“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises” — Pedro Calderón de la Barca
MARCH 2025 features the vivid greens of early spring. A spring break trip to Paris gave me a sneak peek and the steady rain in the final days of the month has convinced me that I can actually watch our yard turning green again.
Here’s a review of what I read, watched, listened to, and enjoyed in March.
READ:
Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy by Elizabeth Beller — "Amidst today’s cultural reckoning about the way our media treats women, Elizabeth Beller explores the real person behind the tabloid headlines and media frenzy. When she began dating America’s prince, Carolyn was increasingly thrust into an overwhelming spotlight filled with relentless paparazzi who reacted to her reserve with a campaign of harassment and vilification” (Goodreads).
UDL Now!: A Teacher's Guide to Applying Universal Design for Learning by Katie Novak — “In this revised and expanded edition of UDL Now! Katie Novak provides practical insights and savvy strategies for helping all learners meet high standards using the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL is a framework for inclusive education that aims to lower barriers to learning and optimize each individual's opportunity to learn. Novak shows how to use the UDL Guidelines to plan lessons, choose materials, assess learning, and improve instructional practice. Novak discusses key concepts such as scaffolding, vocabulary-building, and using student feedback to inform instruction. She also provides tips on recruiting students as partners in the teaching process, engaging their interest in how they learn. UDL Now! is a fun and effective Monday-morning playbook for great teaching” (Goodreads).
Stingray Afternoons by Steve Rushin — “It's a story of the 1970s. Of a road trip in a wood-paneled station wagon, with the kids in the way-back, singing along to the Steve Miller Band. Brothers waking up early on Saturday mornings for five consecutive hours of cartoons and advertising jingles that they'll be humming all day…It's Steve Rushin's story: of growing up within a '70s landscape populated with Bic pens, Mr. Clean and Scrubbing Bubbles, lightsabers and those oh-so-coveted Schwinn Sting-Ray bikes. Sting-Ray Afternoons paints an utterly fond, psychedelically vibrant, laugh-out-loud-funny portrait of an exuberant decade. With sidesplitting commentary, Rushin creates a vivid picture of a decade of wild youth, cultural rebirth, and the meaning of parental, brotherly, sisterly, whole lotta love” (Goodreads).
Olivetti by Allie Millington — “Being a typewriter is not as easy as it looks. Surrounded by books (notorious attention hogs) and recently replaced by a computer, Olivetti has been forgotten by the Brindle family—the family he’s lived with for years. The Brindles are busy humans, apart from 12-year-old Ernest, who would rather be left alone with his collection of Oxford English Dictionaries. The least they could do was remember Olivetti once in a while, since he remembers every word they’ve typed on him. It’s a thankless job, keeping memories alive…As Olivetti spills out the past, Ernest is forced to face what he and his family have been running from, The Everything That Happened. Only by working together will they find Beatrice, belonging, and the parts of themselves they’ve lost” (Goodreads).
WATCHED:
Paris movies including Midnight in Paris, Amélie, and Charade, while sipping Champagne and watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle.
Top Chef Season 22 in Canada featuring Door County’s own Kat Turner.
LISTENED TO:
My carefully curated French playlist
My March Instapuzzle mini-playlist:
They Say It’s Spring (Blossom Dearie)
Lucky (Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat)
What a Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong)
The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Dominic Lewis)
Spring from the Four Seasons (Antoni Vivaldi)
Suddenly It’s Spring (Stan Getz)
Lovely Day (Bill Withers)
Les rues de Paris (Nicholas Godin)
I Love Paris (Frank Sinatra)
ENJOYED:
Paris in the Springtime — The write songs about it for a reason.
Four days at home after returning from Paris — Time to rest and reset, to edit and curate photos, and to catch up with family. It was especially nice to see both Alec and Chase 🖤
