Pat Bean's blog

Escape Reading

June 12, 2026 by Pat Bean

Along with mind-speaking white horses known as Companions, Mercedes Lackey’s books involve birds, both real and fictional. Just another reason her books provide me so many hours of escape from this world.

Aging My Way

Sometimes, especially at night when this old broad’s body wants to go to bed with the chickens – something I used to make fun of my mother for doing – I want a book that simply lets me enjoy the story without having to think.

I don’t want to take notes; or have to look up terms or words I don’t understand; or be so inspired by what the author says that I have to journal my own thoughts. I just want to relax and discharge myself from reality.

And one of my favorite escape-reading authors, one I’ve been reading and rereading for over 30 years now, is Mercedes Lackey. I got hooked with her first book, Arrows of the Queen, published in 1987, which introduced me to the fictional country of Valdemar, a place where “there is no one right way.”

Valdemar characters, and those of other series by Mercedes, have provided me many, many hours of enjoyable reading, and continue to do so. Mercedes has written more than 140 fantasy books since Arrows of the Queen — and the prolific author is still writing them. Over 40 of these books involve Valdemar characters – and I’ve read every one of these.

It’s the Valdemar credence that there is no one right way, and that all, as long as they don’t harm others, should be respected and allowed to live their lives as they choose, that has so captured my imagination. I want to live in a world like this.

As I said, I call it escape reading.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Scamp. She is an avid reader whose mind is always asking questions (many of which are unanswerable), an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for Story Circle Network’s Journal, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing | Tagged Arrows of the Queen, Mercedes Lackey | Leave a Comment »

Mona’s Eyes

June 3, 2026 by Pat Bean

I just discovered Gustav Klimt (1862 – 1918). I love his explosion of color in this painting. If I hadn’t used a gift card from a grandson to purchase the book, *Mona’s Eyes*, which is dedicated to all the world’s grandparents, I might never have discovered this awesome artist.

Aging My Way

Some books I read in a day, staying up until the wee hours of the morning to finish them. Other books may take me weeks, which is the case for one of my current reads, Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schalesser.

It’s a charming story about a grandfather and his 10-year-old granddaughter, Mona, who might be losing her eyesight. But the book is also filled with a layered depth of other events and characters.

Each chapter is short and has the grandfather taking the girl to the Louve (the book was originally written in French) or other places to view a classic piece of art by artists like Seurat, Boticelli, Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

Along with a notebook and pen, which usually accompanies any reading I do, I’ve been taking the time to look up each piece of art, and with the help of the grandfather’s explanations and sometimes a bit more research, educate myself as well.

I read Chapter 32 yesterday, and discovered a new artist, one that even rivals my love of Van Gogh, whose starry nights and sunflowers have long enriched my life. The artist is Gustav Klimt, and Mona described his paintings as “explosions.” I agree.

I can’t imagine how I hadn’t come across Klimt earlier in my life. And if I weren’t such an avid reader I might not ever had. Meanwhile, here’s a few tasty tidbits from Mona’s Eyes:

“…life mustn’t only be lived. It must be danced.”

“The image of a woman smiling, with such a disarming smile, is an invitation to smile, too,” in reference, of course, to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

“Always believe miracles are possible.”

“Sometimes, you really do see only what you want to see!”

“And so, he became aware that he was still learning plenty of things at his age, and after eighty summers, that was wonderful.”

Yes! It is!

Posted in aging, Art, Books, Journeys, Writing | Tagged Mona's Eyes, Thomas Schlesser, grandparents | 3 Comments »

Edna and Miami

June 1, 2026 by Pat Bean

**In the 1980s, in Florida, everyone knew who Edna was. I didn’t live in Florida, but I knew. She was Edna Buchanan, a police reporter for the Miami Herald, and one of my role models.**

Aging My Way

On my weekly visit to the library, I picked up The New York Times Cultured Traveler: 100 Trips for the Curious Mind. It’s a classy anthology about a hundred places, from Agadir to Yogyakarta, that were featured in the newspaper’s travel section.

Reading about exotic and interesting places is high on my list of enjoyable things to do these days. While once that was to discover new and adventurous places to visit, these days it’s mostly only armchair travel — and an opportunity to recall memories of places I’ve visited during my lifetime.

The library book’s first section focused on the United States, so I had much to enjoy, like a story about Alaska’s Inside Passage, which I had experienced on a ferry ride from Haynes Junction to Vancouver in 1999.

But the book’s pages took me back even farther in time when I read an essay about Miami. While I had mostly bypassed the city to spend my time exploring the Everglades when I visited Florida, I had a connection to Miami that I had long forgotten. It was the note at the end of the article that suggested additional reading about the city that jolted my memory:

“The Corpse Had a Familiar Face by Edna Buchanan. Narrative of Miami’s dark side as seen by the Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter for the Miami Herald,” it read.

Edna was born in 1939, the same year as me, and she also wrote mystery novels, including a series featuring police reporter Britt Montero, that I had read. As a late-blooming and inexperienced reporter, Edna had been one of my role models. But I had completely forgotten all the newspaper stories and books I had read that she had written until her named popped up.

Gads, what else has my old-broad brain forgotten, was my first thought. I then went online and discovered Edna’s books were still in print, and I found and ordered a copy of The Corpse Had a Familiar Face. I can’t wait to see what other memories pop up when I reread it.

Posted in aging, Books, Journeys, Writing | Tagged Edna Buchanan, Florida, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, The New York Times Cultured Traveler | Leave a Comment »

I Love Tales of Adventure

May 29, 2026 by Pat Bean

**If one was wise, it was a good thing to take a close look at a rapid before trying to float through it. Both Tim and I came out of our rafts more than once. — Snake River photo by Pat Bean**

Aging My Way

Back in the 1990s, I spent much of my spare time white-water rafting, canoeing, playing tennis, skiing and weekend-road-tripping. So, it wasn’t unusual that I was a fan of Outside Magazine – and its writers.

The wordsmith I enjoyed most, both his magazine articles and his books, was Tim Cahill, whose writing I fell in love with after reading Road Fever. Published in 1991, the book was a face-paced travelogue about Tim’s journey from Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in a record-breaking 23 days.

Cahill’s misadventures tickled my funny bones, and I went on to read his Jaguars Ripped my Flesh; A Wolverine is Eating My Legs; Pecked to Death by Ducks; and Lost in my Own Backyard: A Walk in Yellowstone National Park.

According to Tim:

“A journey is best measured in friends, not in miles.”

“The explorer is the person who is lost.”

“An adventure is never an adventure when it happens. An adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort recollected in tranquility.“

“A constant ongoing joke among the people that I travel with is my absolutely hopeless sense of direction. I’m able to get lost a half an hour from camp. I don’t know how I do this.”

Tim and I have this in common. People who travel with me know that at least once a day, I’m going to be headed in the wrong direction,

Happy reading.

Posted in aging, Books, Journeys | Tagged Outside Magazine, Road Fever, Tim Cahill, Travelogues | Leave a Comment »

Stepping Into a Korean World

May 27, 2026 by Pat Bean

Bushtit: A tiny grayish songbird that is not easy to find, because they like thick vegetation and move quickly through it. I saw my first one in North Bend, Oregon, in 2005 and haven’t identified another once since. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I just finished reading two library books by Korean author Hwang Bo-Reum, one a compilation of essays about reading titled Every Day I Read, first published in 2021, and the other a novel, Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Library, published in 2022.

The first inspired me to read more, and the second gave me new insights about today’s work world, which seems to have taken a 180-degree turn from the work world of this old broad. That turn is something I was seeing everyday by living next door to my granddaughter Shanna and her wife Dawn.

I had already realized I needed to stop trying to compare the two eras or alienate a younger generation, which does not think like an 87-year-old. Hwang’s books just emphasized this.

Meanwhile, I would classify Hwang’s novel as sweet, with a cast of kind, if at times befuddled, characters who care about each other. Reading it was a break from the chaos of today’s world, and I found both books well-worth the time I spent devouring them.

Here are a few nuggets I saved:

On reading essays: “How could our thoughts be so similar despite living completely different lives, and so different when in the same circumstances.”

“It was part of the balance of life – a person’s dream coming true could mean the collapse of someone else’s life.”

“People just see me as me, which is better than being seen as everybody else.”

“What a happy thing it was to meet a person on the same wavelength.”

This final thought reminded me how elated I become when I realize another person and I, despite many differences, are on the same wavelength. More often than not, this makes itself known by discovering we’ve read the same books.

Happy reading all.

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing | Tagged Hwang Bo-Reum, I Read Every Day, Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop | 1 Comment »

The Wanderlust in My Soul

May 26, 2026 by Pat Bean

I spent one summer, during my RV travels from 2004 to 1013 in the Everglades, where I indulged in lots of birdwatching. One my favorite species were the Anhingas, a waterbird that swims with only its head and long neck above water. Thes trait has caused some people to call them the snake bird. I most often saw them on a low branch or stump with their wings stretched out wide to dry. Anyway, I drew this one during my Everglade summer.

Aging My Way

Steinbeck named his mode of travel, a camper created from a pickup truck, Rocinante, after Don Quixote’s horse, and I named my small RV Gypsy Lee for the wanderlust in my genes and a grandfather who loved to travel, or so I was told as he died when I was only two years old.

On most best travel book lists that I come across, I’ve read at least half of them – and I copy down the names of the ones I haven’t and check them out. Age has slowed down my physical road trips, but reading books about travel continues to warm my wanderlust soul.

I was pretty young when I started reading books by John Steinbeck, (1902-1968). Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, East of Eden, I loved; Of Mice and Men, not so much. But my favorite Steinbeck book is Travels with Charley, so much so that I gave Steinbeck credit for being one of the inspirations for my own travels, and titled my travel book, Travels with Maggie. Charley was a large French poodle, and Maggie was a bratty cocker spaniel.

Steinbeck and I looked at this country from different viewpoints, and I learned much from him. I would like to think that if he could have read my book, he would have learned from me, too. As I’ve noted before, one of the best things about reading is seeing the world from another’s perspective.

Meanwhile, here is one of my favorite travel quotes from another one of my favorite authors: Edward Abbey. “May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing | 2 Comments »

A Historical, Fantastical Journey

May 25, 2026 by Pat Bean

Memories are always flashing through my old-broad mind, perhaps because my brain is so crammed full of them. Anyway, as I painted this quick capture of a male downy woodpecker, I recalled the old, animated character Woody Woodpecker. Anyone else remember Woody? — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula K. Le Guin.

This quote means so much to me that it has a permanent place on my blog page. It was the inspiration for how I traveled after retirement, when I took the backroads and zigzagged across America in a small RV for nine amazing years.

It was a similar, but yet totally different journey, that the protagonist takes in Douglas Westerbeke’s intriguing book A Short Walk Through a Wide World. Classified as historical fantasy, a New York Times reviewer said it rolled The Life of Pi, The Alchemist, and The Midnight Library into one fantastical fable.

I recommended the novel to my book-loving neighbor who enjoyed it as much as I did. We read it last year shortly after it was published. And by the way, I do know how lucky and blessed I am to have a neighbor who loves reading as much as I do.

Westerbeke, a former librarian, credits all the reading he had done as inspiration for his novel. I would think that his neighbors, if they know him, would be fortunate, too.

Meanwhile, a Bean Pat for our local libraries. “A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never-failing spring in the desert.” – Andrew Carnegie“

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged A Short Walk Through a Wide World, Douglas Westerbeke, Woody Woodpecker | 4 Comments »

Remembering Albert Payson Terhune

May 24, 2026 by Pat Bean

Scamp in 2019, just a few days after I got him from a shelter. He was terribly matted and here he is showing off his first haircut. He weighed 17 pounds and I thought he was almost full-grown. He weighs 45 pounds today. Photo by Jean Gowen

Aging My Way

Since I decided to blog more about books, and do it five days a week, I quickly realized I couldn’t just mention titles I was currently reading. Even I don’t read that much.

The solution, which requires me to go back into my past, has been quite enjoyable, like the memory that popped into my head of my favorite childhood author: Albert Payson Terhune (1872-1942). Among a dazzling array of other books, he wrote over 30 dog-related titles – most of which I’ve probably read. His books were the first ones I looked for during my weekly library visits when I was growing up.

With a bit of current research, I learned that some of Terhune’s books are available for 99 cents on Kindle, and I downloaded Lad, A Dog and Chips, two that I do recall reading. Terhune’s books may have started my lifelong adoration of dogs, a love that became even greater when I became the sole occupant of my abode almost 50 years ago.

There have been four dogs in my life since then, each a cherished companion. The latest is Scamp, a Siberian Husky-Shih Tzu mix who became my soul mate seven years ago. Albert said: “Any man with money to make the purchase can become a dog owner. But no man — spend he ever so much coin and food and tact in the effort – may become a dog’s master without the consent of the dog.”

However, when it comes to Scamp, it’s debatable about which of us is the master.

Meanwhile, on perusing the two books I downloaded, I discovered that dogs back in the author’s days, and mine, weren’t the pampered pets they are today. Their masters weren’t always kindly and they mostly didn’t live indoor lives and sleep on beds. Of course, all dogs today still don’t have as coddled a life as Scamp

What’s a childhood book you remember?

Posted in aging, Books, Dogs, Journeys, Writing | Leave a Comment »

All About Us – And Happiness

May 22, 2026 by Pat Bean

***A memory of an afternoon safari in Tanzania. — Art by Pat Bean***

My Way

Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, one of the top 100 books of the 21^st Century according to the New York Times Readers’ Pick.

Wow! That was my first reaction when I started reading this book. It’s 2.5 million years of history squeezed into 599 pages – and it’s all about us. There’s the good, the bad, the ugly and questions about what’s next.

I read it a while back, but unlike some books that quickly fade from my memory, this one has stuck with me. I’m thinking about reading it again. What would be really fun is to find a used copy in which someone has underlined passages and/or made margin notes. Someone else’s thoughts is one of the reasons I like purchasing used books.

Art: It’s supposed to be a Marabou Stork. I saw lots of them in Tanzania in 2007. From the back, if you have a decent imagination, these birds look like they are wearing a long black coat, which has prompted some people to call it the undertaker bird. Anyway, this quick sketch was fun to do, but the best part about it was that it reminded me of my two-week African safari, during which I identified 182 different bird species. While that’s not an impressive number for what I could have seen, it pleased me.

Quote: And that brings me to a favorite quote, which I will paraphrase because I can’t find it or who said it. Simply put: “Happiness is not always getting what you want but loving what you have.” Anyone know who said it?

Posted in African Safari, aging, Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing | Tagged Sapiens, tanzania, Yuval Noah Harari | Leave a Comment »

Strong Women

May 21, 2026 by Pat Bean

Yellow makes me happy. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

“My grandmother turned toward a guard – she was in line to be shot into a pit – and said, ‘What happens if I step out of line?’ And he said, ‘I don’t have the heart to shoot you, but somebody will.’ And she stepped out of line. And for that I am here.” – Alex Borstein.

This quote opens the book The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line, which I was given as a recent birthday present after I requested stories about strong women. It’s about “girls” who stepped out of line and helped win World War II. I’m loving this book.

Quote: “Being right might be gratifying, but in the end it is static … being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey and a story … to fuck up is to find adventure.” – Kathryn Schultz, Being Wrong,

Posted in aging, Art, Books, Journeys, Writing | Tagged Being Wrong, Kathryn Schulz, The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line. | Leave a Comment »

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