Patricia Harrelson

2025 Entertainment List

One terrific aspect of having 15 grandkids, ages 10-30, is their wealth of cultural and artistic experience. This year, I asked each of my grandkids to name a show, movie, podcast, book and/or musical artist they have enjoyed. I now have a wildly varied list of entertainment (and learning) to choose from for 2025.

First, I created a playlist name Grandkids’ Picks on Spotify. Here are some of the tunes that landed there:

• “The King Beetle on Coconut Estate”- mewithoutYou
• “Better Year”- Sam Barber
• “Crystal Chandeliers and Burgundy” -Charley Crocket
• “Picture” – Feeble Little Horse
• “Bizcochito” – ROSALÍA
• “Favorite Thing” – ShitKid
• “Romantika” – Brutalismus 3000
• “Small Car with Big Wheels” – Enjoy
• “Fate” – Boy Harsher
• “Eye On the Bat” – Palehound
• “Weak” – SWV
• “Afterglow” – Chokecherry (Grandchild’s friend’s band)
• “I giorni: Andante”- Daniel Hope
• “Always” – Daniel Ceasar

Plus, one granddaughter sent an entire playlist she named “Morning Chill” that’s lovely.

In the movie department, two of my son’s adult kids sent 30-year-old comedies. This son has always leaned toward chick flicks, and it looks like his taste influenced his kids as their favorite movies were The Princess Bride and You’ve Got Mail, both of which were filmed before these young people were born. We watched You’ve Got Mail last night, and I found myself super intrigued by the economic message around which the story is built, and the fact that the 2-hour movie would these days have probably been 90 minutes for those of us who have soundbite attention spans. Other recommendations were any Studio Ghibli Film and a quirky one that sounds intriguing, Better Off Dead.

Book recommendations were thin. Two books were psychological thrillers, a genre I generally avoid but now will take on interested to see what drew my granddaughters into these stories. The books are The Silent Patient and Verity, both of which I have on order from Libby. I’d already read three books that were labeled favorites: There There by Tommy Orange, When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithti, and The Women by Kristin Hannah.

The recommended podcasts are super exciting: “Modern Wisdom,” “The Way I Heard It,” Mike Rowe, “Start with Why,” Simon Sineck, “The Undraped Artist,” and “Maintenance Phase.”   like getting podcast recommendations because I tend to stick to my favorites which are on regular production calendars.

The request for shows turned up the most arcane suggestions, beginning with Arcane and followed closely by AP Bio, Pushing Daisies, Sex Life, and The Traitors. I will watch at least one episode of each, but I don’t anticipate getting hooked, though you never know. I lean toward super schmaltzy shows (think Heartland) or PBS British series like Grantchester and All Creatures Great and Small, so I think the suggested shows might be too far outside the box for me. The one show I can’t wait to dip into is Cable Girls.

If you have young adults in your life, I highly recommend asking them to name titles from the mediums they enjoy. As you can see, the suggestions alone say a lot about these young people. And I think it’s a terrific way to broaden my perspective, don’t you?

Early this year, my therapist recommended that Cindy and I listen to an episode of a podcast called “Happier,” hosted by Gretchen Rubin and her sister, Elizabeth Craft. This particular episode, called “Deep Dive into 18 of 2018,” explored the women’s proposal to create a list of 18 things that will enhance joy and happiness during the year. We listened to the episode and then took several days to draft our lists. It turned out to be several weeks before we actually shared our lists with one another, but in the meantime, I’d take a deep dive down the rabbit hole of the Happiness Project.

During the podcast, Gretchen mentioned something called “The One Minute Rule.” I had  added the “One Minute Rule” to my 18 for 2018 list because the gist of it appealed to me: commit to do any task that can be completed in one minute. But I wanted to know more, so I Googled Gretchen and the rule and ended up at her blog. Soon I was roaming among her blog posts, totally intrigued with the idea of a Happiness Project, so I went to Audible and downloaded the book, which Gretchen reads. I was hooked immediately.

Gretchen thinks like me–in lists, about setting goals and self-improvement and finding greater joy in life. As I drove down the road listening to this book I was smiling. Her ideas made me happy! A by product was that I began to notice other times and places when I felt particularly happy.

For instance, Cindy and I spent half a day posting a pile of items on the local online Buy & Sale site. It was a blast taking pictures, researching the going prices for each item, and crafting an interesting description. Plus, I enjoy working with Cindy on almost any project. We also had a fun time was watching Super Bowl 52, not because either of us are fans of football but because Cindy had developed a pool with family and friends. The pool spurred my interest in the game AND the score. I found myself hooting and cheering enthusiastically.

This morning, I discovered something else that makes me happy. For Christmas, I asked for a reacher because I wanted to use it to pick up trash on my morning walks along the edge of New Melones Reservoir. This morning as I walked beside the glassy water, picking up beer cans, water bottles, and abandoned fishing paraphernalia, I realized I was truly happy.

The best thing about Gretchen Rubin’s book, blog, and podcast is that she has reminded me that I’m a pretty happy person already, but it helps to be conscious of all the different things that contribute to my happiness.

After the Women’s March to Sacramento, I was elated. The cloud of despair had lifted and stayed gone as I clicked “Like” on Facebook posts picturing my friends and family at Marches all over the country. On Sunday morning, I met my writing buddy at Schnoogs, a popular local coffee shop, where talk of the March peppered the air. We ran into friends who had also marched and some customers said they’d watched coverage on TV and thanked us for our participation.

However, as my date with my friend came to a close, I could feel the hint of a virus closing in on me, so when I got to my car, I sent text messages canceling my plans for the rest of the day and went home to sit quietly in my chair reading and sipping a cold preventative hot beverage made from garlic, ginger, honey, and lemon juice. Ironically, the book I was finishing was called “Today Will be Different,” a quirky novel by Maria Semple, that closed with the narrator considering how to live with her husband who’d adopted a radically new approach to life that she couldn’t fathom.

From there, I proceeded to four hours spent in cyberspace, reading email, following links to articles like this one in which George Lakoff explains how the Democrats helped elect Trump. Friends were still posting on Facebook and Instagram about their March experiences, but now another kind of post was showing up—one from friends who had felt excluded and/or resentful of the March. There were also posts from Trump supporters who were insisting that we needed to give Trump a chance. And one chilling post that cited attacks on Barron Trump. Oh dear, I thought “NO!”—a ten-year-old child is off limits. I commented on a few of the posts and found myself immersed in revealing and sometimes uncomfortable conversations with people who saw things quite differently than me. I’m happy to say the threads remained civil, and I actually learned something.

Still, I was overloaded. I felt like I needed to find ways to engage more fruitfully in conversations with the opposition and I was swimming in suggestions about what to do to maintain the momentum following the March. I was starting to feel afraid. I went to bed as a bracing winter storm hit the region. I was sick, my cats were agitated, wind and rain were lashing the house, and I was alone, thinking that it was up to me to solve problems for which I couldn’t see solutions.

A couple hours after I got up in the morning, the storm broke, and a neighbor and I trekked cross country to check out the flow of Bear Creek and the height of the New Melones Reservoir. My lungs welcomed the fresh air as much as my spirit. My neighbor and I made a date for late afternoon to write postcards to our elected officials about our legislative priorities. When I got home, I checked Facebook and read a post from a wise teacher I had met in graduate school. He admitted he felt “pulled out too far” and would be retreating for a while.

Yep, that described my feeling pretty well—pulled out too far. I decided to retreat too, but first I would blog about my March experience and write my postcards. We made postcards by cutting up greeting cards with beautiful or provocative images. Choosing the right image for each official felt almost as important as clarifying my priorities and shaping them into something that would fit on the cards. It was a feel-good exercise.

So now excuse me, please. I’m heading for a media fast to regroup and find my center again. See you in a while . . .

In early December, when I saw an announcement on Facebook about buses chartered to take women from Tuolumne County to Sacramento on January 21, 2017, I signed up. I didn’t have well-defined expectations. I simply wanted to be with other people who were unnerved by Trump’s election and expressing distrust. This is a report of what turned out to be meaningful to me during the March.

Notwithstanding marching with 20,000 like-minded people, I was deeply moved by connecting with specific people already known to me. Cindy was not able to make the March, so I invited my newest friend and neighbor Carolmarie. When we arrived at the loading place for the buses, I discovered that three of my long time friends were also making the trek. I knew many of the women boarding the buses, including the two sisters of the subject of a biography I’d just completed. Shortly after we started to march, I stumbled upon a woman who lives in Todos Santos near my brother. Later, after the March, I would see Facebook posts announcing that childhood friends, former work colleagues and neighbors, members of my writing group, book group, and master swim team had participated in the same March—not to mention friends and family far and wide who had participated in Marches at other locations. All day, I was reminded of the abiding connections I’ve made over the years, people who were my emotional, recreational, and, yes, political safety net.

Words are my livelihood and passion, so I was attune to the manner in which they served me and touched others. All day, I sent messages and photos to Cindy, so she could take part from a distance. I was gratified when two passengers on the bus complimented me regarding some of my published writing. And there were the signs carried by marchers. I scribbled their messages in a notebook as I walked. Here is one carried by my friend that said so much:

I’m with her–>

<–and her

and her–>

<–and her

As we marched toward the Capitol, a roar could be heard forming several blocks ahead, which gradually moved through the crowd until we joined in, and then it passed on behind us. This happened again and again and made me think of the Helen Reddy song with the opening line, “I am woman; Hear me roar.” I was already feeling buoyed up by the company of women, and the repeating roar lifted me further. Likewise, early in the program when the Japanese Taiko Dan drummers performed, the rhythm felt like the heart beat of the crowd.

The program was heartfelt and filled with elected officials welcoming us, which felt promising. But the most significant moment of the trip happened long before we reached Sacramento when we were only 15 miles into the journey. I had to pee. The pressure rapidly became unbearable, so I asked the bus driver if there would be a restroom stop. “Yes, in an hour,” he said. I waited a few more minutes, but it was clear I couldn’t make it an hour. So I asked him to pull over so I could pee by the side of the road. He complied, and I flew off the bus as someone shouted, “Everyone look left!” I squatted by the tire to relieve myself as cars whizzed by. When I got back on the bus, everyone applauded.

The lesson for me was the importance of speaking up, even if it is embarrassing, doing what needs to be done, even if in less than ideal conditions. The relief I felt when I got back on the bus, the relief I felt during and after the March by connecting with others, confirmed that taking action, even when I’m unsure, can have satisfying results.

Tomorrow I’ll write about the March aftermath—which has been much more intense and unsettling than I expected—as I seek to define what proactive means to me.

3 Books I Loved

I signed up for the 2016 Goodreads book challenge and read 33 books. Though I had hoped to read 45, I’m nevertheless quite happy with my reading this year because I read several fat biographies as opposed to a bunch of the slimmer volumes of poetry I normally read. Here are a few of the books I loved in 2016:

Non-fiction I loved: I started the year with Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Front in World War II, an eye-opening account of a marriage, a presidency, and World War II from a wholly new perspective. I’m closing the year with Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow’s extremely well researched and insightful look at the man and the early days of our nation. I have to say this book has actually eased some of my fear about Trump as I discover that politics in this country has always been dicey and partisan, and yet we’ve survived. The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk was an eye-opening, thought-provoking study of how trauma shapes the body and the brain.

Memoirs I loved: Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem (which secured my vote for Hillary over Bernie); On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Bliss, a mix of science research and personal experience that broadened my understanding of immunization; When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi, a tender, insightful tale of young doctor’s approach to his own death.

Fiction: A Gentleman in Moscow (far and away the best book I read this year), The Danish Girl, brilliant example of an empathetic point of view, and Loving Eleanor, which was especially fun to read after In Ordinary Time.

Delightful escape literature: Bruno Chief of Police series by Martin Walker.
Inspirational reading: Staring at the Sun by Irvin Yalom saved my sanity immediately following the election
My Goodread reading challenge for 2017 is set at 40 books.
What books did you love in 2016?

Self-promotion, in particular promoting the book I wrote, is not something I do eagerly, even though I recognize that if I don’t promote my book, it’s not likely to be purchased or read. Consequently, I have a box of 50 books sitting in a closet and sales of my book on Amazon is dismal.  I think about book promotion often, if not daily at least weekly. I read about marketing and promotion on websites and on Facebook posts by authors, but so far that reading has not provided the shove to make me proactive. Recently a few local authors who are also reluctant and/or clueless about promotion, decided to get together to share promotion ideas. That meeting is scheduled for tonight.

There was a problem, however. I didn’t have anything to share because I haven’t done much. As the time approached for the meeting, I decided I had to hustle up an idea to share, so when my book group met this past Wednesday, I swallowed hard and impulsively asked them to consider my book, “Between Two Women” as an upcoming read. 

The impulse didn’t come totally out of the blue. I’d actually been thinking about it for a year. I’d read about authors speaking with book clubs and it seemed like something that would be fun.  I wanted to know how readers responded to my book and these women were my friends–they were smart, avid readers. Surely, they would provide a lively discussion of the work. But something held me back from asking–something probably rooted in long-ago training not use the “I” pronoun.

Fortunately, their response was heart warming “Yes!” which of course made me feel foolish for waiting so long to ask.

Tonight I’m going to talk to other authors and suggest they too ask to do author chats at book clubs, and I’m going to share my plan of action to ask additional book clubs to consider my book, which begins with ask readers of this post to invite me.

If you are a member of book club, please consider my book. Send me an email via the contact page. I can speak with you in person or via phone or Skype. I’d love to hear from you.

    Ever since I first heard about NaNoWriMo  in the late 90s from a friend whose nephew was doing it, I wanted to give it a try. It seemed like an incredible undertaking, and for a while I didn’t think I was writer enough to do it. But finally, I decided to go for it. Even though I never considered myself a fiction writer, I fancied I could write a mystery. I succeed in writing 50,00 words of pure junk that year, and though it was terrible stuff, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment.

The next year, I decided to try it again. Only this time, I was going to make it more practical. I was working on a non-fiction book about women inventors, and I had a lot of interview material. I decided I’d use the month to shape the material. It wasn’t the same as generating 1600 words a day, but figured that if I could enter and edit that many words a day, I was in sync with the intent. Again, I finished the month with 50,000 words logged, but didn’t have the same sense of accomplishment. even though I had a nice early draft that book. After that, decided to be a bystander in November, watching and cheering for friends who were doing NaNo. It simply didn’t fit my style of crafting a piece of writing.

In early October of this year, I was getting ready for a trip in Todos Santos, Mexico, where I would housesit for my brother and spend two weeks working on shaping my third book. I had collected mountains of interview transcriptions, and I wanted to begin to organize the material. I’d purchased Scrivener and taken an online class from Gwen Hernandez, the author of Scrivener for Dummies. I was anxious to start using what I’d learned while depositing material into a Scrivener Project I’d set up for the book. Somewhere along the line while I was getting stuff together, I came across a site developed by Nina Amir, called Write Non-Fiction In November.

I was excited. This was more in keeping with what I needed than NaNoWroMi. I signed up for Nina’s newsletter and registered for WNFIN. As soon as I got to Mexico, I logged into the forum and introduced myself and my project and explained that I needed a few days to decide on what my goals would be for the month. Then I got busy playing around with my material and Scrivener.

The first few days were not fun. It felt chaotic and I had no idea how I was going to manage the girth of material I had collected. But I paid attention to the advice from one of Nina’s email messages.  She recommended visualizing myself succeeding, so I developed a mantra: “I’m making progress on the Borgquist project!” and I repeated it all day long, especially when I got discouraged. Pretty soon a plan emerged.

I discovered that I could open a transcription file and as I read through it, I could copy/paste segments into documents I’d set up in Scrivener that were loosely based on my subject’s lifeline. With this discovery, I established my first goal for WNFIN: I would spend a minimum of 2 hours a day doing this activity. Of course, as I worked. I started to discover holes in the material, so I was keeping a running list of people to call and questions that needed answering. That shaped my second goal: Spend 4-6 hours a week in research mode, calling people, doing interviews or locating facts. My third goal was the real carrot. At least once a week, I would spend up to 4 hours actually writing, that is actually shaping it into a narrative.  Since this is the fun part of the project for me, it made sense to give some time to it to keep my spirits high.

I thrilled to be joining folks around the world who have dedicated significant time in November to their writing projects, be it NaNo or WNFIN. And I’m especially thrilled to have found a community of writers who are working on non-fiction writing like me.

Not sure what motivates others to dive into and make progress in a project, but I love to sign-up and measure my progress toward a writing goal in association with HUGE online community.What about you?

There was a puff of smoke in the sky to the south, clearly a fire, something our eyes are alert to in the foothills all summer. We watched a pyrocumulus cloud form on the horizon–beautiful but not benign. The cloud flattened and roiled. Helicopters, air tankers, and fire engines roared into the county. Thus commenced the Rim Fire Days.

At Masters swim practice, I peeked under my arm as I swam watching the helicopters and then a DC-10 flying low. It felt as if the helicopter was going to dip its bucket into Lane 5 for water to douse the fire.

My son texted at 10pm Wednesday saying a fire fighter friend warned they would soon be on advisory evacuation. He wanted to bring his family to my house. “Come on down!” I texted back.  It would be a day and half before his wife called and said, “We are packing up and heading to your place.” I’d just spent a sweet hour in an interview with Marjorie and Karma Borgquist talking about family. As I drove away, Phillip Phillips came on the car radio singing “Just know your not alone/I’m gonna make this place your home.” I drove quickly to make space for a family of six and their pets.

We moved the Harrelson family in, parked their bikes on the patio and Humphrey, the guinea pig, on the washing machine and made plans for dinner. Cindy and Taylor went shopping, and Cody and Kyle went for a ride on nearby dirt roads in the Samurai. After a dinner, everyone took to screens– iPads, smart phones, and computers– to see what was happening. We were consumed with watching the fire via the Internet–mostly Facebook and My Mother Lode, but also InciWeb and a few other sites. The Groveland Facebook page became our favorite site. We called out different reports and showed each other incredible images. Our wifi got so overloaded that the Internet on my computer stalled.

The next morning when I took my tea to the patio, the smoke was as thick as a January fog. I soon headed inside where breathing was easier. The next few days were a whirl of games, guitar music, fire monitoring, food prep, and watching our animals make friends with the Harrelson animals. The days were hot and smokey and filled with family fun. When they decided to head home Sunday afternoon, the quiet in our house was enormous. We missed them.

The next day, the earache I’d been nursing all weekend flared; I tried to catch up on freelance work but kept getting drawn back to fire monitoring on Facebook. Then I got an email from my sister Ginger reporting an offer had been made on the San Francisco house where we grew up.  The world smelled like smoke; the sky turned an eerie crimson and gold at sunset. I was unsettled!

Cindy made cookies, and we took them to an elementary school where firemen were bivouacked. We walked out Plainview Road to the point and watched smoke curling in big plumes from Paper Cabin Ridge. Behind us, the sun was a giant orange globe.

For a seven days, the fire was all we could think about. It wasn’t over, but there was a sense that things were pointed in the right direction, that we could resume whatever it was that had stopped or slowed or slipped.  Tomorrow would be different. But first we stood still on that hill until the sky was dark and all we could see was a deep red glow in the distance.

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