Weekly Wrap Up 110

the hidden cassettes - Emily found out as a kid that her dad secretly recorded all the house phone calls. Once she found out, she was able to use this knowledge to skirt the family phone rule of keeping calls under 3 minutes. 30 years later she found some of the cassettes and has posted the audio files. There are only 4 up there now but there are placeholders for more, so hopefully this project grows.
Since You Arrived - taken - What kind of information is your computer freely handing out?
The Bat Cloud - Ask the bats a Yes or No question and receive a reply from The Bat Cloud. Kind of a fun art project experience although I'm a little concerned that the answer to my question of "Will I win the lottery this week?" was FEAR. 🤔

I'm already getting mail from the postcard clubs! I'm so excited! I didn't think I'd be getting anything until later in the month.

Scanned image of a postcard front and back. On the left is the front side. The border is little colored squares with various flowers. There are yellow (daffodil?), purple (pansy?) red and green flowers. In the corners ar either a slice of birthday cake with candle or a large red strawberry. The inner scene is on a lawn anf features 6 flower pots of different sizes with a variety of flowers, some of which are on the boarder. There is a large 3-tiered birthday cake with white icing and colored swags and flower decorations. There is a little ladder leaned up against the side with a mouse holding a flower, getting ready to place it on the upper tier. There is another mouse wearing a party hat sitting leaned up against the bottom tier. There is a clear pitcher filled with a light pink liquid, ice cubes and strawberry slices to the left of the cake. There is a mouse on top of the handle, stirring with a wooden spoon. There are 2 mice on the ground by the pitcher, one holding a strawberry slice and the other reaching upward. To the left of the pitcher there are a couple of packets of seeds and a garden trowel leaning against one of the flower pots and a small mouse wearing a party hat between them leaning over to look at a strawberry on the ground. To the right of the birthday cake a brown mouse with party hat is marching towards the ladder with a long-stemmed yellow flower. Just behind him a tan mouse is running with a small blue flower in its mought. Draped above the cake and pitcher, hanging from the flowers in the pots, is a garland with multicolored triangle flags. On the right side is an image of the backside of the postcard which features a multicolored chicken in the lower left corner holding a red, a yellow and a blue balloon. The dividing line between the address area and the message area is made of small flowers in pink, blue, yellow and green. There is a drawing of a stampe with a birthday cake slice where the actual stamp goes. In the middle is an image of a sticker with a pink birthday cake with blue, yellow and purple swags and dots, 3 green lit candles and a racoon next to the cake with a striped party hat and a fork with a chunk of cake on it.

Blue Bike Club sent an adorable postcard, sticker and letter. (I put the sticker on the scanner with the backside of the card but I did not actually stick it on the card.) The letter was very sweet. It's the artist's birthday so she talked about that, her favorite cake, the flowers she painted on the postcard and how some are edible. It was a lovely chatty letter. So nice to take a little break in the day and read it!

Image of a trifold card. The left side shows the card shut. It shows a very large black and white kitty with yellow eyes sitting on top of a gray brick castle. There are 2 narrow, arched windows filled in with red on either side of the entranceway which has a starry background and a Gothic font that says TAKE UP SPACE. Behind the kitty are several castle towers, some skinny with peaked roofs, arched windows and mostly solid light green, some wider with a crenallations at the top and looking as if they are made of green rocks. There is one tower in the far background that is gray with a red peaked roof. There is a red banner on a pole to on the right side. There are several 5-pointed stars around the castle, one with a green tail. The background is pink. The right side shows the opened card. There are many more kitties of various shapes and sizes on the castle, in front of the castle, in the castle windows. The background has changed to a starry black sky and the pennant has changed from red to light pink with red stars.

Two stickers. Sticker on the left is a lamp. The body of the lamp is oval shaped with vertical blue and green strips. In the center is a white oval with a black 8 pointed star with a red middle. The shade looks like stained glass with a green bottom edge. On the top are red and pink rectangles topped with smaller black and white squares, a solid blue piece, and the brass lamp finial which has a green bead on it at the very top. The middle is white and on either side are 2 unicorn heads and necks, with green horns and blue-gray manes. They are facing each other. In the middle, in a red and pink edged circle, is a dark blue ball with white spikes which looks like a morning star weapon head. On the right are 2 square links with a red heart dangle. On the right is a sticker of a 2-tiered birthday cake on a yellow cake stand. The bottom tier is dark blue with light blue stars, trimmed on the bottom with red hearts and white envelopes, trimed at the top with green frosting leaves and red frosting rosettes. There are letters arranged in an arch saying REN * O * GRAPHICS and below that in fancy script is Mail Club. The top tier is pink, trimed with a red ribbon and bow on the top, white flowers with green leaves and what appears to be a baby deer with 2 lit, striped birthday candles on its back.

Ren-O-Graphics also sent out a card, not the monthly one I had signed up for but a special one because it's their 2nd birthday. They sent out a neat trifold card and 2 stickers.

I didn't do too much outside of the house this week but I did go to my city's monthly Indivisible meeting. They've been bringing in speakers for the meetings and this time we had a member of the city council come in and explain just how city councils work and it was surprisingly interesting. If you are interested in getting locally involved, city councils usually have all kinds of boards and committees you can apply to be on. The member was trying to be circumspect about how she worded it but basically she said that a lot of people who are in power now and causing (waves hands at America today) got started at the local community level on school boards and city councils.

Listening

I've been listening to a lot of Tracy Borman lectures on YouTube. She is the Historic Royal Palaces' Chief Historian, an author and gives an excellent lecture! I had seen her before in things like historical specials on TV but I had never listened to her lectures before or read her books. So far I have listened to:

Tracy Borman - The Stolen Crown - all about the shifty way in which James VI became Elizabeth's "declared" heir
Tracy Borman and the King's Mistress Henrietta - absolutely fascinating tale of Henrietta Howard who became George II's mistress.
And I listened to the part of a series about Anne Boleyn which was about the days leading up to her execution and what happened afterward. Apparently Anne never thought Henry would really go through with it. But Henry had ordered the French executioner's services before her trial actually took place so it was a foregone conclusion. That was interesting because, as much as I rail about the Tudors taking up all the historical air space, I think this is a part of Anne Boleyn's timeline that doesn't get as much attention.

Reading

There has been lot of reading going on! I finished The White Rose, the third book in Glen Cook's The Black Company series. I quite enjoyed these books!

Best Son (who gave me these books) said there are more in the series! What I read is The Books of the North. There are 2 other series, The Books of the South and The Books of Glittering Stone. Plus, apparently, some other single novels. I enjoyed this first trilogy enough that I will be looking into these other books but for now I am moving on to other things.

I came across a YA series, The Deptford Mice by Robin Jarvis, on the library app, Libby. I'm all down for reading a good YA story but this wasn't really intriguing me until I read about a prequel series, The Deptford Histories which features CATS. So I got a copy of the first book in the series, The Alchemist's Cat, from eBay and have just started reading that.

I also just ordered a bunch of novellas from the Kobo store. One author I really enjoy is Grace Draven. The first books of hers I read were Radiance and Eidolon. They are fantasy but also romance (but not romantasy!) and I just love the characters and setting. That led me to the rest of her collection and I thought I had read just about everything she's written, only to find there were some novellas I missed! I bought 4 novellas.

I also bought 2 novellas from an author new to me, Maria Schneider. Now, I found out about her because somehow I came across her personal blog which has a listing of authors who sell their books on their own sites. I added that link to my reading page but I also sent her an email letting her know that one of the links was dead. That started up an email correspondance - turns out she's a tiara enthusiast, too, especially for ones with big chonky stones like the pink one I wrote about a couple weeks ago. Plus, she lives in New Mexico and I've visited there so we had that in common. It has been both unexpected and lovely. Anyway, she's written several books and at least two of them - Ghost Town and Hidden in Time - are set in an alternate Southwest and are cozy, romantic fantasies. They sound like something I could get into.

Oh, and I haven't started it yet but I still have The Memory of the Ogisi, the last book of the Forever Desert series by Moses Ose Utomi to read before the library wants me to return it.

Watching

I thought I had been caught up with all the shows I watch but I forgot all about Dark Winds! The 4th season has already aired so I'm working my way through that and have only 2 episodes left.

This series is based off a series of books Tony Hillerman wrote in the 70s featuring policemen on the Navajo reservation. One thing I really like about the series is that, because of the time period it's sent in, there aren't any convenient cell phones or computers to help the plot along. It's very analog.

Another thing I appreciate about the series is the care the creators have taken to accurately portray the Navajo language and culture. The series got negative feedback after its first season because they weren't as careful as they could be (‘Dark Winds’ fails authenticity test). They took that criticism to heart and hired a language and cultural advisor (How the 'Dark Winds' Season 2 cast got Navajo culture right). I am not indigenous and I wouldn't have known if what was being portrayed was correct or not. But I think it's really great that, when people who did know pointed out what was wrong, the series creators took steps to fix that.

Link Lagniappe

Birthday color - kind of a fun site that will tell you what your birthday color is based on your birthdate. In Japanese, so you'll probably have to run the translator. Sad to say, my birthday color is very blah. I hope yours is better!
Dracula Daily - email newsletter that sends you Dracula in bite-sized pieces.
The Internet has no benches - thoughtful piece on how someone is creating their own internet neighborhoods.
When I Heard a Montreal Fortune Cookie Factory Was Closing, I Needed to Get Inside - a photographer finagled his way into being allowed to photograph the last day of a fortune cookie factory through a heartfelt plea and old matchbook bribery.
The Y Chromosome May Be Vanishing. What Does It Mean For The Future of Men? - Nothing drastic, as this genetic shuffle has happened in other species as well. Nature just reroutes.
Why some mathematicians think we should abandon pi - Apparently tau could be a better option.
Embroidered Everyday Objects - Ulla-Stina Wikander, a Swedish fabric artist, covers everyday objects with cross-stitched fabric. She prefers using household items from the 70s for the nostalgia factor.
Researchers in Ireland uncover medieval book in Rome with oldest English poem - This poem was written in the 7th century by "an agricultural worker." Amazing that it has survived but also makes me wonder how literate the general population was in the 600s. I wouldn't have thought they were particularly literate but this person worked on an Abbey farm so maybe he had the benefit of ecclesiastical education that the general population wouldn't have had.
Magic by Return of Post: How Mail Order Delivered the Occult - Linotype machines, cheap pulp paper, and newly improved postal networks all allowed the occult to blossom in 20th century America.
QuiltCon 2026 Winners Gallery - Check out these amazing quilted pieces! My favorites are Tinker Toys, Chingona - (noun), Badass Woman and Momentum. What are yours?

OK, that's about it for this week!

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