All posts by Laurie Graves

I write about nature, food, the environment, home, family, community, and people.
Books, Celebrate

A Special Anniversary—Maya is One

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Yesterday was a very special day for Clif and me. Our fantasy novel—Maya and the Book of Everything-–had its first birthday. Or anniversary. Or whatever. The book was launched on November 28, 2016, and this certainly brightened, at least for us, an otherwise dismal year for the country.

Even though I wrote the novel, I used the word “our” because Clif was (and is) such an integral part of the process that it really is his book, too. First, he was one of a handful of careful readers who found errors and helped me keep the plot on track. Second, he did all the page layout, both for the paper copy and for the ebook. He continues to help me as I give presentations—lord, am I ever grateful for his technical expertise—and he goes with me to various craft fairs.  Many, many thanks, Clif, for your invaluable help.

While we are on the subject of giving thanks, I want to thank the many friends, both near and distant, who have bought Maya. Merci, merci! Because of your generosity, Maya has not only been read in the United States, but also in England, Ireland, and Canada. It is no small thing for an indie book to travel so far. As for my new blogging friends…well, Christmas is coming. Perhaps you have someone in your family who loves fantasy novels. While Maya is technically a book for young teens, it is also a crossover book that adults enjoy reading. Maya is easy to order. Just click on the book’s cover in the upper left-hand corner of this page. There! Done with the shameless self-promotion.

Maya is our first book, and over the course of the year we have learned a lot and, of course, have made more than a few mistakes. The happy thing we have learned is that Maya sells really well at various events, and next year, we are going to increase the number of places we go, not only with Maya but also with Clif’s anthology, The Wave of Time. Lucky for us, Clif and I really enjoy doing this. We both work from home, and it is a nice change to get out, meet people, and talk about our books.

By a very happy coincidence, on Maya’s birthday, I was engaged to speak at my town’s wonderful library, the Charles M. Bailey Public Library. Richard, the director, did a great job with publicity, and there was a nice turnout, with plenty of old friends as well as people I didn’t even know. We sold quite a few books, and what a lovely, lovely way to celebrate Maya’s birthday. Thank you Richard and Shane and to all the people who came to my Threads of Realism in Fantasy presentation.

Now, onward to the second book—Library Lost. I’m over halfway done, and I’m hoping to have it published by next fall.

 

 

Animals - especially dogs, Celebrate, Food for Thought

Resting with a Cat on My Chest, Hoping for an Angel Sitting on My Shoulder

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On Sunday evening, this was the scene at our house.

In fact, I wasn’t resting at all but rather reading and commenting on the many blogs I follow. This is always a delight as I can go around the world yet stay on my couch with my cat—the notorious Sherlock,  who certainly knows how to make himself comfortable—and my mug of tea.

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and it was a merry blur of food, family, friends, and movies. We are a family keen on movies, and we saw two over the holidays—Coco, which we liked very much, and Murder on the Orient Express, a remake that got a resounding “Meh!” from all three of us.

Now it’s onward to Christmas, my favorite holiday. There will be Christmas movies to watch, cards to send, goodies to cook, presents to wrap, gatherings to attend, and twinkling lights to set out.

In Maine as well as elsewhere, December is the darkest month of the year, a good time to ponder the Christmas sentiment “Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All.” Unfortunately, we are far from this notion, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reflect on it, now and for the rest of the year, too.

And if we can slide in a little “ho-ho-ho,” so much the better.  This Christmas song—“We Need a Little Christmas”—perfectly captures the way many of us in the United States feel right now.

Here is a version by the folks from Glee.

I’m hoping to find that little “angel sitting on my shoulder” sometime soon.

Celebrate, Food for Thought

A Time to Be Grateful

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As noted in yesterday’s post, in the United States, we celebrate a holiday called Thanksgiving. This holiday always falls on the fourth Thursday in November. It’s a time to eat (usually a lot!) and give thanks for the good things we have.

I’m not going to mince words. For progressives, this has been a very difficult year, and because of this, it hasn’t been easy to count blessings. The worries, ranging from nuclear war to dismantling the Affordable Health Care Act, are not trivial.

Nevertheless, there are blessings to be counted. So far, this country is at peace. So far, the Affordable Health Care stands. So far, there is a free press that hasn’t bent to those in power.

On a more personal level, I have a snug house, a loving family, and a terrific library that allows me to go far while staying home.

I also have a wonderful circle of friends. Today, I want to give special thanks to my blogging friends who have enriched my life is so many ways. Through pictures and words, I travel near and far, I learn new things, and I am immeasurably enriched by the creativity—in all its various aspects— of my blogging friends.

So many, many thanks to all my blogging friends. You not only enrich my life, but you also remind me that there is still much that is good in this world.

 

Celebrate, Food for Thought

A Non-Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner

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All right. I have a confession to make. I am not a huge fan of Thanksgiving dinner. I know, I know. This makes me sound, well, Un-American. After all, this tradition is in honor of the gathering of the Pilgrims and the Native Americans way back before there were green bean casserole and sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows. As legend has it, in the 1600s, everyone came together to celebrate the harvest festival. (This sounds a little too jolly and pagan for the Pilgrims, but what the heck. Maybe it’s true.)

And so it has gone, with the food changing over the years. When I was young, we had a meat and potato stuffing to go in the turkey and a medley of different vegetables. In the week before Thanksgiving, my mother baked like a crazy person, and her fudge was, in a word, incredible. (I often wish I had a fraction of her energy.)

I am sorry to say that for me, with my sweet teeth—never mind tooth—the fudge was the best part of the meal. I have never liked turkey that much, and mashed potatoes are a little too bland for my taste. Turnip and squash are all right, but my heart doesn’t leap with joy when I see them on the table.

Then there is the work. Oh, there is plenty of it, and everything must come out at the same time and be reasonably warm. Usually, by the time the food is ready, my appetite is nearly gone. After that comes the clean-up, and when it is all over, I feel like lying on the bathroom floor for an extended snooze. (A friend’s mother has done this, and my sympathies are with her.)

Last year, Thanksgiving was particularly rough. Shannon and Mike were in North Carolina, and Clif and I had been working hard on Maya and the Book of Everything. When Thanksgiving was done, I felt even more exhausted than usual, and I was seriously considering going out to eat this Thanksgiving.

But eating out at Thanksgiving is expensive—at least $100, including the tip, for two people—and it’s just not as cozy as being at home. What to do, what to do?

Dee, our New York daughter, is a vegetarian, and it suddenly dawned on me that my life would be significantly better if we had a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner, say, stuffed shells or baked ziti. Because while I’m not a fan of Thanksgiving dinner, I am a huge fan of all things Italian, and the baked pasta dishes can be—wait for it!—made ahead the day before Thanksgiving.

This notion made me so giddy that I thought, “Well, son of a biscuit, I could even make a chocolate cream pie on Thanksgiving morning if the rest of the food was ready.”

And so settling on stuffed shells, I proposed the alternative Thanksgiving dinner. Dee was all for it. She doesn’t eat turkey anyway, and our friends Alice and Joel, who will join us, are good sports and very flexible. However, now we come to Clif, who LOVES Thanksgiving dinner, but he, too, was a good sport and agreed to my stuffed shell suggestion.

But I could tell he was a little sad, and last night we had a quasi-Thanksgiving dinner of breaded chicken thighs, baked potatoes, corn, and stuffing from a bag. It was pretty darned good, and a snap compared with the real event. Clif’s desire for stuffing was satisfied, and clean-up was no problem at all.

Thus it is that onward, with a lighter heart, I go toward Thanksgiving. The house is reasonably clean, the shopping is done, and we have a plan devised for the rest of it.

I’ll still be making pumpkin bread. After all. But I have a funny feeling that stuffed shells will be a new Thanksgiving tradition in our family.

 

News

Five for Friday: A Mummy’s Face?

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Today I’m trying something new, something I borrowed from the blog Cimple, which regularly features a post called “A Week In Seven Pictures.” Seven pictures seemed like a lot, even though it really is just two more than five. But I like alliteration, and two less is, well, two less.

I don’t know how long I’ll stick with this—I’m not one for either routines or lists—but for now, here are my Five for Friday.

The winterberries, a species of holly, brighten Maine’s November landscape. They will soon brighten my winter arrangements.

Dry rocks, wet rocks. When will the ice come, I wonder?

Heart and leaves. Happy November!

The face behind the wire. Can anyone guess what this is? And, no, it really isn’t a mummy’s face.

The last of the leaves to be raked. We’ve raked about three quarters of the yard, and it’s always good when this chore is done. We hope to get them raked by Monday, at least, because Thanksgiving is fast approaching.

Nature

Suddenly, the Cold of Late Autumn

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This year September, October, and even early November have been so warm—balmy, in fact—that when the cold weather came in a rush, it caught me by surprise. Before that sneaky devil of a windstorm  knocked out the power to nearly a half-million homes in Maine, Clif and I had brought in all the furniture and lawn ornaments. So in that sense we were ready.

But, as of a week ago, we still hadn’t had a hard frost, and I felt no sense of urgency about dealing with the potted plants outside. Silly me! Now the soil in the pots is frozen hard, and unless the rain comes to soften it, I’ll have to bring the pots down cellar to thaw.

I hope I have learned my lesson. For the past five years, Maine autumns have been markedly warmer than they were in the past. But this doesn’t mean the cold weather won’t come. It surely does, suddenly rather than gradually, with little warning. Changes, changes, and it is time for this old Mainer to adapt.

Regardless of the warm weather, the bright leaves fell right on schedule, and now we are into the russets of November. After the burst of mid-fall, some people find this landscape too monotonousness, too austere, but I am not one of them.  Instead, to me, the countryside is soothing, lovely in its plain garb.

There is no better place to appreciate this than by Maranacook Lake, and yesterday, on my way to pick up the Sunday paper, I swung by the public beach for some pictures.

In the background are the lovely russets of the oak leaves, and the white specks on the float are seagulls. Maybe they should be called lakegulls as they seem to be permanent residents.

Here is a closer look.

Then I turned my attention to the trees and bushes, stark yet beautiful.

In this season of thankfulness, I am ever so grateful to live in a place that has four distinct seasons. All right, there are five seasons if you count the muddy misery of March, but right now my focus is on gratitude rather than resentment. Plenty of time for the latter when March rolls around.

Fortunately, March is many months away. For now, despite having  pots with frozen soil that probably will have to be hauled down cellar to thaw, I’ll take in the serenity of November, a month that surely knows the long, dark cold of winter is coming and is more than ready for it.

News

A Ray of Hope

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I know. I said I wasn’t going to post this week, and this will be a short one. But the recent election has made me so hopeful that I just needed to write a little blurb about it. In Maine, voters approved a Medicaid expansion, which will provide health care to low-income folks who cannot afford it on their own. And, as the New York Times put it, Trump and his ilk were whupped big time in states such as Virginia and New Jersey.

I know. The tide can turn again. But for this one day, I am going to allow myself a ray of hope.

And here’s a picture that captures the way I feel right now, bright and full of color.

News

We’ve Got the Power!

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After almost a full week without power, it came back last night at around 7:00 p.m. Oh, how happy we were. Unfortunately, we lost quite a bit of food, and the house is a mess. Slowly, we are putting things back in order, but to borrow from Bilbo Baggins, we feel like butter scraped thin on too much bread.

Because of the work of getting the house back together along with other commitments, I will be taking next week off from blogging.

However, to end on an upbeat note… yesterday, we had a table at a craft fair at the Harriet Beecher Stowe elementary School in Brunswick. We did very, very well. So well, in fact, that we nearly sold out of books. As one mother put it, Brunswick is a community of readers.

That’s what I love to hear, that is sure.