Ann Burlingham

'This is everyone’s win': Striking PG workers celebrate a big victory - Pittsburgh Union Progress Monday started out as one of those cold, dreary Pittsburgh Mondays that you have to plod through as if it were sticky and slick with mud. The previous night’s Steelers’ game, a loss, made it worse. Yi...

yea!
www.unionprogress.com/2025/11/11/t...

Something chewed up the jack-o’-lantern candles and one jack-o’-lantern

The hometown newspaper arrived today with the front page news that mediocre white men are still failing up

New York ironweed seed heads, full and naked

Neighborhood cat rolling in the driveway

New York ironweed seed heads, and the often-skittish neighborhood cat decided to roll in our driveway and let me pet it and pick it up. (Cats should not be outdoors because they predate on birds, but I still want to say hello)

Surprise autumn violet

Why should that be a top agenda item?

Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, with the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction sticker on the cover

Vajra Chandrasekera, photo by Sanjeewa Weerasinghe. The author sits at a white table, arms resting in front of him, wearing a tan jacket and a white shirt.

Congratulations to Vajra Chandrasekera (@vajra.me), recipient of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for Rakesfall!

Chandrasekera's book was chosen by authors Matt Bell, Indra Das, Kelly Link, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Rebecca Roanhorse.

Thanks! It was a great show.

Quite excellent. Heard it here in Pittsburgh. Would love to have a transcript to be able to tell people about specific parts.

too lazy to open my email so I'll mention here that Taskmaster Australia SEASON 6 episode 4 includes a task about moving mugs, including the line "Most unbroken mugs gotten into the bath wins. Hm, maybe I'll just suggest that it's homework for Jennie....

Swamp milkweed pod with feathery, star-like fluffy seed carriers emerging, in black and white on a sunny day

I see why he's getting roasted. Until today, I had never heard of him.

So glad I have my coffee at hand.

...and I do know it's difficult for some parents. especially if they didn't have the experience themselves, as children.

When my kindergartener's school librarian said "You can tell he's been read to", my heart broke. Granted I owned a bookstore and grew up in a house full of books, being read to by both parents in the '70s (we watched tons of tv, too), but reading with a kid is for me kind of the point of having one.

Sweetgum shadow

‘It’s been quite a ride!’ Melvyn Bragg to step down from Radio 4’s In Our Time after 27 years The broadcaster is leaving the hit BBC programme after presenting more than 1,000 episodes and having ‘enriched the lives of millions’

Was there no link? Ugh

‘It’s been quite a ride!’ Melvyn Bragg to step down from Radio 4’s In Our Time after 27 years www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

‘It’s been quite a ride!’ Melvyn Bragg to step down from Radio 4’s In Our Time after 27 years

Melvyn can make awkward steps at times, but I cherish the things I’ve learned from the show. I’ve followed numerous scholars who have been guests, who continue to enrich my understanding of.

Coverville 1548: The Aimee Mann Cover Story II Podcast Episode · Coverville: The Cover Music Show (AAC Edition) · 09/04/2025 · 1 sec

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...
That’s what I needed

Oh, gosh, you did!

From naming varieties out of Le Guin to a chicory festival to the obsessions gardening inspires, it’s very PDX but also very me indeed

I have been thinking about re-watching since it turned up streaming. I, too, saw it when it came out. Iirc the Canada-US border stoppage of lesbian smut came into the story, among other things.

I think of it along with I've heard the Mermaids Singing, though I see they're almost a decade apart!

Bright garden

I am delighted that this delightful book has a 100th anniversary edition, but Penguin Random House’s invitation to “Never miss a new book by Anita Loos” seems a titch optimistic

Thank you! ... I'm reminded that my aunt, who was on a world voyage in the 1940s that sent rolls of film back to the National Geographic for potential use, telling me that a picture with "a spot of red" was very likely to get published.

Under a bridge along 5th Avenue, Pittsburgh, driving home from brunch

@lawandorderpodcast.com I went to the Museum of the Moving Image and see what I saw!

Haymarket was excellent episode of In Our Time but really what's news is that I have found a few more of my people - the people who like knowing how many guests take tea and how many take coffee (and the one time I think I heard Melvyn actually take coffee, can you imagine?).

And Dance Mom! Dance Mom is in everything I watch lately.

A few minutes later, watching him watch data on a screen, I find myself wanting to watch Robert Redford reading books in a Washington townhouse and see where that goes for six, no three, days.

It is possible I am not fully engaged.

Also, Lois Lane is in this! Briefly.