Happy Sunday! Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at ReaderBuzz. Check out her post and the links to see what other bloggers have been up to in the last week.

How’s the weather?

I just got rained on while I walked. I thought it was going to hold off another hour, but the weather prediction changes every 30 minutes, right now. At least, our heat wave ended. We’ll be back in the 90s again, next week, but it should stay well below 100.

What are you listening to?

I’m still listening to Dolly Parton’s America, a nine-episode podcast from 2019 about Dolly Parton and so much more. I’m also listening to Dolly Parton’s music and to the music of Rhiannon Giddens who was interviewed for one of the episodes.

What are you reading?

I enjoyed The Seaside Book Club. Thanks, Marg, The Intrepid Reader and Baker, for recommending it!

I’m nearly done with The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios. It’s about time because I’m leading the book club discussion on Thursday night. Everyone I talked to has said that they liked how much this nonfiction book focuses on individual characters — like a novel.

I started Once Upon a Time in Dollywood by Ashley Jordan. That has been on my TBR for a while. It feels like a good summer read, especially when I’m indulging in Dolly Parton in other areas. I don’t know if we’ll actually make it to Dollywood in the novel, but we’re in Gatlinburg and I’m enjoying the “Tennessee Mountain Home” setting.

What are you watching?

We finished A Woman of Substance on BritBox, the series based on Barbara Taylor Bradford’s 1979 novel. We were impressed by the acting, particularly the older Emma Harte played by Brenda Blethyn (Vera) and the younger Emma Harte played by Jessica Reynolds. The story, though, is a revenge plot which is not my favorite.

We moved on to Season 2 of Patience on PBS. That’s working better for me.

I tried watching Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, a Netflix series of made-for-TV quality movies, when they were first released. I couldn’t get into them at that time, but they’re working for me now. I have to be in the exact right mood for Hallmark Channel and Lifetime movies, too. When I’m in the mood, nothing else will do! It’s the exact same mood that I had while watching the ABC Afterschool Specials when I was a teenager. It’s fun to still be in touch with that part of myself fifty years later.

What are you doing?

Speaking of remembering my youth, I’ve been teaching string figures to some children in my life, recently. The ones that I learned as a kid are coming back to me. Muscle memory! Here’s what we’ve learned so far:

• Witch’s broom
• Tea cup and sauce
• Cat’s cradle
• Cat’s whiskers
• Jacob’s ladder

When I was researching these, I learned that string figures appeared in pretty much every culture in the world and that we humans started making string figures before we started writing, making string figures prehistoric. Isn’t that cool?

What string figures do you remember making?