A few more books read

Retirement Homes are Murder, by Mike Befeler. I thought this might be a book based on Alzheimer's, but it really isn't. The premise is that a 70+ guy who has just moved into a retirement home can't remember anything that happened in the last five years or so once he goes to sleep. He gets involved in a trying to solve a murder and has to reset his memory every morning. It's a clever premise and this light diversion is well done. A quick read, but fun. Set in Hawaii, and it does have a good sense of place.

I'm Not Scared, by Niccolo Ammaniti. The book opens with a sense of foreboding associated with corn fields. Told from the perspective of the son of incompetent kidnappers, it has a tone of dislocation as the 10 year old main character, Michele, finds the kidnapped boy and figures out what's happening from overhearing the adults. Although the story line is frightening and the author seems to be trying for a sense of menace, the book wasn't totally convincing as the "thriller" it claims to be.

The Double Bind, by Chris Bohjalian. The writing was nothing special, but it was not intrusive to the story. The story, connecting an assaulted woman with the homeless and with The Great Gatsby, was very complex and the twists and turns really kept me reading. Big twist at the end still has me thinking; I'm not sure the author played fair about that.

Tuxedo Park Mystery

I just finished another cozy mystery...this time set in Tuxedo Park: Dying for Mercy, by Mary Jane Clark. It was fun to be able to see so many of the locations in my mind as I was reading, and to imagine which real places the author was referring to with fabricated names. This was a mystery that had to be set in Tuxedo Park, or a place like it (are there any other places like it?). The story was plot-driven, and Tuxedo Park was as much a character as any of the people were. While the writing was pedestrian, it didn't get in the way of the story, a requirement for something non-literary like this. All in all, it was an enjoyable afternoon's read.

100th Birthday

Can you believe I actually went to Colorado for my grandmother's 100th birthday and forgot a camera? Well, it happened, but fortunately my family came through with many cameras and many photos. This picture of G and me with Gmom was taken just after she had the surprise of arriving at the party room and seeing all of her family there from across the country. Fortunately, her doctor was in the room! We all cried a few tears, I think, but we shared in the comfort of having everyone together. It was a bit of a reunion -- the first time all my sibs had been together since Dad's 75th.

Cozy Mysteries

In preparation for a trip to Colorado Springs for my grandmother's 100th birthday party, I decided to read some mysteries set in that town. It seems as though all those mysteries were cozy, leading to other cozies as well. So in the last month, I've read a few of these non-literary mysteries. Those set smack in Colorado Springs were Throw Darts at a Cheesecake by Denise Dietz and A Real Basket Case by Beth Groundwater. The former is set in a diet club and the latter in a health club, and both really could have been anywhere. Glancing references to places in Colorado Springs were all that set these books there -- the sense of place was decidely lacking in both books. A book with a little more sense of place, although that place is a fictional town outside of the Springs, is Irrational Numbers by Robert Spiller. At least this one felt like it was "out west," and I have to admit I was partial to the math teacher sleuth. Another cozy set in Colorado was really a romance novel, once again one with such a generic setting that it could have been anywhere: A Dying Art by Nageeb Davis. This one had an art teacher as the sleuth and, of course, she fell in love with the policeman just as the diet group leader in Dietz's book did. One more cozy I read during this binge of mediocre mysteries was L. C. Hayden's Why
Casey Had to Die. That one made my list because of a geocaching connection, and indeed, at around page 200 there was a geocache involved. The improbable turns of events in this book brought it down a couple of notches, though. At this point, I'm really looking forward to reading something with a little more depth.

Learning-Focused Schools

I'm in Connecticut at a conference called "Learning-Focused Schools: Consulting, Collaborating & Coaching for Professional Excellence." As I was headed down for dinner from my hotel room, I ran into someone from another conference who asked what this conference was about. I struggled for a moment, and then decided that it was about communication. That doesn't fully represent it, but it's the best short description I can come up with. There are 30 of us at this weeklong summer institute, and we're really digging into how to mentor new teachers. We've spent the last two days talking about how to have intentional, focused conversations with our faculty. The emphasis here is on one-on-one conversations, but I'm constantly thinking about how to expand this to group discussions -- like those with the Young Professionals Group and with the Academic Council. The conference presenters have a few major constructs that we're learning -- sort of contexts for discussion. One of these examines mentor-protege relationships along a continuum from consultation through collaboration to coaching. Another deals with paraphrasing in focused conversations, especially using paraphrasing to shift the level of conversations. Both of these are valuable lenses through which to view interactions, but the shifting of discussions through paraphrasing seems as though it will be especially helpful with the group meetings I lead. I'm looking forward to the rest of the week, and to bringing some of these ideas back to TPS. In the meantime, tomorrow's a shortened day of conference so that we can get outside -- I'm planning on some geocaching in this beautiful weather.

Curb Appeal

You know that house...the one on the block whose yard is the prettiest? Flowers blooming at the right times so that a perfectly complementary blend of colors shows its best side to the world all summer long? Well, that was our house when we bought it. The gardens were beautiful, and it was clear to us, even without the reminders from the seller at the closing, that they had been lovingly planted and tended. That first summer, as things grew in without too much weed cover, the yard was indeed a showpiece and we were proud of it in spite of the fact that we could take no credit whatsoever. Summer two rolls around. You know that house...the one with the messiest yard on the block? Where the weeds are as high as the flowers and it looks as though the people who live in the house may have moved on and forgotten the garden? That was now our house -- how on earth did we go from the prettiest to the ugliest in one year? It turns out that it's a lot easier to maintain a garden when one is retired (as the previous owner was) than it is when one is working 12 hour days (guess who?). And I'm allergic to anything with pollen, and neither my husband nor I could recognize the difference between a weed or what should be in the garden until it had bloomed. We felt awful about pulling plants, because half the time we pulled what we should have left and left what we should have pulled. Fast forward to the third summer...this summer. Clearly the flowers weren't for us, but we couldn't just leave the terraced gardens a mess. So we bit the bullet, pulled nearly everything, and planted non-flowering evergreens that the deer don't eat (junipers). Some nice crisp green plants with red cedar mulch -- much more our maintenance style and aesthetic. The gardens are beautiful again, but not so showy, and I feel proud that we managed this each time I drive into the driveway or walk past the gardens (stopping to pull what are now obviously weeds) as I walk the dogs. It took us three years, and we didn't end up with anything quite so glamorous as the original gardens, but now they suit us and we don't have to hide our faces in shame in the neighborhood.

Book Club

Today was Book Club; the book under discussion was The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz. Everyone was glad they read it, although some felt disconnected from the characters while others (myself included) felt that the distance in the writing was representative of the storyline. The book gave great insight into the role of the princess in the Japanese Imperial Court and how difficult it is for a "real" woman to cross the moat into that life. The book was especially interesting, since it relates to the current princess' situation. Across the board, though, we felt the ending was unrealistic. Next up: The Double Bind, by Chris Bohjalian. Since there's a connection to The Great Gatsby, I may have to reread that--it's been quite a few years!