Things I've seen, read, heard and want to remember from May 2025
From commitment to conspiracy theories with a dash of mystery and writing thrown in.
A thing I’ve seen …
(This thing I’ve seen wasn’t in May 2025. It’s something I saw years ago and wrote about then. I’ve reworked it a little to start off my month in review.)
They slowly followed the young man to the table. He walked well, but slowly. She walked slowly, but not as well with a slight tilt to her head and an arm in a permanent bend.
He smiled at them, handed them menus and helped them settle in — both of them on the same side of the table.
Curious, that. I turned my attention back to the conversation at my own table. There is, after all, a delicate balance to people watching during a lunch meeting.
Their order came quickly. Two identical plates piled high with broccoli - or at least that’s what I could see from my table.
I feigned interest in the repeated scenes of an empty racetrack and the incessant scroll along the immense television screen mounted on the wall behind and above the elderly couple a table or two over. Occasionally, I would contribute to the discussion at the table, but my peripheral vision focused on the action.
An act of devotion. An act of love. An act of beauty.
He gently reached over and cut her meat. Picking up her fork, he jabbed a chunk of chicken and turned the fork, placing it in his wife's hand so she could eat, allowing her the dignity of feeding herself. Then, he turned to his own plate to have a bite for himself.
The process continued, their gray heads almost touching as the fork was passed back and forth in quiet conversation.
They smiled at the server when she came to deliver their bill and graciously declined dessert before they began the slow journey back out the door.
This. This is commitment.
This is devotion.
This is love.
Things I’ve been reading …
Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave by Elle Cosimano - I always listen to the Finlay Donovan books on audio because the narrator is brilliant. This is the fourth book in the Finlay Donovan series and it’s as fun, quirky, and deadly as the rest.
The Maid’s Secret by Nita Prose - Molly the Maid returns in a story that reveals more about her beloved Gran and a lost/refound love against the backdrop of preparing for her own wedding and dealing with the aftermath of an art heist.
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis - Warning. If the world is too heavy for you right now, don’t read this. This 1935 dystopian novel looks at one way fascism could arrive in America through political divisions and propaganda. I found it hard to believe that it was written 90 years ago when parts of the storyline could clearly be from today’s headlines.
Things I’ve been listening to …
The last episode of Devil and the Deep Blue Sea dropped last week. It’s been quite a journey through the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s. Host Mike Cosper, who also created The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, walks through the things that anyone who grew up evangelical in that time frame remembers well - avoiding Halloween, purging record collections of secular music, back masking on songs, the “dangers” of Dungeons and Dragons and more. All the while, Cosper posits, there were real dangers in the church that were hidden by this focus on conspiracy theories.
A thing to remember …
I had the privilege of seeing Frederik Backman in Lancaster recently. If you’re a writer and you ever thought you would be completely content if you had a book published, you should listen to him sometime. He’s brilliant (obviously, given his amazing books), and funny, but there’s a deep undercurrent of melancholy when he speaks. This interview with Barnes & Noble was posted almost a week after the Lancaster event but it contains similar themes.
Anyway, all that to say, here are a few of my favorite quotes from the evening - or at least the ones that I captured word for word (that’s why they’re short):
“My process is: chaos, chaos, chaos, book.”
“The first draft still sucks. The first draft always sucks.”
“My writing was just for me to survive. It’s my coping mechanism.” (Any amens from fellow writers?)
“Language is melody and song.”
And this one, in response to a question from the audience …
“The reason you weep is because I cried when I wrote it.”