Finished the Claire McCardell biography on the flight home.
Decades ahead of her time — flats, pockets, clothes that move, American sportswear, even the early hoodie.
She died young, with no succession plan, so her name didn’t endure. But the way we dress today is still hers.
#booksky
Found this tucked‑away garden in Rouen two days ago. A soft pause before the long travel day home.
Another opening in Normandy: this one at Château de Martainville, where the arch doesn’t guard or guide — it simply invites you into the garden.
Front façade of the Abbaye aux Dames — Romanesque geometry, carved stone, and a symmetry that has held for nearly a thousand years.
An arrow slit in the walls of the Château de Caen — a reminder that even the smallest openings were once built for survival, not scenery.
What opened the year, and what refused to leave.
#booksky
Three years of mentoring and steady stewardship finally moved this quarter. I didn’t expect the reveal, but I recognized it when it arrived. New essay up now.
"How Big Things Get Done” is a sharp reminder: know your org’s Legos, and hire the master builders. Reusable patterns + real expertise = faster, better outcomes.
#booksky
Some roles come with clarity. Others come with gaps. Leadership is choosing to leave the role better than you found it—even if you never meet the person who follows you.
#Leadership
The Black Angels is a powerful history of Black nurses who became TB experts, helped find the cure, and opened doors into other hospitals and the ANA.
#booksky
Some women return from time abroad not transformed, but clarified.
New essay: The Continental Woman.
A small wardrobe built in motion — objects chosen while passing through, carried forward long after the trip.
This one sits beside my silver essay, the second panel in a diptych about the things that stayed.
Some of the pieces that stayed with me the longest weren’t planned at all.
A scarf at Heathrow.
A suede bag at DFW.
A bracelet from New Orleans.
This is a story about lineage, migration, and the quiet rituals that rebuild a life after everything comes apart.
Every family has a drawer of misfit silver.
Mine survived a flood.
I learned my first real governance lesson the hard way: when the system started to strain and the mission was at risk. Training didn’t teach me that — lived experience did.
The Pretenders — Jo Harkin
Book 1 of 2026.
A novel about identity, grief, love, and revenge — and a man who keeps reshaping himself to survive. Simnel never had a fixed self, so he slipped into whatever role others handed him.
#YearInBooks #2026Reads #Booksky #FictionAndNonfiction #BookLover
2141 days of French.
Not discipline — continuity.
A five‑minute ritual that carried me through seasons I didn’t yet have language for.
cadenceandecho.substack.com/p/the-long-arc
#LongArc #Habits #LearningFrench
My Top 6 Reads of 2025
Ressa for courage.
Tolstoy as the year‑long through‑line.
Gilbert for mosses and the long view.
Pittard for civic grief and aftermath.
Henry V for grit and mortality.
Nicholls for warmth and humanity.
#YearInBooks #2025Reads #Booksky #FictionAndNonfiction #BookLover
I didn’t know nurture would be this hard.
Turns out the quiet work is what reshaped the year.
Full essay on Substack.
cadenceandecho.substack.com/p/on-nurture...
Reading War and Peace slowly — week by week, season by season — was the right choice. Petya’s death, Andrei’s resignation, Pierre’s rebirth. Tolstoy gives reckoning, not comfort.
“The strongest of all warriors are these two—Time and Patience.”
cadenceandecho.substack.com/p/war-and-pe...
#booksky
Not every pause is a reckoning. Sometimes it’s just a pause — and sometimes it becomes a story. Read my latest meditation.
The Thingie That Wouldn’t Pop Up cadenceandecho.substack.com/p/the-thingi...
#writing #essay
I agree! I do notice it now.
The Signature of All Things
Elizabeth Gilbert
Alma Whitaker studied mosses — quiet persistence, overlooked resilience.
Her life mirrored evolution: competition, survival, the will to endure.
The Signature of All Things surprised me, but I really liked it.
#booksky #historicalfiction #botany
Not a poinsettia, not a pine. Just a cactus that knows when to show up.
Refracted Revolution — my essay on watching Ken Burns’s American Revolution, layering Outlander fiction and my own travel maps. The truth bombs hit differently as an adult.
cadenceandecho.substack.com/p/refracted-...
