Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer!
Father's Day, Summer Solstice, Pride Parade, and Puffins, too!
Summer has arrived! There’s something magical about this time of year—the longest of long lazy days surrounding the Summer Solstice. There’s promise and anticipation in the air. Having spent nearly my entire life operating inside an academic calendar—from Kindergarten through college, then twenty-five years in middle school, and now teaching retired folks at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Sierra College—I still get a rush when it’s time for school to let out for the summer. “School’s out for summer! … No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks!” It’s time for a good old-fashioned summer vacation!
Read on for puffins, book recommendations, some old backpacking pix, and in honor of Father’s Day, a quick fish story about my dad.
Puffins in Paradise! Plus Pride Parade & No Kings Since 1775
Off I flew to Boston, where I spent a week with “the kids,” my son and daughter-in-law, Dean and Marta, in their new/old house in Cambridge. (Built in the 1880s, it’s brand-new to them.) I moved into the sweet sunny room on the third floor under the eaves, the perfect guestroom.
Boston’s annual Pride Parade coincided with the No Kings March on June 14 this year. Patriots have been protesting Kings in Boston since 1775, and Boston’s Pride is always spectacular. In fact, the events also fell on the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, too, one of the first Revolutionary War battles, when the untested Continental Army valiantly battled Mad King George’s Redcoats on the Cambridge edge of town. There were celebrations and parties and music and dancing and costumes and signs and reenactments all across the city. I was so fortunate to be in town for all that over-the-top excitement!
That same afternoon, we drove north to Portland, Maine, staging ourselves for the next day’s adventure out of New Harbor, ME, to Eastern Egg Rock to see the puffins in their protected little paradise. The skies were clear, the seas calm, and the puffins plenty! What goofy-looking birds they are! They’re the cute little koala bears of birds—if koalas wore tuxedos and clown makeup and flapped their stubby wings like hummingbirds! They stood on the rocks, swam about in the water, and flew past our boat on their way to and from their tiny rock island.
“The kids” and I enjoyed several meals of delicious traditional, and not so traditional, New England seafood fare during my stay, including at Scales in Portland, ME, and Fisherman’s View in Sandwich, MA. Then—drum roll—I came down with Covid, the new “razor-blade throat” strain, and spent the rest of my vacation tucked into bed in that cozy third-floor guestroom, being waited upon and nurtured by “the kids.” Geez!
Where are you headed this summer? Somewhere exotic? Somewhere familiar?
Prideful Books
On this last day of Pride Month, I want to point you toward two excellent, but very different books, one old and one new, that I highly recommend reading.
Cleve Jones’ 2016 memoir, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement, tells his story of growing up gay in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, moving to San Francisco, finding himself, and living through the AIDS epidemic while others did not. It’s not only his life story, but the history of the Gay Rights Movement centered in San Francisco’s Castro District. Jones and I are exactly the same age, yet he knew and witnessed so much that I was oblivious to. The book is absolutely the very best memoir I have ever, ever read. I first read it back in 2016 and was both educated and moved. I cannot recommend it enough! 5***** (really, it’s off the charts)
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s women’s historical novel, Atmosphere: A Love Story, is brand spanking new, released on June 3. I loved her recent book Daisy Jones and the Six, so knew I wanted to read this when I first saw the release announcement. It’s inspired by events during the early years of NASA’s Space Shuttle era—when they first started recruiting women to be astronauts—and follows the lives of several of those women. It’s also a time before the US allowed LGBTQ Americans to serve openly in the military, which presented additional obstacles beyond simply being a woman in a man’s world. I found the combination of the excitement of “shooting for the stars,” and the struggle faced by brilliant people navigating a system that rejected them, to be fascinating and intriguing. 5*****
Force of Nature in the Wild
Be sure to let me know when your book club is going to read and discuss my adventure memoir, Force of Nature. I’m happy to join you for your discussion to answer questions and tell stories in person locally or via Zoom at a distance. Even if we can’t visit, let me know where to send your Book Club Kit and Discussion Guide.
If you’ve got photos of Force of Nature in the wild, be sure to send them to me and I’ll post them for all to see and send you one of my pretty handmade beaded bookmarks!
June’s Books
I’m still playing catch-up on my book lists, but I’ll limit myself to eight books (in addition to the two above). One speculative fiction, four historical novels, and three mystery-thrillers.
Michael Connelly is one of my favorite writers of fun detective novels. They’re all set in Southern California, often along streets and in locations I am familiar with. His Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer series are classics everyone loves. Nightshade, his newest book, introduces the reader to new characters and a new locale, Catalina Island. A detective, is banished to “paradise” for being a thorn in the side of less honest, but more powerful, LAPD officers. This is the first in a new series, and it lives up to my expectations for fast-paced action, interesting mysteries to solve, and flawed, but lovable, characters. 5*****
Gary Gerlacher’s Faulty Bloodline is another in his AJ Docker and Banshee series. Somehow, I read this out of order, it’s book #2 and he’s up to 4 or 5 now, but it doesn’t matter. Gary’s books remind me a bit of Clive Cussler’s thrillers crossed with the Superman story, where the hero, “Doc” in this case, and his sidekick Banshee, a highly trained retired police dog, are crazy brave, ridiculously lucky, and determined to save the underdog and bring the “bad guys” to justice. Faulty Bloodline is fast, fun, upbeat, and good always conquers evil! A timely read, I think. (Gary is a fellow Black Rose Writer.) 5*****
Miranda Fights by Gail Ward Olmsted is also a part of a fun series of mystery thrillers. The central character, Miranda, is a lawyer and a bit of a celeb. She’s a bit quirky, too, as are all the characters, which makes them all lovable. This time, Miranda takes on a human-trafficking ring. Plot twists are abundant, so don’t get too comfortable, as this is an edge of your seat experience. (Gail is a fellow Black Rose Writer.) 5*****
Copy Boy by Shelley Blanton-Stroud is the first in an historical fiction series set right here in the Sacramento-San Francisco area during the Great Depression. (I reread this book as I prepared to interview Shelley via Zoom in mid-June as a part of my OLLI at Sierra College monthly Author Spotlight series.) The central character, a strong-willed young woman, an “Okie,” who must disguise herself as a man to break into the “man’s world” of journalism, is adept at moving through the seedier parts of the city, while both solving mysteries and disentangling herself from family problems. 5*****
Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale does not need accolades from me—it’s considered one of her best. My book club read it this past month and will be discussing it at our next meeting over a luncheon with a French theme (I’m bringing Salade Caprese!) This historical novel is filled with strong female characters, including two sisters who take on very different roles in Nazi-occupied France in WWII. One rebellious, one traditional, neither can avoid becoming involved in the French Resistance in their fight for survival. It’s a long, luscious book filled with ordinary people doing extraordinary things. 5*****
The historical novel The Midwife’s Revolt by Jodi Daynard grabbed my attention because one of the significant side characters is none other than Abigail Adams. With my obsession for all things First Ladies, I couldn’t resist. The story is set during the Revolutionary Era in the small town of Braintree, MA. The women bade farewell to their men who have gone off to fight the British on battlefields and as statesmen. The women come together in community to valiantly maintain the farms, raise the children, and “hold down the fort” amidst intrigue and plenty of work for the midwife. It’s a fun, light read, with a mostly happy ending. (Spoiler: they win the war!) 4*****
The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick is a kick! Imagine if Elizabeth Zott from Lessons in Chemistry (by Bonnie Garmus) started a book club and the first book the “troublesome” women chose to read was Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. You can imagine the “good trouble” those bored and energetic early-Sixies housewives could get into! And they did! A great summer read. 5*****
Francis Stufford’s Light Perpetual, a speculative piece of literary fiction, has an intriguing theme and a complex braided structure, the kind of book I generally love, love, love, and parts of it I did. But overall, it didn’t touch me, move me, intrigue me the way I think the author intended. In the very first scene, based on a real event, five children are killed instantly when a bomb goes off during the Blitz in 1944 London. The rest of the book speculates on how their lives would have unfolded had they lived, and we follow them as they develop careers, marry, have children, succeed and fail. It’s a brilliant idea, but it just didn’t fulfill its promise for me. 4****
My starred ratings are a measure of how much I enjoyed a book, how it lives up to my expectations. So, light fun reads can get a 5-star rating for doing just that, while a more complex, rich novel that doesn’t reach a different level of attainment doesn’t get the 5 stars. Everything is relative!
What are you reading? What do you recommend?
June’s Book Giveaway Winners
In mid-June, I sent out an extra newsletter/blog announcing I was giving away the two books I had highlighted in the first episode of my new Auburn Community Television (ACTV) show Reading in the Wild. In addition, to celebrate my birthday, I also gave away a copy of my own adventure memoir, Force of Nature. I drew the names out of a hat. (Really, I used a random number generator, but the hat image is more fun!) Congratulations to the following winners!
Susan from Kentucky won my copy of Heartwood by Amity Gaige
Lynn from Oklahoma won my copy of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Trudie from Texas won a copy of my book, Force of Nature
I’m recording a new episode of Reading in the Wild in a couple weeks and will be highlighting two new books, Cam Torrens’ Scorched and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior. Be sure to tune in (I’ll send you the link) and if you’re interested in one of the books, enter the next drawing. Watch for a note from me.
June 2006 - Cappy & Joan’s Final Shakedown Hike Before Our Grand JMT Force of Nature Adventure
I’d forgotten I even had these photos, but discovered them recently in the recesses of my old computer files. I thought you might enjoy them. In June of 2006, Cappy and I set out for a three-day, two-night backpacking trip into Grouse Ridge Basin area of the Northern Sierra Nevada. Jane joined us for day one only, while our friend Patty came along for the whole weekend. We hiked in past Carr and Feely and Island Lakes, all the way to Glacier Lake. There was still a lot of snow on the trail, so we did a lot of “dead reckoning” on the way in. We found tiny Glacier Lake almost completely frozen over and a small stash of beer buried in the snow by some previous hikers. We set up camp at Glacier, and did day hikes out to Six Lake Basin the next day, where Cappy and Patty insisted on swimming with the icebergs! Not me!
Interesting note: My photos were taken with my brand-new Nikon digital camera. If you’ve read Force of Nature, then you know that very camera was doomed. You’ll have to admit it took really great photos!
In Honor of Father’s Day - A Fish Story
It’s 1960. I’m six years old. We’re on a family vacation at the Lair of the Golden Bear, the family camp in the Sierra Nevada operated by Cal (AKA UC Berkeley) for alumni and their families and staffed by Cal students.
A small stream flowed through the Lair. Dammed and widened into a small pond under the shade of tall trees, it was kept richly stocked with trout exclusively for young fishermen and women. Dad and I took part in an organized father-daughter fishing activity one afternoon. A good sport, Dad patiently followed the leader’s directions to guide me through the complicated task of putting a bait worm on my hook—a “night crawler” pulled from a cardboard cup of soil and worms we’d picked up at the camp store where we’d checked out my bright orange fishing pole. I wrinkled my nose, but didn’t let go when the long, pink worm wiggled and contorted each time I stabbed it with the small barbed fishhook. And I had to stab it a few times to get its long body to stay on the hook. When I’d finished, the poor thing looked like I’d tied it into a big, ugly, painful knot.
Next, Dad showed me how to get the bait and hook out into the water. The trick was to gently cast it into the pond without entangling my line with any of the dozens of other lines being tossed about by the other father-daughter pairs encircling the pond. Inexperienced young fisherwomen sent their lines flying this way and that, and lines crisscrossed first to the left, then to the right, sometimes three and four at a time. It was a bit like a circular firing squad, the result being entangled lines galore.
Miraculously, fish were actually caught despite the chaos! I yelped each time there was a tug on my line. Usually, it had just caught or been caught by another young angler. But once, the tug came from an actual fish!
Dad, seeing the tip of my pole dip dangerously toward the water, grabbed it halfway up and held it steady. “Reel it in,” he said. There was excitement in his deep voice, though not nearly as much as there was in mine.
“What do I do? Daddy, what do I do?” I squealed! I gripped the handle of the pole with my left hand and the handle of the spinner in my right. I was concentrating so hard on the fish and the pole that time seemed to stop and the other people and their noise disappeared.
“Don’t rush now. Very slowly, turn the handle this way,” Dad said, his bushy black eyebrows pulled together in concentration. Still steadying the pole for me, he put his large, free hand over mine and together we turned the handle and began to pull in my fish. After a few turns, he removed his hand, but held it close by at the ready.
When my fish began to emerge from the water, Dad helped me swing the pole to the side and bring the sparkling and wiggling trout to dry land beside us. He grabbed the line, and the fish flopped and thrashed on the ground. “Daddy, take it. Take it,” I said, pushing the pole towards my father.
“No,” he answered. “It’s your fish. You get to finish this.” His dark eyes were serious and his deep voice modulated to keep me calm.
Together, we held the wet slippery animal, while Dad worked out the hook.
I don’t remember how we transported my catch to the cleaning area or anything about that messy process, but I remember taking the cleaned fish to the back door of the Mess Hall. I remember the kitchen staff accepted my prize, wrapped it in white butcher paper, labeled the package with my name, and placed it in an oversized refrigerator.
The next morning, at breakfast in the huge, rustic mess hall, my name was called on the loudspeaker. Dad and I stood and waved from our wooden benches, and a white-aproned waiter wound his way across the room to deliver to me my own cooked catch. Head and tail still attached, its round black bead of an eye staring directly at me, my fish greeted me. Dad showed me how to pull the head, tail, and backbone out with one smooth movement.
“I’ve never had fish for breakfast,” I laughed, my fork poised.
Force of Nature!
My adventure memoir, Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle the John Muir Trail, is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook! You can purchase it wherever books are sold online or in bookstores, and I’m proud to say it’s available in over 160 libraries across the country! And, now, (drumroll, please) it’s going to be coming out in a Spanish translation very soon! That just tickles me to no end!
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My TBR gets longer with each one of your newsletters, Joan! Hope you are back to 100% soon.
The Nightingale is so good! Now I’m going to read The Book Club for Troublesome Women and the Midwife book, thanks to your recommendations.