April isn’t the cruelest month; February is! Even though it’s the shortest month, it’s cold, bleak, and dark. I’ve been eating beans and greens - trying to stretch, move - and keep up the momentum!
My saving grace the last few winter months has been reading books!
I came across an old ‘Duke City Fix’ blog post about this book - ‘Weekends With O'Keeffe’ by C.S. Merrill
"In 1973, Georgia O’Keeffe hired C.S. Merrill to catalog her library for her estate. Merrill, a poet, was twenty-six years old, and O’Keeffe was eighty-five, almost blind, but still painting."
“We were in the library when I was telling her about my eyes. (I had reddened eyes from riding my bicycle in a sandstorm.) She said that I should get a weak salt solution and an eyecup. I said I had not tried that, but rather used eyedrops. I had never even thought of using an eyecup; I had never heard of an eyecup.”
She responded, “You’re not even prepared to live, Child.”
#TheShade
“O’Keefe showed me how to make simple, fresh food my medicine. Over and over, we read health food articles and books such as Adelle Davis’s ‘Let’s Eat Right To Keep Fit’. She gifted me with an appreciation for herbs and teas. Every night, we had a hot pot of orange blossom tea. The ritual of swathing her arthritic parts in soft wool and heating pads showed me the art of being an elder.”
I enjoy all sorts of books, including First Lady biographies, History, and Fiction, but I lean into dystopian fiction the most! I recently tore through ‘Parable of the Sower’ by Octavia Butler - “In 2024, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.” Butler used "Make America Great Again" as the campaign slogan for the dictator Andrew Steele Jarret in her 1998 novel ‘Parable of the Talents’.
I just started ‘Woman on the Edge of Time’ by Marge Piercy. 1976
The problem with escaping in dystopian fiction is reality in 2025!
I wrote this in February 2017! “As week four of the Trump Presidency comes to a tumultous close, and the President heads to Florida for the first big rally of the 2020 election, I already need to refocus on my self care routine, get back on the AM Yoga Track, eating a protein packed breakfest, talking Blanket on a long morning walk, working out, writing, and most importantly not check my phone to see that day's breaking news! I am going to try harder to embrace my inner chingona! Embrace your inner chingona.”
