Things I Love
- my local library
- freshly picked summer corn
- knitting
- the Nero Wolfe mysteries
- frogs and toads
- kit houses
- West Virginia glassware
- Etruscan art
- old Virginia roads
- farm-made goat cheese
- going barefoot
- volvelles and moving charts
- tea
- old time radio
- maps
- my critter cam
- summer thunderstorms
- small town independent hardware stores
- fruit trees
- the cat dynamics of this neighborhood
- octopodoi
- pomegranates
- road trips
- oranges
- unpasteurized cider
- heist movies
- books I don't want to throw at the wall
Music I Can't Stop Listening To
- Etta James
- Ashley McBryde (particularly Lindeville)
- Ashley Monroe
- Aretha's The Delta Meets Detroit
- Brandy Clark
- Nina Simone
- Amanda Shires & Bobbie Nelson's Loving You
- Cassandra Wilson's Blue Light Til Dawn
Books I Really Liked
- The Riddle of the Labyrinth (Margalit Fox)
- My Life in France (Julia Child, with Alex Prud'homme)
- Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56 (Anne Appelbaum)
- No Idle Hands: A Social History of American Knitting (Anne MacDonald)
- Her Country (Marissa Moss)
- The Hidden Legacy and Innkeeper series (Ilona Andrews)
On social media
I have, like many of my contemporaries, mixed feelings about social media, and yet I (have) used the most common varieties regularly. The current state of social media is a potpourri of bad decisions, resulting in aging and disgruntled audiences and a fragmentation and disintegration of communities.
So roughly: twitter is a festering cesspool with an unfortunate rebrand and diminishing usability -- but it is still the place for college basketball - and increasingly not the place for hyperlocal updates. All of my communities scattered to different alternatives, and I don't have time for 5 more Social Media sites. I very occassionally solicit book recommendations and post pictures from my critter cam and roadtrips to facebook (I prefer to have a context for folks on facebook - family, classmates, former coworkers, friends, witty internet pals, as opposed to total strangers.) I was shamed into creating an instagram account a few years back that I promptly ignored for a while. I do have a g+ account, but come on! I never check it because I don't work at Google and I have no need for hangouts.
Personal Heroes and Role Models
- Lady Catherine DeBurgh
- Arnold Horshack
- Zsa-Zsa Gabor
- Livia
- Bill MacNeil
- Ted Baxter
- GOB
Jane Austen Novels Ranked by Preference
- Persuasion
- Pride and Prejudice
- Emma
- Sense and Sensibility
- Mansfield Park
- Northanger Abbey
Best Pie Flavors
- Apple Pie
- Lemon Meringue Pie
- Key Lime Pie
- Pear & Cranberry Almond Pie
- Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
Five Facts About Me
- I was once stranded on a desert island.
- I need my own Archie Goodwin. Or Sol Panzer. Either'd be good.
- My favorite place in Australia is the rock reefs in front of the town center of Colloroy Beach.
- I once painted my primary bathroom bright bright orange.
- My first email address was a bitnet address.