Published in October 2023

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For those of you following along from home, here is a roundup of all my articles that published in October 2023. I hope you find something useful or enjoyable.

Earth911

Get Your Home Ready for Winter

Is the Miyawaki Method the Answer to Deforestation?

Office Conversions Could Be the Key to Urban Renewal

Green Earth Book Awards 2023

Reprints

What to Do With Autumn Leaves

Why It’s Time for Electric School Buses

Start Thinking About Your Spring Garden Now

ParentMap

Demystify the Process of Selecting a Middle School

Authentic Learning Keeps Kids Curious

The Healing Power of Music

Seattle Times

Meet the Seattle company combining burlesque with literature

Emerald City Music explores connections between classical and jazz

WWMG

Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery

Psoriatic Arthritis

Crooked Road

The name of the blog – Crooked Road – comes from a line in the movie Joe vs. the Volcano. It refers to the way that we almost never follow a straight path to get to exactly the place we need to be. These days, I’m not writing much for the blog, but I’m still traveling down a crooked road. Since most-read posts and most popular search terms aren’t very interesting on a blog that only had one post in October, I thought this month I would add something I read to my list of things I wrote.

In October, the book I most want to share is Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas. Set in Sudan nearly 20 years ago, it presents the civil war there through its impact on a small, diverse group of people – an American aid worker, a Sudanese-American filmmaker, a child worker, and a man and woman who are falling in love despite their ethnic origins in opposing sides of the conflict. It was a beautiful exploration of the human side of a conflict I knew almost nothing about and it left me absolutely heartbroken.

I’ve written before about how my attempts to book club rarely stick. Because We’ve Read seemed to turn more into an action group and stopped making monthly book recommendations. But a couple months ago, I got a text message from Amnesty International that said something like “This month’s book club choice is Lost Children Archive.” I had never heard of an Amnesty International book club, let alone signed up for one. But I checked the book out at my local library, and it was really very good. Now I’ve read two wonderful books that I had never heard of before thanks to Amnesty International, so I will keep reading whatever they recommend for as long as the texts keep showing up.

I review only a tiny fraction of the books that I read (as anyone who has seen my year-end book lists knows). But I do keep track of them all on Goodreads, and if you want to see what I’m reading as I read it, I promise to accept your Goodreads friend request.

And that’s October in the books.