valeriesbookofme

  I currently have several memoirs in my stack of books. I am in the process of reading/listening to three and it occurred to me lately, why are memoirs so popular?  When I am listening to Sally Field's "In Pieces", part of me thinks "Really, why is she talking about this? Am I interested in her descriptions of her grandmother's house in Pasadena or her relationship to her father?" And yet, even in questioning this in my mind, I am actually drawn into her story, I am having a (albeit one way) conversation, I am thinking, thinking, thinking.  Last night I started reading Nina Totenberg's "Dinners With Ruth", a memoir not only about her long friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but also, she writes, about women's friendships and how sustaining they are. Ah yes, bittersweet words for me. My friendships with women have literally saved my life over the years. And I still have them but at such a distance that we can't just phone each other up...

 I never imagined I would live in Arizona. Never knew about Arizona really. I knew it had dude ranches, courtesy of an old book I read as an adolescent, a Trixie Belden mystery set in Arizona. But living in eastern Canada in the 1950s through mid 1970s, the West, especially the US West, was more about cowboys than anything else. Laurie and I went to a dude ranch in Tucson in 1996 and, to be honest, I wasn’t really enthralled by the area. California was far more glamorous. So, in terms of my location right now, well, I never would have imagined either living in Arizona or even wanting to.  But one of the things I often wish I had done—much as I am glad to be where I am, doing what I am, having the people around me that I have—is to have planned more when I was younger. It’s not that I didn’t have friends who had plans. I had a friend who wanted to be a doctor, some teachers, nurses, one friend wanted to be a nun, other friends who were determined to go to university for the exp...

Another one of my Storyworth questions. I  could take this question to mean so many things: the farthest I have ever traveled in one plane ride? In one trip over a period of so many days? It’s an interesting and fun question so I have decided to list mileages for the vacation trips that involved air travel. The first flight I ever took was when I was 17, when my dad and I visited my sister who was living just outside New York City. I did that trip several times though so won’t include each individual occurrence. Oh, and I am only going to calculate the outgoing miles; most of the time I returned [smile]. Montreal to Freeport, Bahamas. I think it was in 1972? Flight distance 1342 miles, flight time about 3.5 hours. A week’s beach vacation with a friend, a cheap and cheerful Air Canada sun ‘n fun holiday. Montreal to Merida, Mexico, maybe 1973 (I am quite fuzzy about dates in the years after I left university full time): 1918 miles but I assume that would mean by direct flight. When ...

Two weeks ago I received this question in my daughter's "52 Questions about you" app she sent me for my birthday. Finally came up with a response. Oh gosh, that’s the kind of question that we used to laugh about. “Meaning of life”? Wasn’t there a Monty Python movie about that? (Yes there was.) I’ve actually had this post hanging around for a couple of weeks trying to figure out how to answer this. I’ve decided in the end to muse about one of Wikipedia’s definitions of meaning of life: What is the purpose of existence? Which can still be a fairly deep question but here goes. As I experience my 80th decade (yep, we start at age 0, not at age 10; at 10 we already have completed our first decade) I look at the “purpose of my existence” in terms of past, present and future. With all that I have written about my past publicly and privately, with all that I have said to people and with all the interactions I have had with family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers and sometimes ...

  The first week of 2023 has ended with shootings in the US. No surprise there but the two separate shootings--one, a family of five children and three adults in Utah, and the other, the shooting of a first grade teacher by her 6 yo pupil--have caused me great thought about where I would/could stand. In the first, this family was Mormon. The first reports that came out talked about a "wonderful" family in a "close knit" community. This description sent shivers down my back. Not that long ago, we had a case in our own Mormon community about a father who sexually abused his minor female children for four years and was only caught by the FBI when pornographic videos were reported by someone in Australia! And then it turned out that our church here had known about the abuse but their solution had been to kick the man out of the church. In response to criticism, they defended themselves by saying they had suggested to the mother that she take her children out of the hous...

  Richard really wasn't thrilled about going to Windsor despite my assurances that it was the kind of English town with old buildings that he would enjoy seeing and that there would be plenty of places to eat. As I wrote in my earlier post, our hotel at Heathrow certainly doesn't inspire the taste buds, nor is there anything to do around it. Especially not in the pouring rain. So we trudged out in the rain at around 10:00 a.m. and only had to wait about 5 minutes for a bus to the station at Hayes where we caught an Elizabeth Line train to Windsor & Eton. It's the "newest" line on the Underground system although a young man I was chatting to in the carriage said it had taken years to complete. It's very nice though and when we arrived at Windsor & Eton station Richard was charmed. Especially as we were able to find a table at Bill's Restaurant right in the station, which served probably the best breakfast we've had since we've been in London...

  As a friend of mine remarked after reading my blog and remembering her own experiences sleeping at an airport one long ago Christmas: “Just keep thinking of it as an adventure.” An adventure testing what stamina we have left  in our elder years for sure. At least we haven’t slept at an airport (so far, we still have tomorrow to get through.)  I didn’t see Elizabeth at King’s Cross yesterday. After writing my blog and taking a shower, I realized I was not feeling up to socializing. For Elizabeth’s sake as much as mine. I think Elizabeth might have been secretly relieved, she replied that we had looked a bit like the Marley brothers’ ghosts when she saw us on Wednesday—sans clanking chains but I certainly felt like I was dragging as did Richard. I was all for hanging out at the hotel all day but after eating what the hotel had to offer in the way of breakfast, Richard said he was up for going back to Piccadilly and revisiting Hatchard’s for reading material. So we travele...