Edith Wharton wrote that “There are two ways of spreading light: to be / The candle or the mirror that reflects it.” I’m going to revise the ending of the quotation slightly so I can use it as a caption for this photo, and say “or the piano that reflects it.” These lines are from her poem “Vesalius in Zante,” published in the North American Review in 1902.

For today’s scrapbook blog post, I want to share some of the things I’ve enjoyed seeing or reading about over the past week: an exhibition of quilts, a short video featuring Ursula K. Le Guin, a mother-daughter road trip to PEI, and a new novel for fans of Jane Austen.

Last week, I went to the opening of “By Her Hand: Contemporary Quilts Inspired by the Nova Scotia Museum,” an exhibition of stunning quilts created by Andrea Tsang Jackson and Marilyn Smulders. Marilyn is a friend of mine, and I’m the proud owner of a gorgeous quilt she made a few years ago, entitled “Homage to the Homage to the Square.” I was delighted to see that quilt in the background of Marilyn’s photo. If you’re in Halifax in the coming months, you should go see the exhibition, which is on at the Museum of Natural History until January 7th.

“He’s my first reader,” Ursula K. Le Guin says of her husband, Charles, in a delightful interview with the two of them, sitting by the fire in the house they shared for decades. I’ve read very little of her work and would like to explore further. Do any of you have suggestions?

I enjoyed this essay about a road trip to Prince Edward Island: “Road to Avonlea: Amanda Parrish Morgan on the Transportive Intimacy of Reading and Long Drives.” Morgan writes that “Reading a book aloud, especially to a child, means getting on that frigate together, being passengers in the same car, not just with a character with whom we might feel like kindred spirits, but with each other. The car, the book, the trip—all means of getting somewhere unknown together.”

Here’s my photo of the view from the Confederation Bridge, from a road trip to PEI several years ago. Stopping on this narrow bridge isn’t allowed, but on this occasion, we had to stop because of construction, so I was able to take a photo. Morgan says that although she isn’t a nervous driver, she found it challenging to drive over this eight mile bridge: “it required mantras and affirmations like those I’d used during childbirth or in the final miles of a marathon.”

Happily for Morgan, she found that “The bridge and the terror it induced seemed, somehow, to make the rolling hills of PEI and the sweet reconstructions of Anne’s world all the more bucolic.”

One of my photos from a family holiday in PEI a couple of years ago:

Jane Austen fans might be interested in Stephanie Barron’s new novel, Jane and the Final Mystery, the last in a series of fifteen mysteries that started with Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor. My friend Laurel Ann Nattress of Austenprose.com writes that this last novel is “a poignant, compelling, and uplifting story.” She says “the immaculately researched mysteries are standalone stories, so please do not hesitate to jump right in with book fifteen, and then circle back to any of the previous novels.” I’ve read a few of the books in the series, and I have a particular fondness for Jane and the Ghosts of Netley. Do any of you have a favourite Stephanie Barron novel you’d like to recommend?

I’ll leave you with one last photo, of our dog, June, keeping me company in my office.