One of my favorite things is to write with my hands around a pen and hear it scrape across the paper. Even gel pens have a sound.

I can’t imagine dipping into an inkwell just as the younger generations can’t imagine hours of practicing cursive. I am glad my kids were exposed to cursive handwriting before it stopped being taught in schools. It will become a lost art just as pretty journals and day planners become an extension of one’s creativity and more like a hobby.

It’s the pull and push of life. The friction and the smooth release. The tension and the languid exhale.

For Christmas recently, my friend P sent me a puzzle of baby Yoda in a Santa suit. That got me on a tear and I have since put together many puzzles of 100-750 pieces and been gifted a felt puzzle wooden table that you set up on a slant with 4 drawers to parse out however you want to organize your pieces. I prefer making the frame first and then assign pieces to each drawer according to color.

I have since that day also gifted puzzles and we are sharing them once solved for the next person. One thousand piece puzzles await in a drawer for that day when I feel I have some experience and success behind me.

Meanwhile, so far after around eight completed puzzles, have lost one piece in just two. They are like socks. No one knows what happens to them. They just disappeared.

Book club has changed and grown. We started before Covid and then went on zoom and now we just stay online since we have some out of the area participants. It’s just easier. We try to read women writers about women’s issues usually. Therefore many of the books we read shine a light on how marginalized, difficult and unfair our female ancestor’s lives have been.

Our first book of the year was “The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek”, by Kim Michele Richardson. A lovely written book about the hardships endured by the Appalachian mountain folk of Kentucky and the existence of blue people therein. I don’t want to give anything away but if you like books and have never heard of the blue folk of Kentucky then this is one well researched historical novel on your list.

Our February title was “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” by our own CA author Lisa See who joined our discussion on zoom and added much rich background info to how she researched the book, visited its historical location and even interviewed villagers with a translator to get precise memories and data so she could spin her tale around the true events. This was an extremely well written and prose like account of a secret language Chinese women once used many centuries ago. Her explanations were invaluable and we were all unanimous we want to read another one of her books next year.

We are so lucky to have writers who investigate little known facts, ferret out detailed experiences and circumstances so traditions we could have lost forever are made real to us the reader via skillfully creating stories around them so we can examine, digest and discuss amongst other trusted women; our thoughts, feelings and even our dedication to making it better in some small or large way just by our having our Goddess Circle Book Club.