April is showery so far

Spring is sweet and all – I love the smells the best – but I am a little sad to see winter leave. My little ones had a blast skiing out to the Coco Cabin to read the stories this year. And we circulated our trail pass to Jackson Ski Touring a grand total of 28 times which I think is a terrific success.

In March I read The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara which I found a wonderfully tender, but also brutally realistic story about what it was like to be transgender in NYC in the early 80s and at the dawn of the AIDs epidemic. It made me realize, for the first time, how one-dimensional transgendered characters tend to be in popular culture. They are present more and more but often as characters instead of multidimensional people. I had never noticed that before. This one has stuck with me.

I listened to Treating People Well by Lea Berman and other presidential social secretaries. It was a combination of management, etiquette, and white house anecdotes. Not exactly what I expected, but diverting enough to listen to while painting.

Finally, I liked Grace Metalious’ No Adam in Eden much more than I expected to. The gender tension was intense, but in the midst of the #metoo movement and my perspective growing up in the 80s, it was thought provoking.