book review: “N is for Noose”…

… by Sue Grafton, inventor of Kinsey Millhone, fictitious private investigator. Grafton hit upon the idea of using the sequential letters of the alphabet to generate the titles of the numerous books written with the lead character living in southern California, getting herself into various scrapes in the course of her employment. After becoming an orphan at age five when her parents were killed in an auto accident, and being raised by a no-nonsense aunt, Millhone applies for training to become a police officer. Eventually disillusioned, and after a short stint of working for an insurance company as an investigator, Millhone decides to become self-employed, developing skills to work as a PI after fulfilling licensing requirements.

Living in the fictitious town of Santa Teresa near the Pacific coast, Millhone rents a small apartment from a friend, who is a retired baker. Currently, she has taken an assignment working for a woman whose husband, in law enforcement, recently died. In a small remote town up in the mountains, miles from her comfortable space and friendly faces. Where she is a stranger, and all the townspeople are suspicious of an interloper. The wife is not satisfied with the official autopsy/claim his death was ‘natural’ and feels there must be details she insists upon knowing. The plot thickens when the townspeople refuse to share information as Millhone asks questions, reveal personal data about the dead man and circumstances surrounding his last days.

Grafton writes in a way that provides small details guaranteed to leave the reader with a feeling of being ‘unsettled’, dark overcast days, slick icy roads, being followed by questionable vehicles, breaking-and-entering in Millhone’s personal space, cold icy winds and spitting snowflakes. Little things that make the reader look over a shoulder, anxiously wanting to pull a collar up high around the neck for warmth, protection, safety. Creepers who follow along the street at a slow rate, keeping a close watch, but not near enough to identify…

Concerned for her own safety, and nagging paranoia about the effects those people who seemed to be protected by law enforcement could have on others. She is accosted in her motel room, leaving little doubt she is being watched and warned, with the ones that should be willing to protect seemingly doubtful of her motives. Attempting to gain the support of the police, they seem to close ranks and be unwilling to provide the support needed to resolve the problem.

The reference to ‘noose’ in the plot:how two men were killed, found in a remote wooded area with ropes around their necks, the other end tied to a rock that was thrown over a tree branch, causing the victims to strangle.

book review: “Silence”…

… by Sue Grafton. The author of the ‘alphabet’ series, a set of 27 books, all identified by the sequential letters of the alphabet as the author assembled the story line for her plot. With the lead character a fictitious female private who lives in the fictitious town on Santa Teresa in southern California. After working with law enforcement for several years, then as an investigator for an insurance company, Kinsey Millhone chooses to go into business for herself. Fulfilling the requirements to become a PI, fully licensed and independent.

The main character, consistently present through out the series is Kinsey Millhone, self-employed as a private investigator. Living in a fictitious town in southern California:close enough to the Pacific that she can go for three mile run along the beach front. With fictitious neighbors, friends, geography and a few truisms thrown in to anchor the stories. Millhone’s parents died when she was a small child, causing her to be the ward of an unmarried aunt. After a aw enforcement, and working an investigator for an insurance company, she apprentices herself to qualify as PI.

In the “S” book, she is hired to investigate the disappearance of a woman, Violet, who vanished decades ago. Talking to family, friends, neighbors, police she becomes convinced of foul play. Violet’s daughter, seeking closure, struggles with the idea that she was abandoned, although the title of the book comes from the idea that the mother just ran off, simply vanished, leaving no trace, no note, never making an effort to reconnect, after being gifted a new automobile. The unlikely discovery of where that vehicle might be found leads to someone thinking Millhone needs to be silenced as well….

book review: “The Mother in Law” …

… by Sally Hepworth. After reading a different publication, more requested from the local library. this work of fiction published in 2019. Others by this author include: “The Family Next Door”, “The Mother’s Promise”, “The Things We Keep”, a tome with a French title. As well as another read, reviewed and reported here about three generations of midwives.

Lucy and Oliver are a young couple with three small children. Oliver’s parents are Diana and Tom. The older couple are well established in their community: socially, financially, respected. Diana manages a nonprofit that helps immigrant women who come into Australia to escape hardships, usually pregnant, often with small children but without the support system and caregivers necessary to manage childbirth, delivery, caring for infants and youngsters. Diana is a hard woman to love: opinionated, focused, unbending in her convictions. When approached by family members for support, she is dis-inclined to prop others up, desiring they learn to depend on their own wisdom, council, resources. This creates constant discord: animosity within family.

Diana’s daughter Nettie is infertile, has been trying for years to conceive, start a family. Nettie has struggled financially with the constant emotional and financial expense, and resentful that her mother has the resources and refuses to support her efforts. Much emotional and psychological turmoil going on here.

The author fleshed out the characters well: interesting story line with well-developed people that have busy lives. The story is told well, with the individuals interacting in daily lives, sharing personal histories with conversations that sound remarkably like we all have. Stories and experiences from average lives in normal households.

Suddenly: Diana is dead. Questions abound. Diana might be a suicide. Diana’s death might be murder. Diana claimed to have cancer. Diana had become a member of an ‘assisted suicide’ group. Evidence collected by law enforcement is inconclusive. Family members are questioned….

rescued canines ..

… found in pet shelters. Amazing pups who obviously really want to be useful, just need someone to show them what their job is! Taught by people who help the animals develop the ability to locate the hidden nests where sea turtles lay eggs on the sandy beaches just above the shore line. The female sea turtles’ reproductive task completed, after covering the holes they dig with their flippers, they then laboriously return to the salty ocean. Abandoning the dozens of small leathery eggs and disappear back into the deep water.

The canines trained for this work were first seen in an online article. Passed along as a an unusual way for those often neglected, throw-away, neglected dogs to become useful: and don’t we ALL want to feel like we were made for a purpose? Media outlets in recent years have promoted the dangers to sea turtles in fishing nets, well as land-baseed predators, like un-leashed dogs, coyotes, humans, that might up the nests and consume eggs before they mature to hatch. Plus dangers once those tiny creatures do get to the waterline, when so few survive to maturity and reproduce. And then there is climate change across the planet, which many deny as bunkum.

The world is right there at your fingertips when consulting Dr. Google: One story found in ‘People’ magazine, and another came from ‘National Geographic’, considered a well-established, reliably documented source. Such an unusual and unique approach, people who have funding to do environmental and conservation work on this particular challenge of supporting wild-life are writing research articles about the success of the task.

The reports indicated the dogs could be trained to identify the residual odor left behind when the sea turtles deposit their eggs after digging nesting holes in beach sand. This process, when done by the trained canines is not fool-proof, but far quicker and with much better results than the tedious efforts produced when humans are doing the same work, searching on two (human) feet at a much lower pace. Numbers quoted in the article for a dog named Dory on the Atlantic coast in Florida completes tasks consistently.

This is Magpie, a mixed breed rescue. Working the beaches of South Padre Island on the Texas coast.

Magpie, seen above in the article from ‘People’ magazine was selected from a number of rescues, and trained with grant funding from Tito’s Vodka. The sea turtle breeding season starts in April and lasts through September, with Magpie starting her ‘job’ as soon as she was trained: finding many more nests in that time period than the humans had previously discovered. Trainers expect she will also help with locating injured turtles during the ‘off season’ when not detecting the ‘chambers’ filled with eggs below the sand. The turtles, after completing the task of laying eggs, often cover the holes they dig so effectively they are often invisible to humans, but the scent easily found by the trained dogs.

book review: “Half-broke Horses”…

…by Jeanette Walls. This author also wrote a book that has been on New York Times best seller list for a number of years, a memoir of her growing up years “The Glass Castle”. Other published narratives have been requested from the library as this book was so well written, such a fascinating tale.

The story here told from the first person point of view, is about her grandmother: Lily Casey Smith. Her family lived in west Texas, on ranch land that was inhospitable, infertile dry, not welcoming to crop farming or livestock. Her family consisted of parents, and two siblings. The family first lived in a sod house, dug into the creek bank, made of blocks of grass dug up from the near by open pasture land. Then went to an abandoned wood frame house nearby, took the two room shack apart and rebuilt, with reclaimed wood, scarce in a place with very few trees, little timber for construction.

The story opens with Lily forcing the younger siblings to climb a tree when she believes a flash food is imminent, too far away to return home.. Spending the entire night wrapped around the limbs and trunk of the tree before they return to their parents. She worked with her dad to train carriage horses they would sell as a matched pair,in the late 1800’s, she learned self-sufficiency, as would any youth of that era. From a very young age, parents encouraged her independence: from tasks a simple as gathering eggs, some for family use ,others taken to a nearby general store (taking the eggs for the shop owner who bought for a penny apiece and resold for two cents.)

Her parents sent her to a Catholic boarding school, where she excelled: a capable student, finding life there with the nuns one of ease compared to the hardships of ranch life. The Mother Superior cautioned her than the only options for educated woman were secretarial, nursing, or teaching if she did not marry. Her dad failed to pay tuition, causing her return to the ranch. Her only option, but she wanted more from life than the drudgery of hard work from before dawn to dark, training horses with her dad and the struggle of life in bone-dry, infertile ranching.

As a teenager, industrious Lily sought employment, desiring paying work after years on the ranch where she was taking more and more responsibility. Home schooled, she applied for and got a position as a teacher: a tiny one room school in Arizona, five hundred miles away from the east TX home. No housing, no promise of permanent work, she got on her pony and rode. Alone, camping out at night under the stars. A good, capable teacher, her supervisor assured her he could find more positions. Deciding she should attempt a college,to get a teaching degree she told her famly she was moving to Chicago. She met a young man, married, they lived in a boarding house, where she found out her husband was a bigamist.

Another of the books read soon after cognitive skills and comprehension began to return following weeks of inertia as an inpatient in the local hospital, then rehab program. The author wrote beautifully, fascinating tales of her life and family experience, as she was growing up as well as lives of the interesting characters she encountered throughout her travels.

small crisis …

… that could have easily become major if not for having a ‘back up’ plan. Someone went to a near-by chain drug-store/pharmacy after discovering reading glasses were advertised on sale and came in the door with a pair of eye-glasses for everyone! Not one to readily pass up a bargain, after years of being trained to shop the BOGO adv. at the nearby supermarket: hard to walk past a bargain!

People who had been cautioned that vision starts to decline when your eyeballs have a birthday after four decades cannot live in denial for long. Unable to read the small print on the pill bottle. No longer, even with squinting or standing right next to the light source able to decipher the font on back of the carton.

To make facing the reality of that slippery slope, the decline continues. A person can go into the store, stand at the rack, look at the choices, discern the necessity for magnification by studying the eye chart and make a decision. Walk to the cashier and pay for your new ‘readers’. Only to discover over time the magnification is insufficient. You are going to need something a little stronger to read the daily hints for the crossword puzzle printed in the newspaper. Bumping up from 1.5 to 2.00, then sadly- whatever comes next as you find you cannot recall which room you left those readers in…

These are off the rack at chain drug store. Used in a pinch when the lens fell out of the prescription ones

‘plate it forward’, part 3 …

… photos from the fund-raiser dinner. All has not been finalized as far as expenses go, a few details left to be completed. But overall – a great success. The fact that there was considerable corporate support with organizations willing to underwrite tables, place settings for eight guests to enjoy the excellent catered meal prepared by a professional chef. More tables sold to guests than the previous year, as it has consistently grown in community support over the time.

Green salads served at each place setting, ready for guests to arrive, enjoy.
In small clear glass vases, the arrangements were given away to attendees following the event.
Charcuterie platters set up near the entrance to welcome guests for tasty bites.

The flowers came from the Tennessee Wholesale Florist off McCallie Ave.,where the Y is permitted to purchase the fresh cut bunches without paying an extra fee/tax as a non-profit organization. Looking at the goods a couple of weeks ago, shopping what was in stock days in advance is not the best way to get the job done. There is no way to know what they will have on hand when it is actually needed. Just an educated guess, as it seems likely most wholesalers will only be getting what is being shipped from the growers in central America where there are no seasons.

Some of the large ten stem bunches of blooms were not of the quality the wholesale people wanted to sell. Meaning what we had hoped to use to fill the small glass vases was not available – having to substitute other blooms instead. Hoping for some small chrysanthemums in the yellow and white color theme, but they were just not satisfactory. Yellow pixie carnations, small yellow blooms, eucalyptus foliage, leather leaf fern. Foolish to spend funds on something not fresh and usable – so others were used instead: the tiny but fragrant wax flowers, and other small blooms that would fill out the containers.

A favorite to add interesting texture is the hypericum berries: available in a dark red/russet, or a creamy yellow or the off white that you see here. Nice long stems that can add height to a large arrangement if need be, or just to provide the eye-catching shape that is such a contrast from the flowers and foliage. Plus: you cannot help but notice the slices of fresh lemon. Not sure if they actually provided any aroma once the finished arrangements were placed on the dinner tables – but you have to admit – a pretty cute/clever idea!

book review: “A Place in Time”…

… by highly lauded and respected, noted southern regional author Wendell Berry. According to research, Berry has published over fifty books, although some appear to be reprints of articles in other media, as well as anthologies that are collections of short tales of his creative mind. Consisting of local residents and relatives, friends, neighbors, business people, farmworkers, all beautifully developed people from an invented community over decades of keeping company with these families who lived inside his head before landing on a manuscript and coming to life in his books.

The book includes a couple of hand-drawn maps, to show where the community has expanded over the years, even though it only exists in the mind of the author. With farms, homesteads, commercial property along the edge of the river. The small tributaries that flow off the hills where people have built homes, barns, raise livestock as well as families, with runoff feeding into the creeks, into the wider navigable water way. Naming established families and their connections as young people marry, settle down, reproduce, sharing lives together, watching generations grow, relocate, return and often planted in the property surrounding the churches they attend.

I have read another of the Berry books: the story of Jayber Crow as his history is relayed. Quite entertaining. More requested from the local library collection. For someone with a library card that provides access to the PINES system in Georgia, organized by UGA, the options for reading more Berry tales are almost limitless…

‘plate it forward’, part 2…

.. annual fund-raiser dinner. If everyone who has purchased a meal shows up, there will be a good crowd. Delicious food, amenable company, interesting speakers who will share first-hand information about the impact the branch has across the community. This branch of the YMCA is non-traditional, not what most expect when thinking of the Y: no exercise equipment, yoga classes, but focused on community outreach. This facility provides educational programs for youths and adults. Teaching kids basic meal prep and nutrition, and providing adults in cardiac care programs with instruction health eating, recipes, short cuts to making good food easy. There is a mobile grocery, meeting the needs of the often under-served in the Chattanooga area.

The J. A.Henry YMCA operates a number of outreach programs in the area. In Chattanooga/Hamilton County, into north Georgia as well as neighboring areas. There is demand,even in densely populated area: where services have expanded in recent years to meet needs of youth and senior populations. A variety of opportunities have been developed over years to make this particular non-profit one that meets food challenges in non-tradition ways: a traveling market stocked with fresh seasonal produce as well as non-perishable goods.

In neighborhoods, where the distance from homes to grocery/supermarkets with fresh goods is too great for walking the area maybe referred to as ‘food desert’. With only access being convenience stores, the traveling market has a a regular, scheduled route for residents to know when to expect arrival. Without transportation, or willing neighbors/family, access to healthy, nutritious, fresh food can be challenging: the truck and Mobile Market are a valuable resource across the community.

A small grocery store housed in a downtown space where low-income/disadvantaged citizens need access to basic needs. Nutrition educational programs to support individuals in cardiac-care recovery programs, diabetes, other high-risk health concerns. Cooking classes for youth, providing education for good health/nutrition, as well as opportunities to sample new, different, unusual foods.

This once-a-year event helps fund the various programs that operate year-round meeting needs of youngsters and seniors. The fund-raising dinner began in the early 2020’s, increasing annually in scope and success.. Although the ingredients that feed teens in summer as well as after-school programs are USDA grants, there is much that the federal dollars do not cover: labor, vans that deliver goods, building maintenance, consumable goods. During that era when we were all in hiding, cautious about contamination, keeping our distance due to COVID anxiety, hoarding goods and wearing face masks.

Originally: the meal catered was delivered to the front steps and left for the recipient to open, enjoy, send a donation in support of the goals of this organization. Over time, with promotion and publicity, more awareness and advertising has helped the event to grow. Corporate sponsors purchased most of the tables, providing employees (or friends/family, co-workers) with an opportunity to enjoy a delicious catered meal, free adult beverages, socialize with friends and complete strangers, learn more about the programs that meet community needs.

This trailer, with fresh produce as well as ‘staples’ (dry goods like flour,sugar, shelf-stable ingredients) and some refrigerated products makes the rounds of the community each week. Meeting needs of neighborhoods that are often considered ‘food deserts’ at too great a distance from supermarkets for easy access to residents without transportation.

‘plate it forward’ …

… a fund-raiser dinner to benefit programs of the metro YMCA, occurring each year in the fall: late September or early October. A catered meal, with delicious food, speakers briefly telling about impact programs have within community. Invitations to participate, conversations about ways to expand and support services, celebrating success.

With decorations consisting of fresh cut flowers ordered from Tennessee Wholesale Floral company to complete centerpieces for dinner tables at a rental venue on Mcallie Ave. Decorating the round tables designed to seat eight guests, covered with fresh black linens, for the fundraiser dinner. The J.A. Henry branch of the Metro Chattanooga YMCA usually has a number of corporate sponsors who will buy the seating for attendees, then donate those same meals to employees. Or agree to return those spaces/meals the Y to fill the chairs for friends and family to enjoy a delicious meal.

Plus a number of speakers to briefly share about how this branch with community-based programs impacts their neighborhoods,schools, day care centers, churches. Including youth who are fed all summer, traveling grocery market, cooking demonstrations, healthy eating classes for diabetics and recovering cardiac-care patients. Literally thousands of young people under the age of eighteen benefit from delivery of nutritious meals over summer months when schools are not open for youth to be fed in lunch rooms: good nutrition for growing bodies and brains.

Definitely a family affair: Her sister has been doing the catering for several years. There is always two protein choices, at least two vegetables, a dressed green salad with home-made croutons, and desserts. A full meal, with options for filling or over filling a dinner plate. The actual utensils for the event, including serving ware, aare all compostable, and reclaimed to recycle by a local business.

Appetizers greet guests as they arrive: bites of finger-food sized morsels set out on trays filled with an assortment of tasty cubes and slices of cheeses. Accompanied by bites of various meats like salami, pepperoni, crackers to transport the food from the tray to mouth, delicious sweet grapes artfully arranged on charcuterie boards. Bite-sized, finger-foods, for eating with one hand, as the other holds your adult beverage. Choices of poured wines and seasonal beers donated by wholesale suppliers.

Volunteers and board members putting together the charcuterie plates of cheeses, crackers, tasty treats to whet appetites before the dinner.

The floral arrangements were my part of the contract. Two larger ones, in tall clear glass containers, plus the eighteen used on the dining tables. One of the two, filled mostly with mums and alstromeria lily stems, plus the interesting texture the little white berries of hypericum adds to the look. Sitting on the stage, below the podium where the speakers gave brief talks about the impact they have witnessed as the nonprofit meets community needs.

Those hypericum berry stems were also in the smaller vases on each table along with small yellow carnations, brightly blooming fragrant wax flowers, the wonderful aroma of eucalyptus leaves as filler, to help hold all the blooms in place. The addition of slices of fresh lemon, on small wooden skewers to finish off the centerpieces. All these colorful, small, portable fresh flowers gifted to hosts of each table as the evening’s meal and conversations ended to take home and enjoy for the next week.