Eleanor Glewwe's Blog, page 7

Iceland, Part I

When I was in 7th grade, our social studies teacher, Mrs. Weller, assigned each student in the class a country in the Western hemisphere. Naturally, most of my classmates had Latin American countries, but my assigned country was Iceland. We each had to research our country (remember the CIA World Factbook?), and we did various in-class activities like lining up in order of GDP per capita (Iceland was something of an outlier). The project culminated in a proposal for a business located in our ass...

The Boundary Waters 2021

Almost exactly a year after last year’s trip, my family returned to the Boundary Waters this summer, although this time it was just my parents and me, since my brother was working a show. It’s been ten years since our first family expedition to the BWCA in 2011, and fittingly, we returned to the same entry point we used on that trip, on Lake One. We drove up on a Friday, through the Iron Range, and had dinner in Ely before spending the night in a very nice bunkhouse at the Kawishiwi Lodge & Outf...

Trip to Meudon

Given that we are still in a global pandemic, I didn’t think I would get to visit Isabelle this year, but then the stars aligned, and I spent last week with Isabelle, Olivier, and my godcat Æncre in Meudon, France. It was a pretty quiet trip, but here are a few highlights:

Flowers on the way to the Forêt de Meudon: cornflowers, California poppies, love-in-a-mist, and more

A heron and some large turtles on a log in one of the lakes in the Forêt de Meudon

Walking in the Forêt de Meudon (a reprise ...

AAPI Month: Beyond Fractions Panel

May was Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month (sidebar: why is it Asian American and Pacific Islander rather than Asian and Pacific Islander American? I know I’ve seen APIA before, but suddenly AAPI seems to have become dominant), and the Asian Author Alliance organized a month of virtual author panels featuring many kidlit authors speaking on a variety of topics. Thanks to Twitter, I did not miss one of the panels that had caught my eye: Beyond Fractions: Writing and Living ...

A Visit to Des Moines

Last week, my mother came down to visit me in Iowa, and we spent a morning under a changeable sky at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden. Despite having lived in Iowa for a year and three quarters (minus a big chunk of the pandemic), I’ve spent next to no time in Des Moines. That’s still mostly true, but at least I’ve seen a little bit more of the capital. Here are a few of my favorite plants from the botanical garden:

Baptisias (false indigos) in many colors!

Borage, or starflower, which ...

Firebreak Reading

Earlier this month, I attended a reading and Q & A with Nicole Kornher-Stace, author of the recently released adult SFF novel Firebreak. The event was hosted by C.S.E. Cooney, with guest co-host Amal El-Mohtar. While I read Nicole’s YA novel Archivist Wasp years ago (2015, apparently!), I have still not read its sequel, Latchkey. But I like following Nicole on Twitter, and of course I like Amal El-Mohtar, and I’d just enjoyed C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez’s short story “The Book of May,” so...

Growing Microgreens

Earlier this year, my mother gave me a Great Northern Microgreens Starter Grow Kit she’d bought at the Fulton Farmers Market in Minneapolis. On May Day, I decided to plant my first crop. The kit comes with everything you need (except the water mister), so first I hydrated and crumbled one of the pucks of coco coir growing medium into one of the rectangular black containers. Then I sowed one of the five seed packets; I picked the blue curled kale, for no particular reason. I misted the scattered ...

Contrôle de Sécurité Vol. 2

Here’s Volume 2 of the zine about my experience going through security at Charles de Gaulle last June! In case you missed it, here’s the beginning of the story.

Contrôle de Sécurité Vol. 1

It’s been ages since I’ve made a new zine! This one is about an amusing (after the fact) incident that took place nearly a year ago now, when I was returning from my soujourn in France at the beginning of the pandemic. It ends on a cliffhanger; the rest will be told in a future volume.

Farewell, March!

I know it’s been quiet around here this year. Looking back, I’ve apparently never gone a month without posting at least once since I inaugurated this blog (I could have sworn that wasn’t the case?!), and it’d be a shame to break that streak now. So here I am, emerging from the depths to poke my head above water.

We are still in a pandemic. I hope that wherever you are, you’re weathering it still.

What have I been up to in the early months of 2021? Well, in the midst of the Iowa winter, a curious...