by 7 comments

Celebrate Jan Lilien Day!

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 17 seconds
Celebrate Jan

Sunday, April 24, 2022, at 2 PM

On Sunday, April 24, 2022, at 2 pm in Hanson Park in Cranford, NJ, we held Celebrate Jan Lilien Day. We celebrated her life as we dedicate and break ground on a living memorial for her in the park.

Celebrate Jan Day was a success. One hundred friends joined our family and volunteers from the Hanson Park Conservancy to celebrate her life as we dedicate and break ground on a living memorial for her in the park.

Video clips of all of the speeches from Celebrate Jan Day are not available.

What began as a desire to plant a tree to honor Jan has grown into a living memorial.

  1. Our family donated to plant a Forest Pansy Redbud tree,
  2. One hundred seventy-three friends donated to purchase two memorial benches,
  3. Working with the Hanson Park Conservancy, we will transform the triangular garden at the entrance by adding flower beds and a wind sculpture for meditation, contemplation, and dreams,
  4. The final cost of the benches was less than what was raised. The balance was used to establish the Jan Lilien Education Fund, which will sponsor ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs.

Checks should be made payable to the Hanson Park Conservancy with a note that this is a donation for The Jan Lilien Education Fund and mailed to:

The Jan Lilien Education Fund
Hanson Park Conservancy 
PO Box 542
Cranford, NJ  07016 

We are working with Hanson Park and Carolle Huber Landscape Architecture to develop a creative reimagination of the Hanson Park Triangle. Click here for a PDF of the design.

Hanson Park Display Carolle Huber
Jan Lilien Memorial Triangle Garden

In addition, we will be installing Lyman Whitaker Wind Sculptures in the Hanson Park Triangle. The Double Spinner will reflect Jan’s spirit and enthusiasm for life. It will also be a beacon to the Cranford community and encourage more people to visit Hanson Park.

Lyman Whitaker
Double Spinner – Copper

The memorial benches and plaques with the inscriptions have been installed.

Human Rights Ellen
Ellen McHenry, President of the Hanson Park Conservancy.

We have bookmarks designed with love by my sister-in-law Linda Brown.

These will be distributed to those who attend in person or virtually to Celebrate Jan Day.

As we get closer to the date, we will update you on our plans for the triangle.

Jan Lilien Bookmark

Event Details

Sunday, April 24, 2022, 2 pm, at Hanson Park, 38 Springfield Avenue, Cranford, NJ 07106. 

Register to Attend Celebrate Jan Day
Add to Calendar
Parking for Celebrate Jan Day
Parking Options for Celebrate Jan Day
  • Accessible Parking for those who requested it will be available on-site.
  • All other parking will be at St. Michael’s School. 
  • The GPS address for the school is 100 Alden Street, Cranford, NJ, 07016.  
  • If you are on Alden Street, you will need to go past the school. 
  • At the intersection of Holly and Alden, make a right turn. 
  • On Springfield Avenue, you will turn onto Holly Street, away from the park.
  • Event parking direction signs will be placed in critical locations.
  • The parking lot is one-half block from Hanson Park.

If you share on social media with the links on this page, please use these hashtags.

  • #sharingjanslove
  • #janlilien
  • #loverneverdies
Celebrate Jan
Download a Printable Version of the Save the Date
Hanson Park Map

Join us on April 24, 2022, at 2 pm at Hanson Park Conservancy Cranford to Celebrate Jan. We will celebrate her life as…

Posted by Richard W. Brown on Thursday, November 11, 2021
Contact Us
Subscribe
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

7 comments add your comment

Share your thoughts and ideas

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Previous Post:

Next Post:

The Jan Lilien Education Fund!

Donate Now!
Can You Feel This?

Read: January 2023

Get this book

Can You Feel This?

by Julie Orringer

Today I read Can You Feel This? by Julie Orringer. This short story rekindled so many memories. In the chaos of a maternity ward, memories of tragedy and grief come flooding back for an anxious mother-to-be as she struggles to balance her child’s needs with her healing. Although Jan and I did not have the shadows of tragedy and grief when our sons were born, this short story was more than a page-turner. Can You Feel This? reminded me of the power of the love Jan and I shared.

When our second son was born, we almost had him at home or in the as we waited too long. In Can, You Feel This? , that was not the case. Both children had two loving parents but also grandparents.

When Jan had the first of several hospitalizations, she was in the hospital where her mother died. Jan told me her feelings, and I comforted her, but I could not fully comprehend her angst.

Can You Feel This? is part of Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each Inheritance piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust. This is the second one in the series I have read. The previous one was Everything That my Mother Taught Me.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Rushed into an emergency cesarean section, a woman finds herself in the same hospital where her suicidal mother died. She’s buried the trauma of her mother’s last hours—and also the dread that she might be just as vulnerable to breaking. As the new mother relives one crisis in the midst of another, prize-winning author Julie Orringer turns the joyous event of birth into a harrowing, poignant short story.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
Worry: A Novel

Read: May 2024

Get this book

Worry: A Novel

by Alexandra Tanner

Today, I began reading Alexandra Tanner‘s debut novel, Worry: A Novel. The New Yorker praised it as “dryly witty,” The New York Times Book Review called it “fabulously revealing.” The story follows two siblings-turned-roommates who try to navigate an absurd world on the verge of calamity. It explores existentialism and sisterhood in a Seinfeldian style.

In March 2019, Jules Gold, a 28-year-old woman, felt anxious, frustrated with her art, and addicted to the internet. She lives alone in the apartment she used to share with her ex-fiancé. Her younger sister Poppy unexpectedly comes to stay with her indefinitely. Poppy, who attempted suicide a year and a half ago, is looking for work and purpose in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Jules spends her days scrolling through the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for something to happen in her life.

Poppy’s hives, which she has had since childhood, flare up again. Jules has health problems with her uterus. Poppy adopts a poorly behaved-rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. Poppy’s mother, who recently became a devout Messianic Jew, starts believing in the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’ online mommies. Jules half-heartedly tries to find the source of her ennui and cruelly blames Poppy for not being a good enough friend, writer, or sister. As the year progresses and a new decade approaches, a disastrous trip back to Florida forces Jules and Poppy to question their futures and whether they want to spend them together or apart.

Worry is a darkly funny and deadpan portrayal of two sisters struggling through anxiety and uncertainty in America. A bold new voice in contemporary fiction writes it.

×
Intimacies: A Novel

Read: March 2022

Get this book

Intimacies: A Novel

by Katie Kitamura

Intimacies: A Novel by Katie Kitamura is about an interpreter who has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities is finally looking for a place to call home.

Intimacies: A Novel is the second book by Ms. Kitamura that I have read this year. The multiple intimacies of the novel overlap and at times seem confusing, but in the end, it makes sense even if it is unclear how or where she will live the next phase of her life. A Separation is also written hypnotic, making it difficult to stop reading.

I not only highly recommend Intimacies: A Novel but have become a fan of Katie Kitamura and look forward to reading more of her books.

Goodreads summary provides a good overview.

She’s drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim’s sister. And she’s pulled into explosive political fires: her work interpreting for a former president accused of war crimes becomes precarious as their relationship is unbound by shifting language and meaning.

This woman is the voice in the ear of many, but what command does that give her, and how vulnerable does that leave her? Her coolly impassioned views on power, love, and violence, are tested, both in her personal intimacies and in her role at the Court. She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her; it is her drive towards truth, and love, that throws into stark relief what she wants from her life.

Register to Attend Celebrate Jan Day

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
Black Sun

Read: November 2021

Get this book

Black Sun – Between the Earth and Sky

by Rebecca Roanhorse

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse.  Black Sun is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.

I have always enjoyed fantasy novels like Black Sun, and this is the first one set in the Pre-Columbian Americas.

A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year, it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as quickly as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

Will Serapio be harmless or a villain? The answer, my friend, will be known when you read this book or perhaps the second one in the trilogy.

Before meeting and falling forever in love with Jan, I had dreamed of the life of an American Studies professor. Thousands of students are relieved to know I did not pursue that life. If I had opened that door, an area of focus would have been on Pre-Columbian Americas.

I recommend this book and will read the next two in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy.

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
The Candy House

Read: December 2022

Get this book

The Candy House: A Novel

by Jennifer Egan

The Candy House: A Novel by Jennifer Egan focuses on a new technology that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had and to share your memories in exchange for access to the memories of others—it has seduced multitudes. According to the NYTimes, “this is minimalist maximalism. As a widow, I live in a world of memories, but I would not want them shared as they are in The Candy House. “It’s as if Egan compressed a big 19th-century novel onto a flash drive.”

Of course, I am not able to access my unconscious memories. Albeit in an amateur way, I write down some of my memories as they remind me of the power of the love that Jan and I shared. For example, the essay when I met Jan rekindles the memory and attempts to tell the story the way it happened, not how some would like it to be remembered.

The Candy House is one of the NYTimes’ top five fiction books of 2022. I have read two of them, The Furrows and Checkout 19. Initially, I was overwhelmed by the multitude of characters and was confused. By the novel’s middle, their interconnectedness helped me understand its real meaning. In the end, Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for authentic connection, love, family, privacy, and redemption. As a widow, authenticity Is what I need to heal.

The Candy House is the seventieth (70) book I have read this year. 

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

It’s 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He’s forty, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, Own Your Unconscious—that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others—has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.

In spellbinding linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of styles—from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who track and exploit desires and “eluders” who understand the price of taking a bite of the Candy House.

Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is moments away. With a focus on social media, gaming, and alternate worlds, you can almost experience moving among dimensions in a role-playing game.​ Egan delivers a fierce and exhilarating testament to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for real connection, love, family, privacy, and redemption.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
The New Wilderness

Read: October 2021

Get this book

The New Wilderness

by Diane Cook

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook. The New Wilderness is a timely book and one that resonated with me. When Jan and I met in 1973, it was a revolutionary time with movements encouraging communes and returning to the farm. Neither Jan nor I were interested in living in a commune. Reading this book helped reassure me that we made the correct choice.

The summary of the book is:

Margaret Atwood meets Miranda July in this wildly imaginative debut novel of a mother’s battle to save her daughter in a world ravaged by climate change; A prescient and suspenseful book from the author of the acclaimed story collection, Man V. Nature.

Bea’s five-year-old daughter, Agnes, is slowly wasting away, consumed by the smog and pollution of the overdeveloped metropolis that most of the population now calls home. If they stay in the city, Agnes will die. There is only one alternative: the Wilderness State, the last swath of untouched, protected land, where people have always been forbidden. Until now.

Bea, Agnes, and eighteen others volunteer to live in the Wilderness State, guinea pigs in an experiment to see if humans can exist in nature without destroying it. Living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, they slowly and painfully learn to survive in an unpredictable, dangerous land, bickering and battling for power and control as they betray and save one another. But as Agnes embraces the wild freedom of this new existence, Bea realizes that saving her daughter’s life means losing her in a different way. The farther they get from civilization, the more their bond is tested in astonishing and heartbreaking ways.

At once a blazing lament of our contempt for nature and a deeply humane portrayal of motherhood and what it means to be human, The New Wilderness is an extraordinary novel from a one-of-a-kind literary force.

When I finished this book, I read Pompeii Still Has Buried Secrets by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker. It reminded me of all of the threats to civilization that we face, who will be Pliny the Younger to be “the only surviving eyewitness account of the disaster.” Fleeing our cities for the wilderness is no longer an option!

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×

Discover more from Sharing Jan’s Love

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading