Richard W. Brown December 20, 2021
Soul Sisters Bench with Richard and Ellen McHenry

Plaques Installed on Jan’s Memorial Benches

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 36 seconds

Jan’s memorial plaques in Hanson Park in Cranford, NJ, were installed yesterday! Thanks to the one hundred seventy-three donors who helped purchase the benches! In the photos, Ellen McHenry, President of the Hanson Park Conservancy, sits next to me.

 

Jan’s memorial plaques in Hanson Park Conservancy in Cranford, NJ, were installed yesterday! Thanks to the one hundred…

Posted by Richard W. Brown on Monday, December 20, 2021


Please plan to join us on April 24, 2022, to Celebrate Jan Lilien Day!

Celebrate Jan

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.

Show thread (1)

Richard W. Brown

Social Media Links

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes, 36 seconds

These are links to social media posts about the benches.

To like and share the post on Facebook click here. 

To like and share the post on Instagram click here. 

To like and share the post on Twitter click here. 

Click here to view on Linkedin.

Go back to Stream

Share your thoughts and ideas

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

The Jan Lilien Education Fund!

Donate Now!
Soul Sisters Bench with Richard and Ellen McHenry
×
×
Mercury: A Novel

Read: January 2024

Get this book

Mercury: A Novel

by Amy Jo Burns

Today, I started reading Mercury: A Novel about a roofing family. The family’s bond of loyalty is tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town. The book is written by Amy Jo Burns, the author of the critically acclaimed novel Shiner, which I read and enjoyed in 2022. I highly recommend it.

The story is set in 1990, and it follows the journey of a seventeen-year-old girl named Marley West, who arrives in the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. She is a loner who is looking for a place to belong. The first thing she sees when she gets to town is three men standing on a rooftop, and they soon become her whole world.

Marley becomes a young wife to one of the Joseph brothers, The One Who Got Away to another, and an adopted mother to all of them. Marley guides these unruly men as their mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface, and suddenly, the family’s survival hangs in the balance.

With Marley as their guide, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known or build something more substantial in its place.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding 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 Worst Hard Time

Read: September 2019

Get this book

The Worst Hard Time

by Timothy Egan

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan was initially a book I selected from the e-library because nothing else I wanted to read was available. Once I started reading the book, I could not put it down.

Now that we have had the warmest summer since 1936 during the dust bowl, the book has even more meaning.

According to The New York Times,

The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect.”

With the likelihood of more ecological catastrophes in the immediate future, this is a book I highly recommend.

Subscribe

Contact Us

×
Berlin- A Novel

Read: June 2023

Get this book

Berlin: A Novel by Bea Setton

by Bea Setton

I’ve begun reading Berlin: A Novel by Bea Setton. After finishing Kairos, a book set in a divided Berlin, Setton’s debut novel is witty and insightful, with a young woman battling a sense of emptiness who moves to Berlin for a fresh start. However, things go differently than planned.

Daphne, the protagonist, moves to Berlin hoping for a new beginning but deals with more drama than she left behind. She knows she needs to make friends, learn German, and navigate a new way of life. She even expects to spend long nights alone with Nutella and experience the difficulties of online dating in another language. But one night, something unexpected and unnerving happens in her apartment, and Daphne’s life suddenly turns dangerous.

Setton captures the modern female experience with sharp observations and wit, making Berlin a must-read for her generation.

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.

×
Kala: A Novel

Read: June 2024

Get this book

Kala: A Novel

by Colin Walsh

Today, I started reading “Kala: A Novel” by Colin Walsh, a gripping literary page-turner from a rising Irish talent. Former friends, estranged for twenty years, reckon with the terrifying events of the summer that changed their lives. Three old friends are reunited in the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, for the first time in years.

Helen, Joe, and Mush were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group’s white-hot center. Soon after that summer’s peak, Kala disappeared without a trace.

Now it’s fifteen years later:

  • Helen has reluctantly returned to Ireland for her father’s wedding.
  • Joe is a world-famous musician who is newly back in town.
  • Mush has never left, too scared to venture beyond the counter of his mother’s café.

But human remains are discovered in the woods. Two more girls have gone missing. As past and present begin to collide, the estranged friends are forced to confront their involvement in the events that led to Kala’s disappearance.

Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its secrets, in a story that builds from a smolder to a stunning climax, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging and the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.

×
The Extinction of Irena Rey

Read: April 2024

Get this book

The Extinction of Irena Rey

by Jennifer Croft

I began reading “The Extinction of Irena Rey” by Jennifer Croft today. The novel is about eight translators searching for a world-famous author, Irena Rey, who has gone missing in a primeval Polish forest. The translators have come from eight different countries and share a deep admiration for Irena Rey. Their mission is to translate her masterpiece, “Gray Eminence,” but their task takes an unexpected turn when Irena disappears within days of their arrival.

The translators begin to investigate where Irena may have gone while continuing to work on her book. They explore the ancient wooded refuge, with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens, and study Irena’s exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. However, their search reveals secrets and deceptions that they are unprepared for. As they grow increasingly paranoid in this isolated and obsessive fever dream, the translators are forced to confront their differences, and their rivalries and desires threaten not only their work but also the fate of Irena Rey herself.

This debut novel is a brilliant exploration of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is a thought-provoking narrative blends humor and adventure, taking readers on an unforgettable journey with a small yet diverse cast of characters. These characters, shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation, find themselves in one of Europe’s last great wildernesses, where the fate of their beloved author hangs in the balance.

×
Man's Search for Meaning

Read: January 2022

Get this book

Man’s Search for Meaning

by Viktor E. Frankl

I remember reading portions of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl at different times, but I never finished the book. However, recently, eight and a half months after the passing of Jan, the book came up for discussion in one of my groups. Frankl’s theory of logotherapy, which derives from the Greek word for “meaning,” centers around the idea that the primary human drive is not pleasure, as Freud believed, but rather the search for what gives life meaning. I now have a framework for my life without Jan.

For those like me who are widows, Frankl understands suffering,

In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Jan and I lived meaningful lives. My challenge now is to continue to find meaning in my life without Jan.

As Frankl writes,

Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.

The love Jan and I shared was one of my primary sources of meaning. In addition, I stopped working full-time at the end of 2018 and struggled to replace the purpose I had gained from repairing the world. After Jan died, I suffered the “provisional existence of an unknown limit.” Frankl experienced that when he was in the concentration camps.

I have replaced the loss of meaning and purpose with a series of activities:

  1. Planning to Celebrate Jan Day on her birthday this year;
  2. Writing my random thoughts on Jan, love, grief, life, and all things considered;
  3. Reading more than ever, including my Goodreads 2022 Reading Challange; and
  4. Walking more than I probably should.

I am also beginning to serve on the board of a few non-profits. It is time to transition from hands-on work to providing leadership differently.

Will this be enough to give my life meaning?

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

I must continue focusing on my search for meaning, as life will change over time.

My grief journey has taught me that love never dies,

For the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

My path forward is to keep Jan’s love alive and continue to share it with others.

I recommend this book without reservation.

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.

×