What i’m digging

musings on music, film, books, art, and pretty things.

2025

March 2025

Listening:

Lots of Vivaldi in the am. Sparks, still. Lots of Edith Piaf on vinyl. Wicked soundtrack. Amon Amarth. I try to play some mid-90s punk - Offspring, Green Day, etc., for my senior, driving, with mixed results.

Viewing:

05 - Flight of the Conchords
02 - Academy Awards. Anora the big winner. Hulu loses feed for last two. Maddening. Then we lose all power until almost midnight.

Restarted TWD after a multi-month absence. Midway through S9. Little hard picking it up again. For some reason it feels - or sounds - like the dialogue, for the first noticeable ongoing time in the series, is getting clunky or forced.

Reading:

Bridge of Clay. Little confusing first 70 pages, jumping around and trying to follow the chronology of what’s happening to who when. But eventually swept up in the characters and desire to follow the breadcrumbs dropped, again and again, in front of the reader beautifully.

Lots. A 17-year old polishing off Cherilyn Clough’s second memoir and Celeste Ng’s dystopian tale of beauty and terror. A 14-year old beginning the journey through A Gentleman in Moscow. An 8-year old reading aloud to his 5-year old brother various volumes of Ivy & Bean, along with many assorted books on Avengers, WildKratts, and nature at large.

19 - Finished Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, per my 17-year old daughter’s recommendation. If you should ever wonder how the role of protest, of dissent, of questioning and standing up and speaking out and making art in a time of crushing autocratic intent matters…read this. Poetic, timely, beautiful, terrifying.
06 - Finished Tesla/Edison

Reading - with kids:

Big by Vashti Harrison (2023)
The Day the Crayons Came Home - Drew Daywalt, illustrated by Oliver Jeffers (2015)
House Finds a Home - written by Katy S. Duffield, illustrated by Jen Corace (2022)
How to Teach Your Cat a Trick in Five Easy Steps - Nicola Winstanely and Zoe Si (2022)
It’s My Tree - Oliver Tallec (2020)
Roger is Reading a Book - Koen Van Biesen (2015)
The Old Boat - Jarrett and Jerome Humphrey (2023)
This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen (2012)
Who Owns the Sun? - written and illustrated by Stacy Chbosky (1988)

Started The One and Only Ivan.
Finished Flora & Ulysses

February 2025

General

Lots of reading, all the way around. Love it.

Viewing:

03 - Finished watching The Farewell. One of my new favorite cultural-learning family dramas. Heavy ideas with lots of laughter and personality.

03 - Finished The Wild Robot. Slow start (several days ago), but kept picking up steam and making me care. Beautiful little arc combining WALL-E, Inside Out, and Up, amidst other classics about friendship and family.

Slow Horses (just me). Season 4. Maybe my least favorite season so far, but…that’s like choosing a favorite ice cream flavor when you have a half dozen delicious choices in front of you. Superb ensemble. Also: started up Money Heist again, after a year-long absence or so (on series 2 now).

Reading:

07 - Started Flora & Ulysses with the younger boys. Accidentally read seven straight chapters. We’re into it.

06 - Finished The Phantom Tollbooth with our 5- and 8-year old. Been savoring its magical words and images. Still holds up from its 1960 publication.

Reading - with kids:

Big Bertha: How a Massive Tunnel Boring Machine Dug a Highway under Seattle - Amanda Abler, illustrated by Katy Wu (2024)
Boardwalk Babies - written by Marissa Moss, illustrated by April Chu (2021)
-Fern and Otto: A Story About Two Best Friends by Stephanie Graegin (2021)
Found. - Jeff Newman & Larry Day (2018)
-The Gardener - Sarah Stewart, pictures David Small (2007)
-In Every Life - Marla Frazee (2023)
-The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward (1942)
The Nature Journal: A Backyard Adventure by Savannah Allen (2023)
-The Piano Recital by Akiko Mihakoshi (2019)
Prairie Days - written by Patricia MacLachlan, illustrated by Micha Archer (2020)
Why? by Nikolai Popov (2021)

January 2025

Viewing:

Conclave. Delicious writing and the same level of ensemble performances.
Avengers: Endgame, spread out over multiple evenings. Aaah, the agony and suspense!

30 - Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea. What a pair of…beautiful, beautiful odes to place, to relationships, to individuality and imagination and kindness and strength and resilience and humor…we all watched together, in serialized form over a couple weeks, and they hold up so well from childhood. Our second time through with kids.

29 - Finally finished Dune 2 with Olders. Quite a journey. I enjoyed, cannot speak for all the audience. My respect for Zendaya as an actor continues to slowly grow.

Reading:

A Confederacy of Dunces. Still working my through and loving.

A Court of Thorns and Roses. Yep, had to try it. Definitely stronger writing than I was expecting.

Becca absorbed in Upworthy collection and The Last Thing He Wrote. I pounce on the latter when she’s not around, perpetually a few chapters behind.

Nightbitch. Whew. Nothing quite like it. Am I more understanding and respectful of what it means to be a mom?

Listening:

Beethoven on vinyl, Herb Alpert - yeah, the one with that cover :), kids singing Eminem
Led Zeppelin - debut (1969) and II (1969)
lot of Duke Ellington

Selected Readings with kids:

The Phantom Tollbooth (with me), The Carnivorous Carnival (with Becca)

Away With Words! Wise and Witty Poems for Language Lovers by Mary Ann Hoberman, art by Perry Hoberman (2022)
Bear Wants to Sing - Written by Cray Fagan, illustrated by Dena Seiferling (2021)
Earl the Squirrel by Don Freeman (2005)
Elsie’s Bird - Jane Yolen & David Small (2010)
I Am the Storm - Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Stemple, Art by Kristen and Kevin Howdeshell (2020)
Twelve Days of Winter - Sherri Maret, illustrated by Thomas Hilley (2022)
What You Need To Be Warm: A Poem of Welcome - Neil Gaiman (2023)
When I Wake Up - Seth Fishman, illustrated by Jessica Bagley (2021)