a stream

I wrote and had published on Granite Media a review of The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. Might as well reshare it here for a record.

Full review text from https://www.granitemedia.org/2021/11/the-last-cuentista/ :

It’s literally the end of the world: a solar flare has knocked Haley’s Comet into a catastrophic collision course with Earth. But for almost-13-year-old Petra and her family there is an opportunity in the midst of this tragedy: they must leave their grandmother and their home in the New Mexico desert to secretly board an interstellar ship on a mission to colonize a new planet. Petra’s family is chosen as part of the mission because her parents are expert scientists with knowledge needed for exploring and terraforming the new planet. They will be put into stasis for the nearly 400 year space journey, and along the way Petra will receive a cognitive learning implant that will make her an expert in botany and geology when she arrives and is brought out of stasis. More than that, though, she also carries within her the Mexican folklore her grandmother shared with her, and the desire to be a storyteller, and preserve the stories of humanity. When she is brought out of stasis, not to her parents but to a future far different and more precarious than what was planned, her stories and Earth memories might be the only hope for saving what is left of humanity.

This book launches with a seemingly typical near-future sci-fi premise, but is unique as a middle-grade novel centering the story around a young person’s perspective. The author expertly interweaves Petra’s present predicament with flashbacks to her life on earth before the journey, as well as folklore and tales she learned from her Grandmother, which turn out to be absolutely prescient to her current situation light years from Earth. The book has positive echoes of middle-grade classics like The Giver and the Wrinkle in Time books, but with a contemporary flair, a fresh Mexican American perspective, and perhaps higher stakes for the characters. Beyond being a gripping science fiction adventure, it is filled with topics and situations for tween readers to discuss and think about, which would make it great for a book club or classroom study.

Reviewed by Joshua Whiting, Library Media Program, Granite Educational Technology Department Review shared in October 2021 Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5 stars) Interest Level: Grades 5 and Up

Author Website: dbhiguera.com

Title: The Last Cuentista Author: Donna Barba Higuera Publisher: Levine Querido Release Date: October 12, 2021 A review copy was not provided by the publisher.

Standalone post link: Book Review - The Last Cuentista

Yesterday morning I finished reading All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson. This morning I wrote six to seven pages of thoughts and notes about it, that I’m likely not safe to share anywhere right now, including here in unsyndicated nowhereland.

It’s a powerful book, though, if you’re willing to spend the time with it. And I’m afraid that fear of that power might be the true root and rot of the issue that seemingly requires me not to talk about it.

Standalone post link: Reading: All Boys Aren't Blue

I ended my cooking drought by making some potato-broccoli-cheese soup this afternoon, and now I’m ending my daily posting drought by sharing it here.

I’ve tried several different methods for this kind of soup and I finally have settled on this recipe as the best for what I want. I just add a bunch of broccoli and carrots to it, which is really the only change. And sometimes I mash one side of the pot with a potato masher. And I use more cheese than it says to.

I guess actually if I was in the recipe blogging scene those additions would constitute enough variations to write it up here as my own recipe. With pictures like this, I’m leaning hard into this being an anti-recipe blog, though. You’ll just have to trust me that it tastes good; my wife and daughter can vouch for that, too. Not my son, though; he ate oatmeal for dinner instead.

Standalone post link: potatobroccolicheesesoup

I filled up another ‘Field Notes’ notebook. I’m obsessed with these, and I already have too many, but I justify it because I do really like to write in them, I think I write more because of them. And now I even draw silly stuff in them sometimes. I’m sure I’ll use them all eventually.

Next up is this plain blue notebook, with turquoise and green ink pens. This is the first non-National Parks Series notebook I’ll be filling.

Standalone post link: Filling Up Space

(nightbookshelf)

Standalone post link: nightbookshelf

THINGS I DIDN’T POST DURING THE PANDEMIC - 01

Back in the spring of 2020 Mesita was writing, recording, and releasing the music of the pandemic in realtime, but I didn’t post anything about it at the time because I wasn’t really posting things, and I feel bad about that.

Because after that he kind of went into a thing where he tried to get away from the Internet and from music, and he still is kind of into that thing, and I’m kind of into a thing like that, too, and so I wish him the best in whatever he decides to do, but a downside of that thing, besides the fact that maybe he’s not going to make music anymore, is that he deleted all his youtube videos of individual songs that I would have posted and that were easy to share. He did later gather all those springtime pandemic songs in this album Empty Island, though, and it is still around on Bandcamp and the streaming services- at least for now.

And it turns out that it is actually quite easy to share or embed stuff from Bandcamp in any number of ways, and youtube is actually kind of awful even though it is so easy and ubiquitous.

Album: Empty Island Artist: Mesita (Brooklyn, New York by way of Littleton, Colorado) Release Year: 2020 Label: Self-Released

Standalone post link: Listening: Mesita - Empty Island

It’s an intended project of this website, but currently I’m not sure to what extent I want to re-share old photos and posts from prior websites, social media accounts I don’t use anymore, or just random things from my photo library or ideas and happenings noted down that I never got around to sharing in the first place. And if I do share them, should I have a system or chronology to the sharing, or just rely on randomness and serendipity? Re-post them now as fresh posts, or backdate them to when they occurred?

In the meantime, here are three photos I took of rocks and desert in October 2007 in Emery County, Utah. I was somewhere north of the Wedge Overlook and Buckhorn Wash, not quite yet understanding the scope of the country I was about to drive into. They are some of the oldest digital photos I still have, I think. Posting these as a test to see what it feels like to randomly post really old stuff.

Standalone post link: rockofages

I was doing so good at posting something every day here in nowhereland but then I got sick and stressed out and distracted, and I fell off.

Starting again for November.

Of course, the reality is that this isn’t syndicating anywhere anymore, and I don’t think anyone is looking (though I turned off the Google Analytics so I wouldn’t even know if they were now), so I could do some retroactive posts of things I meant to post last week…

–

Update: I only did a couple of retroactive backdated posts. I’ll be honest about my timing going forward.

Standalone post link: ''felloff''

My wife jokingly asked my kids to figure out what I should be for Halloween, and my daughter quickly came up with this concept and then actualized it. So I wore it while I lurked out in the street behind my kids during their trick-or-treating.

(This would be the first time I had a Halloween costume of any sort in decades, other than the one time I went to work dressed roughly like Lionel Richie on the cover of his first album, and didn’t tell anyone, and no one ever knew. Might do that again sometime; I’d need some new white pants.)

Standalone post link: ''happyapple''

I’m home sick with a cough/cold that isn’t COVID but seems contagious, but I’m behind on a lot of work, so I’m using what little creative energy I have to take care of a few things at work, rather than compose missives for or update the architecture of nowhereland. Other than that, reading or sleeping.

Standalone post link: ''sickdays''