Fabulous Jazz Clarinetist Anat Cohen

http://anatcohen.com/wpo_recordings/claroscuro/#.UnLkMhA1mSo

Fall is a good time to listen to jazz, when the weather is chilly and dramatic, and the recent discovery of Anat Cohen's 2012 CD Claroscuro is highly recommended.  Best of all is cut #4, "As Rosas Nao Falam," (the roses don't talk) composed by Brazilian Angenor de Oliveira (known as Cartola.)  Now I'm on a quest to discover more great musicians playing other Cartola compositions

More about Cartola here:  (website is in Portuguese, which amazingly I can still read pretty well)  http://www.cartola.org.br/cartola.html

Watermelon Minky and Bird Alphabet Fabric Blankets

My own designed Alphabet fabric, at Spoonflower, combined with soft Minky watermelon-colored fabric, make these blankets for twin grandsons Cole and Wilson Taylor soft and cuddly.

Required Reading

This is a great book!

When is a Newton not made with Figs?

Answer:  When it's a running shoe!  Daughter Amber Taylor turned me on to Newton running shoes after she came in at #15 in women in the recent 2013 Big Sur marathon.  So, I bought a pair for my short 2 mile jogs.  I love the new shoes!  More Newton info can be found at their website here.

PS the photo from Big Sur is of a stranger.  I just liked the way he color coordinated his shoes with his running outfit.

Flight Behavior and Foggy Morning Cheese

Two new favorite things: 1.  Barbara Kingsolver's novel Flight Behavior and  2.  Nicasio Valley Cheese Company's cheese. I'll take Kingsolver with a Foggy Morning.  They are both good and delicious.

Here's one example of Kingsolver's masterful touch (on page 283): "She thought of other times, other dire news.  Pregnancies, wanted or not.  It was never real at first.  She recalled the day of her mother's diagnosis, holding her bone-thin arm, its yielding skin, walking her out of the doctor's office onto the crumbling, shaded parking lot.  Little humps of moss that swelled along a scar in the asphalt like drops of green blood.  All these vivid external details suggesting nothing had changed.  They'd decided to go to the grocery with no more mention, that day, of the end of the world.