"Make Me Tell You Something Else About Reading. You See This? Every Time You Open This You Get Free.

"Make me tell you something else about reading. You see this? Every time you open this you get free. Freeness up in here and nobody even have to know you get free but you." -The Book of Night Women by Marlon James

The Basque country, where a unique language, cuisine and radical separatist elements have long resisted Spanish assimilation. In February the gray-blue waves of La Concha Beach in Donostia-San Sebastian were bitterly cold. After dark in Bilbao, relatives of incarcerated members of the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) terrorist group gently marched for the transfer of their loved ones to prisons closer to home. Invented here was the brilliant gilda, a pintxo (appetizer) constructed of pickled peppers, olives and anchovies.

Painting by Antonio Ortiz Echagüe.

"Hearts stopped beating. People put guns to their chests. There was no one and nothing she could ever know well enough to make it stay."

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

Apricot, poppy seed and s'mores hamantaschen for Purim.

"She had heard of the genetic code that could shape an eye or hand from passing proteins. Deoxyribonucleic acid. It contained the entire set of instructions for constructing a respiratory system and a digestive one, as well as the grip of an infant's hand. Chess was like that. The geometry of a position could be read and reread and not exhausted of possibility. You saw deeply into this layer of it, but there was another layer beyond that, and another." -The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis

After work group ride to the lake.