Ruth Tenzer Feldman's Blog
August 7, 2017
Solstice Dreams + Six Weeks
Back in June, as you’ll see from the previous blog post, I planted Serakh’s cucumber seeds. I didn’t expect them to germinate in this crazy weather. Now we have…well, see for yourself. Thriving plants and blooms aplenty. And do you see that smiling face cast in concrete at the corner of the photo? She first graced my garden 20 years ago when I had a real garden. Now she’s casts good karma on this tiny balcony 100 feet up in the air. Blessings abound.
The post Solstice Dreams + Six Weeks appe...
June 21, 2017
Serakh’s Seeds, Solstice Dreams
Here is the reality: The clever folks at Ooligan Press collected cucumber seeds from Portland State University’s Student Sustainability Center and made up seed packets for my author events. Serakh, my time-traveling pursuer of justice in Blue Thread, The Ninth Day, and Seven Stitches, has a passion for cucumbers she first encountered in Egypt at the time of the pharaohs and has been eating them ever since.
The instructions on the seed packet call for planting Serakh’s cucumber seeds two week...
April 29, 2017
Susan Olson, A Penny for Your Thoughts?
A few weeks back, Susan Olson, the blogger of Time Travel Times Two, reviewed Seven Stitches and asked me four questions. And so now here’s where I get to do the questioning and Susan does the answering. She’s got a soon-to-be-published children’s book that combines historical fiction and time travel. Yes!
Susan, about three years ago, you gave us ten reasons why blogging is like gardening. If you were writing that post now, what, if anything, would you change?
Aargh—don’t you know how pain...
April 17, 2017
Two Books, Two Friends, and TTx2
It’s the reader’s equivalent of a double-header, a two-for-the-price-of-one special, a club sandwich, pizza with extra cheese. Amber J. Keyser and I will team up at Annie Bloom’s Bookstore in Portland this Thursday (April 20) at 7. She’s bringing Pointe, Claw; I’m bringing Seven Stitches. There will be laughter. There will be secrets to share. And you will likely not be in attendance.
No worries! Amber has a solid presence on social media, so you can get to know a lot about her there. I show...
April 6, 2017
World War I and the Four-Minute Men (guest post from Michael Feldman)
On April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson signed a Congressionally-approved declaration of war against Germany. Thus the United States formally entered World War I. Now on this 100th anniversary, I’m posting an especially interesting excerpt from Ruth Tenzer Feldman’s Chronicle of America’s Wars: World War I. This is the story of the Four-Minute Men.
Poster advertising the Four-Minute Men
In March, 1917 . . . more Americans seemed ready to enter the Great War. Donald Ryerson, a Chicago busi...
March 21, 2017
The Time Travel Universe
Thank you, Craig Richardson. Craig is a member of the Time Travel Nexus Team, which hosts a blog that is a boon to fans of time travel. Seven Stitches made the list of books for February 2017, and I had no idea there were so many more titles. The blog also features time travel films, comics, audio dramas, and other portals. Enjoy!
The post The Time Travel Universe appeared first on Ruth Tenzer Feldman.
February 13, 2017
Charles Is Coming!
Playfulness offers relief from the stresses of…well…I needn’t enumerate them…so I wasn’t surprised when Charles insisted that he come to the launch of Seven Stitches this Thursday at Another Read Through. After all, Charles and I go back more than a year, when I decided to do some fact checking for the story.
In the Seven Stitches of my imagination, a stuffed blue giraffe is the beloved companion of a homeless girl who lives in Portland. Problem? I’d never seen a stuffed blue giraffe. To fin...
February 5, 2017
Free Speech. The Ninth Day. Facts.
The Free Speech Movement Cafe, Berkeley
Whatever your views on balancing protections for free speech and against hate speech, we all have an obligation to get our facts straight. Yes, as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, I understand how reality can be manipulated. Still, according to a responsible source, the facts point to last week’s violence on the University of California, Berkeley campus as being incited primarily by people who were not students or faculty at the university.
Let...
January 10, 2017
I Kill Facebook. Like My Page.
Today I offer a lesson in irony.
If you’re reading this post you likely know that Seven Stitches is the latest companion novel in the Blue Thread Saga. Ooligan Press has teamed up with Another Read Through for the official launch on February 16 at 7. This book pairs the past (16th century Istanbul) with the future (Portland, Oregon, in 2059).
How did I decide about what will have changed by 2059? That’s for another post. One aspect of 2059, though, is that Facebook is gone, gone, gone. Here’...
December 7, 2016
#Readukkah and Remembrance: We Will Not Be Silent
If the Hanukkah story reminds us of the power of resistance, then Russell Freedman’s We Will Not Be Silent fits with the #Readukkah! spirit of the Association of Jewish Libraries and with perhaps our own thoughts this season. This nonfiction book nominally for older children (but with a topic suited for teens and adults) follows the White Rose student resistance movement in Nazi Germany from its rise through the execution of its leaders shortly before the fall of the Third Reich.
The “we” in...
