Early this month, Naoto and I went out on a school night for another fun Chris & Heather event. If you’ve been around here long enough, you know how much we love going to the Calendar Show every December. The 16mm Film Festival has a similar vibe, but, at least for the May show, there were more old commercials mixed in and only one music act.
The commercials were from before my time, but you could feel the nostalgia in the room. I loved this Kiss action figure one especially.
And who knew there was a Farrah doll? The little boy in this commercial cracked everyone up.
And of course there were lots of videos of musical acts. George Jones is always a favorite and so is Buffalo Springfield.
To start the show, Chris sang a tribute to Cynthia Plaster Caster who died recently. He sang his song “Little Girl” which was really soft and sweet.
The rest of the show was Chris doing his quirky, smart, charming thing. His music is wacky and fun. He writes songs for The Flat Five, our favorite local band, and also has released several of his own albums. (His newer albums are available on Spotify and I’ve added a few of his songs to my summer playlist.)
We’re going back for the June show on our anniversary this week!
Last week I hosted a spring tea for Peggy’s birthday. Our weather has been so cold and rainy so it was a bummer that we couldn’t sit on the back deck but we made do inside. I bought this vintage tablecloth on eBay and it arrived just in time to be washed and ready to go!
I used the blue dishes Karen gave me for my birthday and added these strawberry & butterfly dishes that Peggy gave me. The butterfly glasses were also a gift from a book club member who moved away.
Karen, Susan, and I made the food. We ate ham salad and cucumber tea sandwiches, Helen Corbitt’s chicken salad, fruit salad, and scones with whipped cream and strawberry jam. I made May Day cocktails—I’ll share the recipe soon! They are so perfect for spring!
For dessert, we had petit fours from the Forest Park Bakery. They were such a fun treat and made a pretty addition to the table.
It’s so nice to be hosting again and I always love using my vintage treasures. Hopefully more tiny parties can continue through the spring and summer. I’ve missed them.
After a bit of a hiatus for the holidays and Covid, the Dive Bar Letter Writers are back again! We met last month for National Card & Letter Writing Month and I’m scheduling our summer meet-ups.
Naoto has been a regular at our meetings but this time he actually wrote a letter! (Usually he reads or just eats a burger.)
If you’re in Chicagoland, please join us for our next meeting, May 22 at 2pm in Goldyburger’s beer garden! You can sign up for email reminders here.
My reading has slowed down…partly due to April’s wacky schedule, but also Souls for Sale may not be the book to get me over my reading hump.
Souls for Sale by Rupert Hughes I’m halfway into this…when I’m reading it, I like it, but I’m not excited to pick it up. I will report back in May, unless I give up on it.
As it Was & A World Without End by Helen Thomas These two memoirs…just beautiful, and perfect for spring. It is Helen Thomas’s telling of her marriage to poet and writer Edward Thomas who struggled with depression and died in World War I. Helen and Edward had three children and lived in poverty most of the time, since Edward was something of a struggling writer. He was also a nature lover, so their explorations of the wilderness and the descriptions of flowers and birds and the forests are gorgeous. He may have been a published writer, but her talents for writing are extraordinary.
The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner This was our April pick for book club. The writing was beautiful and there was a lot of marital strife and family drama. (The book is semi-autobiographical so that made it even more interesting because it was as if Stegner was working out his childhood trauma in the book.) It wasn’t an easy read, but everyone in book group appreciated it.
The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright Written in between Native Son and Black Boy, The Man Who Lived Underground was just published last year. I read both of those books and a lot more Wright in college so I was really interested in this one that Wright called one of his best. We read it for book club in March. Wright is a very effective writer, and this book could have been written this year, sadly. I can’t say I enjoyed it–it was definitely a tense read with a sad ending, but I’m glad we read it. If you’ve never read Richard Wright, I would suggest this as a good place to start.
Spring Came On Forever by Bess Streeter Aldrich This was my first Streeter Aldrich but hopefully not my last! This one was written in 1935 and follows two families moving from Illinois to settle Nebraska. It’s a family saga that covers three generations of both families. There’s love and heartbreak, pioneer struggles, marital strife, and beautiful descriptions of scenery in this book–it was a good spring read that I stayed up way too late to finish.
My April was bananas with Easter at work and a ton of volunteer stuff to manage. I am hoping I can slow down in May and get back into my habit of dinner reading and doing more things for myself this month.
kimberly ah 