• 2023: The Year In Review

    Each December, I take the time to examine the ups and downs I experienced over the past year. What follows is my personal and professional review of 2023. I:

    * Landed a job as a contract overnight curator of local news for Apple. My contract was just extended.

    * Relaunched A Bit Of Good News.

    * Penned at least 17 journal entries. Must do better next year.

    * Maintained two Instagram accounts: @thejadewalker and @catsofjade, and The Written Word quote service.

    * Read 58 books and completed the 2023 GoodReads reading challenge.

    * Subscribed and read numerous magazines, including Cook’s Country, Cooks Illustrated, Bake From Scratch, Smithsonian Magazine, Scientific American, The Saturday Evening Post, The Writer and TeaTime Magazine.

    * Watched at least 116 TV shows and 61 movies, and listened to many podcasts.

    * Participated in The Society of Professional Obituary Writers, the New Hampshire Writers Guild, the New York City Writers Group, the South Florida Freelancers Group, the Authors Guild, the Writers Guild of America East and the Silent Book Club – Manchester, NH chapter.

    * Launched The Forgotten Books Project and helped to save more than 200 books.

    * Nursed my husband through COVID-19.

    * Planted a large container garden and a wildflower garden (both of which melted in the constant rains and brutal heat), then spent the fall filling our borders and raised beds with 800 tulip and crocus bulbs.

    * Hunkered in the basement during a rare New Hampshire tornado.

    * Spent months searching for our next home, but between the rising interest rates, the lack of stock and an increase in prices, we had no luck. The search continues.

    * Mourned the death of our eldest cat, Georgina Walker-Weir, and my grandfather, Art Carlton.

    * Ended The Blog of Death after 20 years.

    * Finally completed the decades-long payoff of my student loans.

    * Continued to wear these damn braces (and miss the process of enjoying food). Also underwent implant surgery.

    * Finally entered menopause after nearly 3 years of perimenopause. Started taking medicine to deter hot flashes.

    * Suffered from at least 23 migraines and lost 35 days of my life to pain. Average headache duration: 37 hours. (Note: That’s about 10 fewer migraines than last year, so thank you, menopause.)

    * Discovered I have both high blood pressure and low iron. Lots of hospital visits and stabbings ensued as well as a disastrous attempt at an endoscopy/colonoscopy. Now on meds for both conditions.

    * Decorated the inside of our house for Halloween and dressed up as a baker on “The Great British Baking Show.”

    * Decorated the front and inside of our house for Christmas and mailed 40 Christmas cards.

    * Tried many new recipes. New favorites include: mini waffles, chicken saltimbocca, melted butter pound cake with a chocolate ganache glaze, Key lime pie bars, a sausage and potato breakfast bake and a lemon-olive oil tart.

    * Worked my 33rd year as a journalist.

    * Celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary.

    * Turned 50.

     


    End of the year

     

    Goals for 2024

    * Purchase a new home with at least 5 acres of land.

    * Improve my baking/cooking skills.

    * Work on my fiction.

    * Write more blog entries.

    * Continue to grow A Bit of Good News.

    * Read at least 75 books.

    * Sleep at least 7 hours a night.

    * Win the lottery.

  • 2023 sign

    My top 10 favs of 2023: A year spent reading, watching and listening to stories

    Ok, my friends. It’s time to share my annual list of pop culture wonders. Over the past year, I consumed 58 books, 116 TV shows, 61 movies and many podcasts. These were my favorites:

    (Note: Not all were released during the past 365 days.)

     

    MY FAVORITE BOOKS – FICTION
     

    Lessons in chemistry book1. “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus

    2. “Cult Classic” by Stephen Blackmoore

    3. “Holly” by Stephen King

    4. “Drowning” by T.J. Newman

    5. “Going Zero” by Anthony McCarten

    6. “Hate Machine” by Stephen Blackmoore

    7. “Double or Nothing” by Craig Schaefer

    8. “A Plain-Dealing Villain” by Craig Schaefer

    9. “The Killing Floor Blues” by Craig Schaefer

    10. “Harmony Black” by Craig Schaefer

    (Honorable mentions: “The Castle Doctrine” by Craig Schaefer, “You Are Home” by Catana Chetwynd, “Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting” by Clare Pooley, “All Systems Red” by Martha Wells, “The Maid” by Nita Prose and “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi)

     

    MY FAVORITE BOOKS – NONFICTION
     

    1. true tails of baker and taylor book“The True Tails of Baker and Taylor: The Library Cats Who Left Their Pawprints on a Small Town . . . and the World” by Jan Louch and Lisa Rogak

    2. “National Trust Book of Scones” by Sarah Merker

    3. “What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator” by Barbara Butcher

    4. “American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century” by Maureen Callahan

    5. “Yours Truly: An Obituary Writer’s Guide to Telling Your Story” by James R. Hagerty

    6. “A Pocketful of Happiness” by Richard E. Grant

    7. “Knave of Spades” by Alan Titchmarsh

    8. “My Hygge Home: How to Make Home Your Happy Place” by Meik Wiking

    9. “Clean & Green: 101 Hints and Tips for a More Eco-Friendly Home” by Nancy Birtwhistle

    10. The Art Thief” by Michael Finkel

    (Honorable mentions: “Kitty Cornered: How Frannie and Five Other Incorrigible Cats Seized Control of Our House and Made It Their Home” by Bob Tarte, “Disappearing Ink: The Insider, the FBI, and the Looting of the Kenyon College Library” by Travis McDade, “Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath” by Ted Koppel and “The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power” by Deirdre Mask)

    Overall reading ratio: I read 18,034 pages. Books were split 70% fiction to 30% nonfiction and 55% female authors to 45% male authors.

     

     

    MY FAVORITE TV SHOWS
    GBBO1. The Great British Baking Show

    2. Julia

    3. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

    4. Escape to the Country

    5. Ted Lasso

    6. The Diplomat

    7. The Repair Shop

    8. Grand Designs

    9. Britain’s Hidden Villages

    10. Reacher

    (Honorable mentions: Homicide Hunter, Cook’s Country, America’s Test Kitchen, Gardener’s World, Last Week With John Oliver, The Reluctant Traveler, Men in Kilts, Poker Face, Staged, For All Mankind, Foundation, Welcome to Wrexham and Lessons in Chemistry.)

     

    MY FAVORITE MOVIES
     

    Three Thousand Years of Longing movie1. Three Thousand Years of Longing

    2. She Said

    3. Elvis

    4. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie

    5. John Wick: Chapter 4

    6. The Old Guard

    7. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret

    8. No One Will Save You

    9. Jim Gaffigan: Dark Pale

    10. Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man and the Pool

    (Honorable mentions: A Man Called Otto, Being Mary Tyler Moore, The Fablemans, Plane, Ghosted, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Call Me Kate, Mike Birbiglia: The New One, 65, Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3, The Leftovers, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, The Gray Man and Bullet Train)

     

    MY FAVORITE PODCASTS
     

    The Vinyl Cafe1. The Vinyl Cafe

    2. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe

    3. GrimmCast

    4. Small Town Dicks

    5. Naked Lunch

    6. BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine Podcast

    7. Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!

    8. Christmas Past

    9. Dear Hank & John

    10. Mobituaries

    (Honorable mentions: Clear + Vivid With Alan Alda, Sidedoor, Something Wild, David Tennant Does a Podcast With…, The Christmas Stocking, Sue Perkins: An Hour Or So With…., Nocturne, Criminal, Death, Sex & Money, Awards Chatter and The Anthropocene Reviewed)

  • In Memoriam: A Look Back At Many Of The People We Lost in 2022

    hourglass.jpgSome people view obituaries as morbid, but in truth only one line in these stories deals with death. The rest of an obit focuses on the amazing lives people led.

    In 2022, these obituaries featured people whose lives — and deaths — most affected me:

    * Sidney Poitier, Oscar-winning actor

    * Bob Saget, comedian

    * Meat Loaf, singer

    * Howard Hesseman, actor

    * Ivan Reitman, director

    * P.J. O’Rourke, satirist

    * Ned Eisenberg, actor

    * Emilio Delgado, “Sesame Street” star

    * Madeleine Albright, first female secretary of state

    * Dagny Carlsson, world’s oldest blogger

    * Gerda Weissmann Klein, Holocaust survivor

    * Joanna Barnes, actress and novelist

    * Collarwali, tiger

    * Elaine Brumberg, fairy godmother of bowling

    * Colin Cantwell, designer of the Death Star

    * Ray Liotta, actor

    * Ann Turner Cook, Gerber baby

    * Betty Rowland, burlesque queen

    * Woody Williams, last remaining WWII Medal of Honor recipient

    * Charlie Milan, candlepin bowler

    * Muriel Engelman, WWII nurse

    * Dr. Randall E. McNally, plastic surgeon

    * Raymond Allen Murray Jr., one of the nation’s first Black marines

    * Nichelle Nichols, “Star Trek” star

    * Roger E. Mosley, “Magnum PI” star

    * David McCullough, historian

    * Olivia Newton-John, “Grease” star and pop singer

    * Marty Martin, snake expert

    * Janice Bluestein Longone, cookbook collector

    * Roland Mesnier, White House pastry chef

    * Anne Garrels, war correspondent

    * Queen Elizabeth II, British monarch

    * Al Siegal, editor

    * Ilse Nathan and Ruth Siegler, Holocaust survivors and sisters

    * Nancy Hiller, woodworker

    * Loretta Lynn, country music legend

    * Patricia Marvin, Butterball Turkey Talk-Line operator

    * Angela Lansbury, actress

    * Mehran Karimi, the Iranian man who lived for 18 years in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and loosely inspired the film “The Terminal”

    * Allen Kay, ad exec

    * Bob McGrath, “Sesame Street” star

    * Dorothy Pitman Hughes, pioneering feminist

    * Don Christopher, Garlic King

    * Frances Hesselbein, Girl Scout leader

    * Ali Ahmed Aslam, credited with inventing chicken tikka masala

    * Dave Whitlock, fly-fisherman

    * Barbara Walters, pioneering journalist

  • 2022: The Year In Review

    Each December, I always take the time to examine the ups and downs I experienced over the past year. What follows is my personal and professional review of 2022. I:

    * Produced/edited hundreds of breaking news stories about the global coronavirus pandemic, the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 2022 election cycle, the fall of Roe v. Wade and the transformation of U.S. women into second-class citizens, the resignation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the rise and fall of British Prime Minister Liz Truss, the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the death of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, Hurricane Ian, numerous mass shootings, outbreaks of the bird flu, monkeypox, polio and the return of influenza and many celebrity deaths.

    * Promoted to deputy editor at HuffPost.

    * Relaunched A Bit Of Good News.

    * Penned at least 20 journal entries. Must do better next year.

    * Sort of maintained two Instagram accounts: @thejadewalker and @catsofjade.

    * Read 61 books and completed the 2022 GoodReads reading challenge

    * Read numerous magazines, including Cook’s Country, Cooks Illustrated, Bake From Scratch, Smithsonian Magazine, Scientific American, The Saturday Evening Post, The Writer and TeaTime Magazine.

    * Watched at least 73 TV shows and 64 movies and listened to many podcasts.

    * Participated in The Society of Professional Obituary Writers, the New Hampshire Writers Guild, the New York City Writers Group, the South Florida Freelancers Group, the Authors Guild, the Writers Guild of America East and the Silent Book Club, Manchester, NH chapter.

    * Made 10 bottles of vanilla.

    * Planted a large container garden, three bushes and a tree.

    * Spent months searching for our next home. Alas, between the rising interest rates, the lack of available housing stock and the increase in prices, we had no luck. The search continues.

    * Mourned the death of my friend, author/editor Bev Walton-Porter.

    * Tried to get more sleep. Failed miserably, due to stress.

    * Had our cat Pepper fixed.

    * Continued to wear these damn braces.

    * Decorated the front and inside of our house for Halloween and dressed up as a handmaiden.

    * Decorated the front and inside of our house for Christmas and mailed more than 35 Christmas cards.

    * Tried many recipes. New favorites include: Sheet pan buttermilk pancakes, fried banana bread bites, a new version of pumpkin pie, mini caprese salad bites, cranberry cream tart, spritz cookies and Richard Sax’s cloud cake.

    * Wrestled with perimenopause, in all its hot-flash glory. A winner has not yet been determined.

    * Suffered from at least 20 migraines and lost 44 days of my life to pain. Average headache duration: 52 hours. Began using a Cefaly treatment, which surprisingly, helped.

    * Worked my 32nd year as a journalist.

    * Celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary.

    * Turned 49.

     


    End of the year

     

    Goals for 2023

    * Purchase a new home with several acres of land.

    * Improve my baking/cooking skills.

    * Work on my fiction.

    * Read at least 50 books.

    * Sleep at least 7 hours a night.

    * Win the lottery.

    * Focus more on thriving rather than just surviving.

  • 2022

    My top 10 favs of 2022: A year spent reading, watching and listening to stories

    Over the past year, I consumed 61 books, 73 TV shows, 64 movies and many podcasts. These were my favorites.

    (Note: Not all were released during the past 365 days.)

     

    MY FAVORITE BOOKS – FICTION
     

    Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker1. “The Hidden Palace” by Helene Wecker

    2. “Child Zero” by Chris Holm

    3. “The Kaiju Preservation Society” by John Scalzi

    4. “Upgrade” by Blake Crouch

    5. “Shadow Deal” by M.L. McKnight

    6. “Death Moon” by Michael La Ronn

    7. “Mortal Terms” by Michael La Ronn

    8. “Snake Eyes” by Hillary Monahan

    9. “Three Parts Dead” by Max Gladstone

    10. “Oddball” by Sarah Andersen

    (Honorable mentions: “Running Blind” by Lee Child, “Fairy Tale” by Stephen King, “Cold Hard Magic” by M.L. McKnight, “Spirit Chaser” by M.L. McKnight and “Suicide Kings” by Stephen Blackmoore)

     

    MY FAVORITE BOOKS – NONFICTION
     

    in love by Amy Bloom1. “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss” by Amy Bloom

    2. “On Animals” by Susan Orlean

    3. “The Premonition: A Pandemic Story” by Michael Lewis

    4. “A Walk Around the Block: Stoplight Secrets, Mischievous Squirrels, Manhole Mysteries & Other Stuff You See Every Day (And Know Nothing About)” by Spike Carlsen

    5. “Lily and the Octopus” by Steven Rowley

    6. “If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won’t)” by Betty White

    7. “Finding My Voice” by Nadiya Hussain

    8. “The Beauty of Dusk” by Frank Bruni

    9. “The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness” by Sy Montgomery

    10. “My Life From Scratch” by Gesine Bullock-Prado

    (Honorable mentions: “100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet” by Pamela Paul, “Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals” by Laurie Zaleski, “Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World” by William Alexander, “The Nineties” by Chuck Klosterman and “About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks” by David Rooney)

    Overall reading ratio: I read 17,927 pages. Books were split 65% fiction to 35% nonfiction and 55% female authors to 45% male authors.

     

     

    MY FAVORITE TV SHOWS
    GBBO1. The Great British Baking Show

    2. Sandman

    3. Stranger Things

    4. Escape to the Country

    5. Gardeners’ World

    6. Love Your Garden

    7. Julia

    8. Ted Lasso

    9. The Repair Shop

    10. Men In Kilts

    (Honorable mentions: Evil, The Great British Baking Show: Celebrity Edition, Nadiya Bakes, The Great American Baking Show, For All Mankind, America’s Test Kitchen — At Home, The Morning Show, The Gilded Age, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Penelope Keith’s Hidden Villages, The Confession, Mike and Molly, Ghosts, Ghosts (UK), Kim’s Convenience, Jack Reacher, Junior Baking Show and Welcome to Wrexham.)

     

    MY FAVORITE MOVIES
     

    Last bus1. The Last Bus

    2. Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris

    3. The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52

    4. Becoming Cousteau

    5. George Carlin’s American Dream

    6. Luck

    7. Sea Beast

    8. Hello, Bookstore

    9. Mr. Harrigan’s Phone

    10. The Dig

    (Honorable mentions: Jerry & Marge Go Large, The Last Movie Stars, Introducing Selma Blair, Free Guy, CODA, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Thor: Love and Thunder, The Adam Project, How to Survive a Pandemic, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, No Time to Die and Being the Ricardos)

     

    MY FAVORITE PODCASTS
     

    Vinyl Cafe1. The Vinyl Cafe

    2. GrimmCast

    3. Small Town Dicks

    4. Naked Lunch

    5. Against the Rules

    6. BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine Podcast

    7. Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!

    8. Christmas Past

    9. Sue Perkins: An Hour Or So With….

    10. David Tennant Does a Podcast With…

    (Honorable mentions: Clear + Vivid With Alan Alda, The Christmas Stocking, Nocturne, The Book Case, Criminal, Death, Sex & Money, Backstory, Awards Chatter, Sidedoor and The Anthropocene Reviewed)