My random thoughts on Jan, love, grief, life, and all things considered.
The Swimmers: A Novel by Julie Otsuka is a novel about what happens to a group of obsessed recreational swimmers when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool. This searing, intimate story of mothers and daughters—and the sorrows of implacable loss—is the most commanding and unforgettable work yet from a modern master. I highly recommend The Swimmers: A Novel by Julie Otsuka.
On Tuesday, September 20th, Hanson Park Conservancy‘s Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsored an event on Growing Great Garlic.
Your tax-deductible donations support these programs! Plans are already being made for events next year.
Garlic is a star ingredient in just about every culture’s cuisine.
The workshop asked an important question, why not grow great garlic?
Lesley Parness presented information on how to grow your garlic, the various kinds, and which ones are best for your cooking style.
She covered:
A list of garlic vendors was provided, along with information on excellent cultivars to grow.
All participants received a set of 8 cloves (2 cloves each of 4 delicious cultivars).
Lesley Parness, the presenter, retired in 2017 as Superintendent of Horticultural Education at New Jersey’s Morris County Park Commission. She oversaw programming at The Frelinghuysen Arboretum, Willowwood Arboretum, and Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center.
Ms. Parness is a member of the Herb Society of America, The Council on Horticultural and Botanical Libraries, and Garden State Gardens.
Lesley’sLesley’s news column, The Garden Historian, is featured bi-monthly in Gardener News Magazine.
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.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s blog.
Jan’s Education Fund Sponsors Soil Health and Composting Event
One breath, one step, one day, was all I could manage in the initial weeks after Jan died.
Slowly I have made progress and am optimistic that the new year will be sweet and one of change and growth.
I will never cease to love Jan and be loved by her.
As S.C. Lourie wrote,
Look at your life for all you have gained rather than lost.
Look at your path for everything you have got through rather than
everywhere you think you should be.Celebrate rather than criticize.
Experience rather than expect.
See how that goes, just for today.
Every day, I promise to remember what I gained from loving Jan, not the misery of the loss.
It seems easy to scribble those words on parchment, but focusing on love instead of loss is not effortless.
Just for today, I will keep it simple and love Jan with all my heart and soul.
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.
Thanks to my friend Deb, I have made a giant step in making Apartment 3B my home!
I have all of the plants re-potted and back in my tiny dwelling!
Deb, a master gardener and a member of the Hanson Park Conservancy and the Green Thumb Garden Club, helped me select the plants, and she re-potted them.
Deb also recommended self-watering pots, making it easier for me to manage the plants and avoid drowning them.
Deb recommended a Swiss Cheese plant in front of the kitchen sink, which I will purchase shortly. I have a grow light that can assist the flower in flourishing.
I will be forever grateful to Deb for her patience, guidance, support, and friendship.
My goal since moving into Apartment 3B on July 31st was to make it homelike before the new year. Although I have more to do, I believe I have achieved the objective.
I understand that time travel is impossible, unlike in the Sea of Tranquility.
However, I daydream that Jan might travel thru time and space. Now, with the flowers, she would feel comfortable if she made a stopover in Apartment 3B and would be pleased to visit regularly.
If Jan did visit me, I understand I would not know it was her, so she did not alter the time continuum.
But her spirit will always be with me, and I want 3B to be our home, not mine alone.
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.
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.
On the second day of Rosh Hashanna, I visited the love of my life at Beth Israel Cemetery.
Jan and I had so many years in which we shared the start of a sweet new year.
Although she is always with me, I took her seasonal flowers and spent time discussing my plans to refocus my life with meaning and purpose in 5783.
Jan’s name is in the Book of Well-Lived Lives.
If I can change my life this year, perhaps I may one day join her as someone who lived well.
When I picked out the flowers, I remembered how Jan told me when I bought her a day-old Rose that no one had ever given her flowers.
Forty-nine years later, I will continue to buy Jan flowers as long as I live.
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.
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.
Shana Tova! May 5783 not only be a sweet new year but one of change.
Without Jan, my life shattered into a million pieces over the last sixteen months.
I have taken small steps, but those adjustments have been on the margins, not the core of my being.
But the transitions have not assisted me in defining who I am without Jan.
As Ernest Hemingway said,
We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in….
The light has allowed me to see what I need to do to regain my wholeness.
At times, the parameters of what may define me without Jan appear, but the reality is blurred.
Although Jan is still with me in spirit and always will be, I am the one still alive.
A half-century ago, I stood in the smoky, damp remains of 242 Ten Eyck Street, wearing all I had left after the fire.
I rededicated my life to being one with meaning and purpose, and I will work in 5783 to define who I am now.
God, what do you want from me? I am ready, willing, and able to do whatever mitzvot you ask me to complete.
Jan’s name is in the Book of Well-Lived Lives.
If I can change my life this year, perhaps I may one day join her as someone who lived well.
The only constant will be that Jan will be with me as I delineate who I am.
Jan’s life-changing love will never die and will be the guardrail of my year of advancement.
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.
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.
Based on the demographics of life expectancy, I always believed that Jan would outlive me.
Despite the actuarial evidence, I am the one who is still alive.
I have focused the last year on celebrating Jan's life, preserving her memory, and keeping her name mentioned.
In my efforts to define how I will use these years of living alone, I also,
On the eve of a sweet new year, I walked five kilometers to help Bridges‘ mission of Demanding Change, Ending Homelessness.
I walk for serenity and exercise, but on mornings like today, I walk to help Bridges End Homelessness.
Jan and I were committed to Tikkun Olam to repair and improve the world.
An opportunity to walk with my friends at Bridges in the streets of Summit, NJ, to house the un-housed is a small way to continue to repair the world.
As I prepared for Rosh Hashanah without Jan next to me but with her soul intertwined with mine, it was a joy to take a few strides to assist Bridges in repairing the world.
May we be blessed with a sweet and happy new year, one in which we can End Homelessness.
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.
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.
Sharing Jan’s Love With the Unhoused
Last night I did a shift in Battery Park with Bridges providing food and warm clothes. It was very windy, cold, and unlivable conditions for our neighbors living on the streets. On Thanksgiving, I volunteered with the Bridges street outreach team in Newark.
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by Julie Otsuka
The Swimmers: A Novel by Julie Otsuka is a novel about what happens to a group of obsessed recreational swimmers when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool. This searing, intimate story of mothers and daughters—and the sorrows of implacable loss—is the most commanding and unforgettable work yet from a modern master. I highly recommend The Swimmers: A Novel by Julie Otsuka.
The novel was a page-turner from the first to the last page. It had been on my to-read list for months, and I am happy to start reading The Swimmers: A Novel by Julie Otsuka.
Memory loss is a frightening situation for anyone. Ms. Otuska writes powerfully and eloquently about Alice’s loss of her memory. I felt as if it was one of my loved ones.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief.
One of these swimmers is Alice, who is slowly losing her memory. The pool was a final stand against the darkness of her encroaching dementia for Alice. Without the fellowship of other swimmers and the routine of her daily laps, she is plunged into dislocation and chaos, swept into memories of her childhood and the Japanese American incarceration camp where she spent the war. Alice’s estranged daughter, reentering her mother’s life too late, witnesses her stark and devastating decline.
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.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’sJan’s Love blog.
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by Kevin Powers
Today I started reading A Line in the Sand: A Novel by Kevin Powers. Listed as one of the books to read this week by The New York Times, which described it as “a stunning novel. Kevin Powers provides what any discerning reader desires the most — complex and flawed characters, precise use of language, succinct description, and believable dialogue.”
One early morning on a Norfolk beach in Virginia, a dead body is discovered by a man taking his daily swim—Arman Bajalan, formerly an interpreter in Iraq. After narrowly surviving an assassination attempt that killed his wife and child, Arman has been given lonely sanctuary in the US as a maintenance worker at the Sea Breeze Motel. Now, convinced that the body is connected to his past, he knows he is still unsafe.
Seasoned detective Catherine Wheel and her newly minted partner have little to go on beyond a bus ticket in the dead man’s pocket. It leads them to Sally Ewell, a local journalist as grief-stricken as Arman is by the Iraq War, investigating a corporation on the cusp of landing a multi-billion-dollar government defense contract.
As victims mount around Arman, taking the team down wrong turns and towards startling evidence, they find themselves in a race committed to unraveling the truth and keeping Arman alive—even if it costs them everything.
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.
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.
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s best presidential historians, offers an illuminating exploration of the early development, growth and exercise of leadership as demonstrated by Presidents Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR and Johnson.
I received this book for Hanukkah from my granddaughter and son Mike and his girlfriend Elyssa. They know me very well. A book by Ms. Goodwin is always a must read. If you add in Lincoln, the two Roosevelt’s and LBJ, it is a book I cannot put down.
This NPR interview with Ms. Goodwin is worth listening to.
Read: September 2023
by Kate Atkinson
Today, I commended reading Normal Rules Don’t Apply: Stories by Kate Atkinson, is a dazzling collection of eleven interconnected stories from the bestselling, award-winning author of Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life, with everything that readers love about her novels—the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.
Nothing is quite as it seems in this collection of eleven dazzling stories. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep, a secretary who watches over the life she has just left, and a man who bets on a horse that may—or may not—have spoken to him. Everything that readers love about the novels of Kate Atkinson is here—the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.
A startling and funny feast for the imagination, these stories conjure a multiverse of subtly connected worlds while illuminating the webs of chance and connection among us all.
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.
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.
by Michelle Min Sterling
I recently read an incredible novel called Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling. The book tells the story of several climate change survivors in a near-future northern settlement and explores the intersection of gender, class, and migration. The novel is a page-turner and a masterful exploration of who and what will survive in a warming world.
The story follows Rose, a young woman who agrees to spy on the architect of an American building project in exchange for housing. She arrives at the same time as Grant, a college professor who is trying to escape his wealthy family’s dark legacy. As they begin to investigate the mysterious architect, they uncover a disturbing mystery lurking beneath the surface of the camp.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the novel is the inclusion of an elite group of women soldiers living and working at a nearby Cold War-era climate research station. The rumors surrounding their presence add more intrigue to an already compelling story.
If you’re looking for a captivating novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat, I highly recommend Camp Zero. The book is a mesmerizing and transportive read, perfect for fans of Station Eleven and The Power.
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.
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.
by Maaza Mengiste
The Shadow King: A Novel by Maaza Mengiste is a book happened to offer two often overlooked threads of history. The first is Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. The second one I am most interested in is the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. I highly recommend The Shadow King. It is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power and what it means to be a woman at war.
Hirut and Aster come alive in Maaza Mengiste talented writing. Their struggles to be seen as equal in a society at war is engaging. Hirut’s plan to create a shadow kingpin the absence of Emperor Haile Selassie is one that turns defeat into victory.
Goodreads provides a good overview of the book.
With the threat of Mussolini’s army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid in Kidane and his wife Aster’s household. Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie’s army, rushes to mobilize his most muscular men before the Italians invaded. His initial kindness to Hirut shifts into flinty cruelty when she resists his advances. Hirut finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, betrayals, and overwhelming rage. Meanwhile, Mussolini’s technologically advanced army prepared for an easy victory. Hundreds of thousands of Italians―Jewish photographer Ettore among them―march on Ethiopia seeking adventure.
As the war begins in earnest, Hirut, Aster, and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, Hirut offers a plan to maintain morale. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take arms against the Italians. But how could she have predicted her war as a prisoner of one of Italy’s most vicious officers, who would force her to pose before Ettore’s camera?
What follows is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power, with Hirut as the fierce, original, and brilliant voice at its heart. In incandescent, lyrical prose, Maaza Mengiste breathes life into complicated characters on both sides of the battle line, shaping a heartrending, unforgettable exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.
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.
by Amor Towles
Today, I began reading “Table for Two: Fictions” by Amor Towles. As a fan of his previous work, “A Gentleman in Moscow,” I was excited to delve into some of his shorter fiction. The book contains six stories from New York City and a novella from the Golden Age Hollywood. “Table for Two” is another captivating addition to Towles’s collection of stylish and transporting fiction written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication.
The New York stories, set primarily in the year 2000, explore the profound consequences that can result from fleeting encounters and the intricate dynamics of compromise that underpin modern marriages. These narratives are sure to evoke strong emotions and leave a lasting impression.
In the novel “Rules of Civility,” the resilient Evelyn Ross departs from New York City in September 1938, intending to return to her home in Indiana. However, as her train reaches Chicago, where her parents eagerly await her, she spontaneously decides to extend her journey to Los Angeles. “Eve in Hollywood,” narrated from seven different perspectives, reveals how Eve forges a new path for herself and others in a gripping noirish tale that traverses the movie sets, bungalows, and dive bars of Los Angeles.
