Nobody Wants Slow Transformers Of The Forest

Welcome to the November 2024 edition of...
What I'm Into, What I'm Up To!
#50

Let's not talk politics, shall we?

Wonderful.

Last night, we celebrated a neighborhood Friendsgiving, which is a made-up holiday which I would have sworn was started or at least made popular by the show Friends, but I would have been wrong according to Merriam-Webster (like they know anything).

It's an unusually warm Mid-November day here, high of 68 Fahrenheit. The sun is shining, the sky is a pale shade of blue streaked with those kinds of clouds that look like sand art in a glass box. It's lovely, which is a word I don't use in real life, and will be made even more lovely when I go pick up a picnic table at Home Depot later today (if all goes according to plan).

Yes, I agree, it is getting a little cold for picnics. But in our front yard, next to the driveway, there is a flat paved rectangle. I don't know what the previous owners used it for, but it's a spot that gets tons of southern sun, so I think it will be a perfect spot for a picnic table. And they are on sale at the Depot for $70, which is probably cheaper than the wood it would take to build one.

What I'm Into

Transformers One (Paramount+) is surprisingly good. I've kind of given up on the whole Trasformers franchise but the kids wanted to watch this one and I couldn't believe how much we all liked it. And how much we laughed too.

The Butcher Of The Forest by Premee Mohamed is a pretty dark story compared to most things I read, but it's a small novella with a beautiful cover Wendy picked up from the library. I ended up reading it over the course of a week or two. The author did an amazing job with the word count she used. Books this size are right up my alley right now, so if you have any suggestions for great short novellas, let me know!

Nobody Wants This (Netflix) is such a funny show. Kristen Bell's character co-hosts a podcast about sex and dating and falls in love with a rabbi. Worlds collide to incredible comedic effect.

A Book of Balance: Kogi Wisdom for a Good Life and Thriving Earth by Lucas Buchholz is probably the kind of book the world needs right now.

There are tons of books where we, as modern WEIRD people ('Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic,' an acronym coined by Joseph Henrich, author of The WEIRDEST People In The World) tell ourselves we need to change, simplify, slow down, take care of the earth and each other.

This is a book where a group of indigenous people in the Sierra Nevadas tell us how they live, and an author who is one of 'us' translates that wisdom for the modern world.

Especially of note was a passage near the end where the author talked about how we cannot keep living the way we are living, because it's so unsustainable, and we also cannot go back and live the way people like the Kogi live, which we would consider a 'primitive' and uncomfortable lifestyle, so we have to find or create a third way, which stops allowing greed to dictate so many of the decisions we as societies make for ourselves and our future. Super interesting.

Slow Horses (Apple TV+) is a great British spy thriller show, if you're into that kind of thing. Gary Oldman plays a grumpy old spy, who leads a group of outcasts who have been kicked out of the real spy world to do all the tedious stuff no one else wants to do, but who end up saving the world (or at least someone's life) every season anyway.

Liberty by Julian Voloj and Jorg Hartmann is a beautifully illustrated non-fiction graphic novel about the idea for, design of, and eventual construction of the Statue of Liberty. After reading this, you can't help but be amazed the thing was ever built at all. It goes to show what one person with a dream and a tenacious refusal to give up on it can accomplish.

What I'm Up To

Editing, editing, editing. I had pneumonia recently (feeling much better now, thanks, still coughing way more than I like). In the midst of the worst of it, I was thinking about Skytrails and I had a little bit of a mental breakthrough about how to simplify the story and earn a good ending. I'm still trying to figure out if the breakthrough doesn't actually create more problems than it solves, which is always a danger with big changes in a story, but I'm optimistic.

P.s. Got the picnic table, and it is majestic!