by Quentin Lewis

Weeknotes: 01/03/2026-01/09/2026

weeknotes family travel goodthings truethings museum

This Week:

  • I’m back from a long, busy and overall exhausting break. We travelled to Iowa (where we visited the Indian Creek Nature Center, the Wikiup Hill Learning Center, and the Czech and Slovak Museum and Library) and to Toronto (where we returned to our old friend the ROM). We celebrated Christmas, and my daughter’s 7th birthday, and New Year’s, and drove back on New Year’s Day.
  • The hardest part of the week was grieving for Neva. My cat died after 16 long years on January 2nd. We were able to cut our trip short and come home to say goodbye. She was a good cat, friendly and affectionate with basically every human she met (though she hated most animals she met!) Alanna and I found her in 2010 at the Toronto Humane Society Shelter, and she immediately meowed at us and told us to take her home. She travelled with us to England and back, helped us raise this new human called Dominic, and came with us to Oneonta where she also became very chummy with Hazel, our other new human. Her time with us included sitting with me while I wrote my dissertation and book, sitting with Alanna while she taught on-line during COVID, and a billion other milestones, highs, and lows. I spent a lot of time this week looking at pictures of Neva (I’m blessed with many!) This is the one I keep coming back to: My office in England, with Neva reminding me that there is nothing any book more important than sunshine. Neva, lying on books in the sun
  • At the Museum, I’m getting back in the saddle. I did a little cleaning up and organizing, but my main project this week was working on the upcoming Poe exhibit. I also spent some time on planning some smaller programs for January and February, and planning our Spring arts camp.
  • Alanna and I finished watching season 1 of “The Lowdown” which is simultaneously a shaggy Jim-Thompson-esque mystery, a thoughtful inquiry into how colonialism remains alive and well in the present, and a love letter to the city of Tulsa. It’d be hard for Sterlin Harjo to recreate the magic of Reservation Dogs in any case, and it has nowhere near the richness of that brilliant piece of artwork, but it was fun and well-done.
  • Good Things:
    • I keep coming back to the Geese Album “Getting Killed”, which is as funky, loud, and emotionally rich as everyone has been saying.
    • Dominic and I finished reading “The People of Sparks” by Jeanne DuPrau, the second book in the City of Ember series. I really liked this book, which is a thoughtful book about refugees and sanctuary, wrapped in a post-apocalyptic YA adventure.
  • True Things: