * Mary Carozza * Ryan Nicole Granados * Lillian Howan * Gerda Govine Ituarte * Caroline Kim * Rachel King * Pat Matsueda * Donna Lee Miele * Angela Nishimoto * Jeannine Ouellette * Connie Pan * Ann Pancake * Grace Loh Prasad * Marilyn Stablein * Rebecca Thomas * Marianne Villanueva
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 28, 2020 at 4:16 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Links, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, plans, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: biographies, book lists, fantasy, forthcoming, historical fiction, Just published, literary awards, novel, reading lists, Saturday, short story
March is Women’s History Month. These are the women (prose) authors on self’s 2020 Reading List:
- Liane Moriarty
- Diane Gabaldon
- Edwidge Danticat
- Mathangi Subramanian
- Jacqueline Woodson
- Jung Chang
- Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Sally Rooney
- Peg Alford Pursell
- Oyinkan Braithwaite
- Dacia Maraini
- Shahrnush Parsipoor
- E. R. Ramzipoor
- Elizabeth Tallent
- Sadie Jones
Also: Caroline Kim-Brown’s short story collection, which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, coming this fall: The Prince of Mournful Thoughts. You can read the title story now, in Ms.Aligned Vol. 3.
Women self has read so far 2020:
- Dodie Smith
- Katherine Addison
- Jia Tolentino
- Kathryn Ferguson
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February 16, 2020 at 5:34 pm (Conversations, Lists, Sundays, Wall Street Journal)
Tags: medicine, news
2400 passengers
Health workers in masks and body suits
“I can’t wrap my head around the fact that I could die from this cruise.” — Gay Courter, 75, American novelist
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February 12, 2020 at 11:39 pm (Food and Drink, fpj-photo-challenge, Links, Lists, Places, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: California, elections, farmers markets, fast food, London, Manila, politics, restaurants
There’s always plenty of action around us, so your challenge is to share some of your best captures of that action with all your blogging friends.
— Tuesday Photo Challenge
Ever since self’s Nikon Coolpix stopped working, she hasn’t taken as many pictures. Taking pictures with her Android is such a bear! Nevertheless, she did manage to take some action pictures:
- Top Picture: San Mateo Farmers Market, the Yang Gang, January 2020
- Middle Picture: On the street in front of Ottolenghi in Spitalfields, East London, Nov 2019
- Bottom Picture: Jollibee Hamburger, a little past midnight, Manila, September 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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February 6, 2020 at 8:16 am (Lists)
Tags: politics
(Can you appreciate the fact that it took self HECKA long to list the names? She was on fire this evening!)
Lamarr Alexander (TN) * John Barrasso (WY) * Marsha Blackburn (TN) * Roy Blunt (MO) * John Boozman (AR, For real, there’s a Senator called BOOZMAN?) * Mike Braun (IN) * Richard Burr (NC) * Shelley Capito (WV) * Bill Cassidy (LA) * Susan Collins (ME) * John Cornyn (TX) * Tom Cotton (AR) * Kevin Cramer (ND) * Mike Crapo (ID) * Ted Cruz TX) * Steve Daines (MT) * Mike Enzi (WY) * Joni Ernst (IA) * Deb Fischer (NE) * Cory Gardner * Lindsey Graham * Charles Grassley * John Hawley * John Hoeven * Cindy Hyde-Smith * Jim Inhofe * Ron Johnson * John Kennedy * James Lankford * Mike Lee * Kelly Loefler * Mitch McConnell * Martha McSally * Jerry Moran * Lisa Murkowski * Rand Paul * David Perdue * Rob Portman * James Risch * Pat Roberts * Mike Rounds * Marco Rubio * Rick Scott * Tim Scott * Richard Shelby * Dan Sullivan * John Thune * Thomas Tillis * Patrick Toomey * Roger Wicker * Tod Young
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February 3, 2020 at 3:02 pm (Books, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections, Women Writers)
Tags: book lists, English writers, fantasy, Mondays, novel, reading lists
Just finished Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory, by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, and it was glorious.
Now reading The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison.
Self’s next two books are I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith, and Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh. She found a review in The Economist about great houses in fiction, and those two books came up in the course of. She thinks she read Brideshead Revisited, but so long ago that all she remembers is a British mini-series of the same name, with an actor with the improbable name of Anthony Andrews playing Sebastian.
Monday is off to an excellent start.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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