Bright Colors Meets Your Various Needs *

Bright colors meets your various needs and give you different look and happy mood.

                       

These rhythm band scarves are suitable for kindergarten. dance group, magical performance, square juggling dance, musical play, etc. Or you use its basically function as dressing accessories and decoration. 

Attention that do not letting your kids to put it into the mouth, avoid chocking hazard.

PORTABLE AND NICE PRESENT CHOICE: It is very light that can be floded to quite small size, easy to storage it in your purse, handbag, backpack or travel luggage case during travelling or outing performance. Such a beautiful scraves defintely will make your female family and friends feel happy as a gift.

 

*I haven't quite lost my mind. Josie was playing with these scarves and they looked so pretty in the sunlight that I had to take pictures of them. Then I had a look at where I ordered them to see if they were actually silk. They were described as such, but it was other parts of the ad copy that I couldn't resist and have reproduced above. It all gives me a happy mood.

Also Noted

More books from the friend who brought me an armful. After some of the heavyweights I've talked about, these are a bit lighter -- and they're all good reads.  The first two follow the time honored trope of a damsel in distress in a creepy house. In The Turn of the Key, it's a just-hired nanny in a remote and ultra-modern 'smart house' with all functions capable of being monitored or adjusted remotely.  That's creepy enough. But then the parents leave and the noises begin.  

There's more than an echo of James's supremely chilling Turn of the Screw--and that's good. But the several twists that the plot takes near the end caught me quite by surprise.  As did the ending. A very good read, indeed.

In Lock Every Door, the damsel is a down-on-her-luck New Yorker who's just lost her boyfriend and her apartment. When she sees an ad for a job apartment-sitting at a venerable New York landmark, she's hooked. And when she sees the luxury apartment and hears what the salary is, she thinks it must be too good to be true. And it is, no surprise.

It's a bit like Rosemary's Baby but then it's not. I had guessed at what was wrong with this setup well before all became clear. But it was a fun quick read.

The next two fall into the dysfunctional family/Romeo and Juliet story category. Both were well written and kept me turning pages. 

Ask Again, Yes gives us two families linked by a tragedy. There is mental illness, forbidden love, and an abundance of compassion for the human condition. I liked these people.

The Wild Game, on the other hand, kind of creeped me out. It's a memoir and the author recounts how when she was fourteen, her mother made her a confidante and co-conspirator in the affair she was conducting with her husband's best friend.

This went on for years, long enough for the narrator to grow up and fall in love with the son of her mother's lover. Yes, families can be complicated.  Imagine the holidays.

Ick factor aside (how could the mother do that to her daughter?) it was another good read.

Muted Hues

More Nostalgia

Every now and then I am visited with a feeling of great happiness at being in just the right place and doing just the right thing at just the right time.  Saturday was like that.

Our older son was coming up for an early celebration of John's upcoming birthday and I was in the kitchen, making a chocolate cake. It was raining gently--a much needed rain-- and the warmth of the stove was welcome.

And I was using my mother's flour sifter and my grandmother's cake racks. Like the letter I posted about on Saturday, it was a living connection across the years.

Later, there was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and salad--an archetypal family meal.

Josie showed off for her uncle and later, after she and her mama had gone home, Justin returned and the brothers talked late into the night. 

And the cake was great, if I do say it myself.

Thankful

A Letter from My Great Great Grandmother

October is a month of memories and honoring ancestors--culminating in Halloween, and All Souls Day. So it was particularly fitting that I should get an email from a cousin (a second cousin, I think--his grandmother was my grandfather's sister) in Alabama, reminding me of a previous email chat about mutual forebears and my promise to look for an old letter I remembered.  

I had known right where it was-- but humidity had swollen the drawer shut and I couldn't open it. And then I forgot the whole conversation. So his recent email, and the past months of dry weather, sent me to the bottom drawer and I found the letter!

It's nothing momentous -- just her reply to an invitation to visit my newly married grandfather and some information regarding the family. The main thing I'd remembered about it was the mention of people who left South Carolina "during the trouble with the Indians." 

But now here's 73 year old Celia Emily saying "as I grow older I feel the need of staying home." And suddenly she's real and speaking to me across the years. (I'm 76 and sometimes feel the same.) She mentions that she's in poor health, but according to family records, she lived another six years. 

I hope that Huborn and Ruby made several trips to see her during those years -- maybe taking the baby who would become my mother with them.

It wasn't far.

Letter to Victor Huborn Northcutt signed Granmother Northcutt  (Celia Emily Mason Northcutt- m. John Henry Northcutt, May 11, 1865 Old Sparta-near Evergreen, AL)

                             ~~~

Envelope is addressed:  Mr. V.H. Northcutt, Troy, Ala.

Postmark Evergreen, Ala. Jan. 20, 1917 A two-cent stamp

                                   ~~~

Letter to Victor Huborn Northcutt signed Granmother Northcutt  (Celia Emily Mason Northcutt- m. John Henry Northcutt, May 11, 1865 Old Sparta-near Evergreen, AL)

                             ~~~

Envelope is addressed:  Mr. V.H. Northcutt, Troy, Ala.

Postmark Evergreen, Ala. Jan. 20, 1917 A two-cent stamp

                                   ~~~

                                      Jan 20

Dear Huborn

Just a few lines to thank you for your invitation to visit you. There is nothing I would enjoy more if my health would admit  I no I would have a pleasant time with you and Ruby.. but as I grow older I feel the need of staying at home My health is very bad this winter—now those records I am send you as to the best of my memory  I doe not remember dates

Now if this is not satisfactory pleas let me no and excuse all eares.

Full of love for you bothe, as ever

Granmother Northcutt

                                  ~~~~

ENCLOSED NOTES

Your grandfather J.H. Northcutt was the son of W.M. Northcutt who came with his father J.W. Northcutt from South Carolina and settled in Butter (Butler?) Co. Ala. do not remember the date J.W. Northcutt was a Methodist preacher

Your great grandmother Northcutt was a Miss Nancy Morris of Ahoobuta (?) Miss. who died when your grandfather was born. don’t know her parents.

Your great grandfather Benjamin Mason came to Ala with his father Peter Mason from Savannah, Ga. do not remember their dates

Your great grandmother Mason was Miss Margaret Mancil Came from South Carolina with her father William Mancil, during the trouble with the Indians. do not remember these dates. 

Less

A more-or-less failed novelist embarks on a round-the-world tour, fulfilling invitations to strange literary events--all to avoid the wedding of his ex-boyfriend. Not exactly Eat, Pray, Love--it doesn't take itself so seriously--and consequently, I really enjoyed it.

Arthur Less is a charming, if hapless, creation. An American abroad, teetering on the brink of fifty, and in search of love--or something like it, his globe-trotting escape--Mexic0, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India, Japan--is human comedy at its best.

Cheerfully recommended.

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman

I haven't read many mysteries recently--at some point they all began to seem the same. But I was blown away by Lippman's recent standalone. 

Set in Baltimore of 1966, it's a period piece with lots to say about the racial and sexual politics of the time. Maddie, looking for a way out of a boring marriage, follows a hunch and leads the police to the body of a missing child. 

Energized by this, she seeks a job on the afternoon newspaper, begins to look into  into the murder of the young girl, and then  turns her attention to an unsolved crime, hoping for a scoop that will establish her as a real reporter. The newspaper culture of the time is cleverly portrayed, as are the city of Baltimore and its people.

If that's all there was to the story,  Lady in the Lake would be just another predictable amateur sleuth novel and I would probably not be writing this. Lippman's exceptional prose and her use of a wide cast of fully realized characters to tell the story sets it apart. That and some amazing twists and turns, as well as as the reality of the consequences of Maddie's sleuthing.

Highly recommended -- but don't take my word for it--read what Stephen King said HERE.

Mid-October

Josie Is Hard at It

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

I was curious to see how Atwood handled a return to Gilead after so much time, a television series, and a world that is slipping ever nearer to the sanctimonious evil of her authoritarian dystopia.

Her choice of three narrators--the daughter of a high-ranking Commander, a second girl who grew up in Canada with parents who deplored Gilead's policies, and the hated Aunt Lydia, one of the chief enforcers of Gilead's female related laws,  proved an excellent means of telling us more about the inner working of this repugnant society.

It's been quite a few years since I read The Handmaid's Tale, and I've not watched the television series. So I was pleased to learn more--Atwood's world(society)-building skills are top notch and I was entranced by the first part of the novel. The early scene where professional women are rounded up and discover that they have been stripped of all rights was chilling, partially because in the present political climate, it doesn't seem impossible.

As the woman who will become Aunt Lydia thinks: Stupid, stupid, stupid: I'd believed all that claptrap about life, liberty, democracy, and the rights of the individual . . .I'd depended on that, as if on a magic charm. . .

There's been a coup, here in the United States . . .Any forced change in leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition. The opposition is led by the educated, so the educated are the first to be eliminated. . .

I see such parallels with our current regime. The educated are not being rounded up, not yet, but they are being systematically devalued with cries of fake news and elitism. Not to mention 45*'s choices for his administration where actual knowledge is trumped by loyalty to the Orange One.

Gilead's society continues to have chilling similarities to the religious right's vision for the US and I found that part of the book quite compelling. I also liked learning Aunt Lydia's full story.

But once the setup of the story was complete--and it's an interesting, well thought out setup--the plot turned a bit melodramatic, like a well done Young Adult thriller. It also seemed rushed. Not bad --but not as compelling as the the earlier part of the novel--or as the previous novel.

Still, I'd heartily recommend The Testaments to anyone who enjoyed The Handmaid's Tale. It's satisfying to learn more and to come to a tying up of loose ends.

Those of you who've read it, what did you think? 

Hunter's Moon

Pigeon Thoughts