Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Happy cooking, cleaning, traveling, laughing, stressing-out, hanging-out, gossiping, tippling, eating. My advice — forget politics for the day or weekend, and agree to disagree about pumpkin pie. In between and during — well, maybe not while carving the turkey or tofu, there’s nothing like an audiobook to calm, divert, and amuse. I’ve found five listens that are perfect for dipping in and out of as time permits. Read more…
At lunch one day when he was four years old, my nephew asked when he would turn into a girl. After a microsecond of silence, his father replied that unless he thought that he should be a girl, he would stay a boy. “Oh,” said my nephew, clearly surprised. “But I thought everyone becomes a girl for awhile, even if you start as a boy. Are you sure?” His father was sure. My nephew considered for moment, then through a bite of his grilled cheese sandwich, announced, “Oh well then, if it doesn’t just happen, I guess I’ll stay a boy.”
I love that a little boy could believe that the natural order of life was that everyone spends time as a girl. And I cherish his freedom to ask the question; to talk about variation and difference. What a fine thing it is to be able to be our true selves. How life-affirming to be able to embrace our sexuality, and the gender identities for ourselves that we know are right. Today’s Audio Adventures celebrate that opportunity. Read more…
It’s around this time of year that I bow to the wisdom of A.A. Milne, who wrote, “Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.” After a summer of failing to orchestrate the plants in my care, I long simply to stand back and be thrilled by the messy exuberance of it all. To be as delighted by a whirling maple seed as I was at age five.
For those who feel the same, here are six harvest-season audiobooks—beginning with Nicholas Guy Smith’s clear and friendly reading of Peter Wohlleben’s newest nonfiction, THE WEATHER DETECTIVE, which explores the secrets of the garden from the skies above to the soil below. Did you know that daisies close their flowers when wet weather is on the way? Neither did I. (It’s to preserve their pollen for bees.) The author is German, so much of the information is Eurocentric, but I still found myself saying, “Well, huh,” often enough that my husband kept asking, “What now?” Thus, he, too, knows that honeybees only leave the hive when it’s warmer than 54°F. That’s why on crisp sunny mornings, you see cheerful, shambling bumblebees among the flowers. Read more…
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