iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

At sky-t-tray.us, come share some deep-sea-fish cakes for the birthday of a lightning-rod author—who starts sparks & cross-currents of opinions. * Hemingway For Better & Worse * sky-t-tray.us/hemingway-fo... Happy 127th B-day, Ernest Hemingway! #JulyAuthorBirthdays 📚 #booksky

sky-t-tray.us

Hemingway For Better & Worse – sky-t-tray

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

At sky-t-tray.us, come share some pecan-praline pie for the birthday of a 19th-century social agitator—honestly, she’ll change how you see America. (She sure did for me.) * Hard-Headed & Wilful * sky-t-tray.us/hard-headed-... Happy 164th Birthday, Ida B Wells! #JulyAuthorBirthdays 📚 #booksky

sky-t-tray.us

“Hard-Headed & Wilful” – sky-t-tray

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Happy July, Book Enthusiasts! Celebrating birthdays this month: 3 authors— all 3 born just a few decades apart—all 3 American— all VERY different… Time for a cup of tea & a really good read? Come visit sky-t-tray.us #JulyAuthorBirthdays 📚 #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Her voice—full, sweet, and deliberate—proclaimed that its owner was accustomed to speak and be heard. 'Well, Mr Easton, if you will make me speak first, I suppose I must. Don’t you ever recognize old friends when you meet them in the West?' – from “Hearts and Hands” by O. Henry #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 22: “Hearts and Hands” by O. Henry (1902) At the Denver train station, two young men sit down across from her… A delightful tale with a classic O. Henry twist at the end. I had to read it again—just to see how this short story was put together. #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

‘What a letter! …Just what he needs…’ ‘You know what, deacon? Don’t send it! … Forgive him, let him be! …If his own father will not forgive him, who will? And is he to live so, unforgiven?’ – from “The Letter” by Anton Chekhov #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 23: “The Letter” by Anton Chekhov (1887) (translated from Russian by Avrahm Yarmolinsky) #booksky A story of fathers and sons; forgiveness and blame.

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

‘But what is it, a show?’ … ‘Very good,' he said, 'You will see… You are coming?’ Oh yes, we were coming… It did seem a surprising restraint that could resist an unspecified local entertainment offered in the middle of a green nowhere.’ – from "The African Magician” by Nadine Gordimer #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 24: “The African Magician” by Nadine Gordimer (1965) #booksky A story set on a riverboat & an evening of mysterious entertainment.

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

"Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Unfortunately, in the story he's not such a good guy...

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 16: “Yesterday” by Haruki Murakami (2014) (translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel) A man looks back to his 20s at a friendship—which lasted lasted only a few months—that he's still thinking about decades later. #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

“I now felt myself completely out of place. But intrigued, oh yes…I seemed almost fettered by curiosity… The situation.. had advance so rapidly in such sideways directions: before his own mother arrived, he asked me..to meet the mother of his child.” – from “Naturally” by Maria Luisa Puga #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 17: “Naturally” by Maria Luisa Puga (1978) (translated from the Spanish by Leland H Chambers) #booksky A woman wonders how she got conscribed within this cordial and constricting family circle.

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

“The thought that I would interfere in the life of someone else..did not occur to me… My ethic is now the ethic of a nightingale.” – from “Why I Transformed Myself into a Nightingale” by Wolfgang Hildesheimer #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 18: “Why I Transformed Myself into a Nightingale” by Wolfgang Hildesheimer (1983) (translated from the German by Susan Perry Alexander) #booksky A selfish man has an unusual superpower.

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

“Because you had not left in the proper way it seemed as though you had never left at all. You hung around, like a miasma—…Waiting to deflate my attempts at optimism.. with your own jaundiced view of my behavior.” – from “Hair Jewelry” by Margaret Atwood #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 19: “Hair Jewelry” by Margaret Atwood (1977) #booksky A sad tale of unrequited love, snowballs pitched into the Charles River, and some ill-fitting garments held together with safety pins.

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

He laughted. Short. ‘They want what you got but they don’t want you. They want what I got only it ain’t mine…’ ‘You talking about your fans? …Don’t worry about your fans,’ I say. – from “Nineteen Fifty-Five” by Alice Walker #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 20: “Nineteen Fifty-Five” by Alice Walker (1971) #booksky A very different look at the downside of celebrity culture—and one talented woman who smartly sidestepped the whole circus.

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

‘The problem is that many of these people don’t think we also dream,’ he said. I stared at him, astonished. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, exactly.’ … There is no elixir more potent than the genuine encouragement of a lovely person. – from “Chuka” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 21: “Chuka” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2025) #booksky Set during the 2020 lockdown, an emersive story about a perfect relationship that wasn’t quite enough.

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** I picked two favorite stories from Weeks 2 & 3: “The Conscience of the Court” by Zora Neale Hurston and “The Red Inn” by Honoré de Balzac

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Honestly, this was one of the best books I read last year. Before starting it, I read 'David Copperfield' by Charles Dickens—which ended up helping me get through some of Kingsolver's story—the characters & situations were similiar enough I could see when help was coming for poor Demon!)

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

“Small encounters such as those between him and Thadeus became fraught with meaning… Odd, and yet not so odd. These quick attachmens—a writer’s life is full of them.” – from “Ming” by Han Ong

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 13: “Ming” by Han Ong (2025) (illustration art for ‘Ming’ is by Haley Jiang, The New Yorker, Jan 20, 2025) A surprise inheritance shakes up a lonely man’s life.

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

(I don't know about you... but I've been curious about Balzac ever since 'The Music Man'!) “Chaucer! Rabelais! BALZAC!!” www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2ZV...

youtube.com

Balzac

YouTube video by John Bowie Lanford

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

“Every day we come across some moral phenomenon that is astonishingly significant…yet is too simple to draw notice.” – from “The Red Inn” by Honoré de Balzac

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 14: “The Red Inn” by Honoré de Balzac (1831) translated from the French by Linda Asher A story within a story, a dinner party, a murder, a rich heiress, and a moral conundrum. #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

“She stood there, looking straight ahead. The hostility in the room reached her without her seeking to find it… But she was ready for this moment… This here so-called trial was nothing to her but...an outside show to the world.” – from “The Conscience of the Court” by Zora Neale Hurston #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 15: “The Conscience of the Court” by Zora Neale Hurston (1950) *Any story* we read is a consensus between the author’s message & the publisher’s goals. An African-American woman publishing in a major white—in 1950, no less—can not be just *any story.*

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

(photogaph for ‘The Autopsy’ is by Tereza Zelenková, The New Yorker, Aug 28, 2023)

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

(illustration art for ‘The Last Grownup’ is by Geoff McFetridge, The New Yorker, Feb 27, 2023)

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

“Society…could not resist the diversion of throwing Varick and his former wife together… But Mrs Waythorn’s conduct remained irreproachable. She neither avoided Varick nor sought him out… She discovered the solution of the newest social problem.” – from “The Other Two” by Edith Wharton #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 8: “The Other Two” by Edith Wharton (1904) From the queen of divorce stories! Here, Wharton has some fun at the expense of her main character—whose lovely new bride was married twice before. In the end, he comes to admit he’s the better man for it. #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

“Thanks to the mirror, my father entered the world of the dead—but he also used it to bring his ancestors into the world of the living.” – from “The Wardrobe, the Old Man, and Death” by Julio Ramón Ribeyro (translated by Nick Caistor) #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 9: “The Wardrobe, the Old Man, and Death” by Julio Ramón Ribeyro (1976) A good story for me to read on Super Bowl Sunday! It’s about a man, his sons, and fate arriving by soccer ball… #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

“Finally the sun’s tide crept upon the shore of night and drowned all its hours. Missie May, with her face stiff and streaked towards the window, saw the dawn come into her yard. It was day. Nothing more.” – from “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 10: “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston (1933) A story about a young couple having fun together—until some gold coins & a rich man comes along. The ending in genuinely surprising. #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

“Debra sat on the couch and cried. Which was fine. Crying was good. Divorce was hard! …But Debra didn’t want sympathy, so no one saw her tears except the dog. (Max was a Samoyed, and pure of heart.)” – from “The Last Grownup” by Allegra Goodman #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 11: “The Last Grownup” by Allegra Goodman (2023) A woman who worries, plans, and tends to ‘fast-forward’ life is stuck in a story where time unfolds exclusively in present tense. #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

“Then Marya Akimovna called the church warden… The warden was nice, though condescending… Everybody except her son and his musician friends was condescending to Marya…but she did not even notice.” – from “The Autopsy” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

** 28 Short Stories in 28 Days ** Day 12: “The Autopsy” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya (2023) (translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky) An unusual story about a young man with ‘not a pennyworth of evil in him.’ #booksky

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Yeah, I was very surprised at that end! But at least it was close enough that you knew where it was going... (I wrote on my blog in 2019: "Molly Gibson is a strong, complex character when we meet her as a child on page 1. She only grows stronger and more richly drawn as she grows into adulthood.")

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kjhardesty.bsky.social @kjhardesty.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Just picked this one up at a library book sale!

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