Ensure that every child in America has access to an effective school library program. Every child in America deserves access to an effective school library program. We ask that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provide dedicated funding to help support effective school library programs. Such action will ensure more students have access to the resources and tools that constitute a 21st century learning environment. Reductions in school library programs are creating an ‘access gap’ between schools in wealthier communities versus those where there are high levels of poverty. All students should have an equal opportunity to acquire the skills necessary to learn, to participate, and to compete in today’s world.
The librarians need 5,0835,074 5,073* more signatures on this petition…
* The first number was how many more signatures were needed when I first went to the website. Between then and when I went back after verifying my account via email, 9 more people had signed. Then I did.
You don't need a blog to participate. If you are a non-blogger please leave a comment with a link (if you review elsewhere) to your review or with the book(s) you read.
Audio, ebooks (some libraries allow ebooks to be checked out), bound books are ok. I would have included graphic novels, but I don't cannot read those so it is a moot point.
No re-reads.
Create a sign up post and post the link in the linky.
Challenge goes from January 1, 2012 - December 31, 2012.
I already read at least 50 books/year, almost every single one from the library, so I am not going to sign up for this. But supporting your local library is A Very Good Thing, especially in these days of tight municipal budgets when some folks question the needs for libraries.
I encourage you to sign up for this challenge at whatever level is comfortable for you. Knowledge is a good thing; we all need more of it. Please go forth and investigate your library!
We spent nine days on the North Shore (of Lake Superior) in the mini-mini-motorhome, returning on the day before Labor Day, and it was glorious. I have some photos but am currently too lazy to upload them. Be assured, though, that I knit my little fingers to the bone -- finished three projects (photos to come), started two more (ditto) -- and had a great time doing it.
Before we left home, however, I bought myself a little prezzie.
It all started when I read a Gizmodo post abuot how the Motorola TouchPad was such a great deal for $100* (originally $400+). I was in WI when I read it and Smokey was in Minneapoils, so I emailed and sent him on a quest to buy me one. It turned out, however, that Motorola had recalled all the unsold ones from Best Buy the week before. There were none to be had. ::sob::
After much thoughtful consideration I decided that an ebook reader that was compatible with my library's ebooks would do the trick, and a trip to Wal-Mart and $139 plus tax later I had one of the El Cheapo Nooks in my hot little hands.
[digression] I tried to find a photo online of the aforementioned El Cheapo model, but nobody puts a picture of THAT poor thing online. All I could find were color Nooks and Nooks whose screen didn't quite look like mine. So you will have to settle for the image above; inadequate, but accurate. [/digression]
I immediately bought the tenth anniversary edition of American Gods by Neil Gaiman from Barnes & Noble, my choice for my book club's November read, and downloaded two ebooks from our library consortium. It turns out that there is a very limited selection of ebooks from the library, but I did manage to find a couple that appealed as vacation reading. (Cathedral by Nelson DeMille and My Fair Lazy by Jen Lancaster, for those of you who are counting.)
If you know of any other sites for free, Nook-compatible books, please sing out in the comments. Thank you in advance.
* I have since read that Motorola was surprised to discover what a great demand there was for a $100 (or $150, if the buyer wanted 32G instead of 16G of memory) tablet computer. They rethought their previous decision and subsequently decided to offer a few more TouchPads at the clearance price. In October. We shall see. In the meantime, I've got my Nook to keep me warm read.
Heh. Can you guess what I was obsessed with when I chose my vacation books?
So far I have read Vanished (suspense novel, supremely mediocre) and Night of the Grizzlies (nonfiction account of two 1967 fatal grizzly attacks in Glacier National Park; recommended by soxanne; glad I didn’t read it before we went to Glacier last year) (headline in Thursday's local paper: Man Killed in Grizzly Attack in Yellowstone National Park. Eeep.). The top three paperbacks are all sci-fi, the other is probably horror; all excellent, non-demanding amusement. I started The Compassionate Carnivore – by the same author as Hit by a Farm – before we left home. It is a nice blend of humor, introspection, and ethics; I might be able to handle it. The others, mostly nonfiction, may be too much for my vacationing brain.
On the audiobook front, so far I have listened to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire,and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larssen. I had read or listened to all of them before but wanted to do it again in one continuous string; #2 and #3 are really one story. Then I listened to A Study in Emerald read by the author, Neil Gaiman. That was a short one, less than one hour.
I just finished Grave Peril, #3 in the Harry Dresden series. I heartily recommend listening to the audios of this series. The read has the sexiest voice on the planet, plus he reads them as though he were telling the story over a beer the day after it happened. Much more enjoyable (again, imho) than reading them.
* Last night I couldn't fall asleep so I grabbed a book from my stash -- in the dark -- and a headlamp to read until I got sleepy. This was the one. Friedman is such a wretched writer and egoist that I made it to page 32, skimming large parts, before my eyelids drooped. Success!
Knitting.
I brought along enough knitting projects to sink a battleship.
The Lace Shawl ofDoom Delightfor BGFE.
This is coming along swimmingly. I have finished the first chart and am ready to start on the border. That simple statement belies what lies ahead, though; the pattern warns that most of the knitting is in the border, plus chart 2 is altogether different and appears far more complicated than chart 1. Stay tuned.
This is currently about two-thirds done but was put on hold when I took up the Lace Shawl of Doom again. Nice pattern, nice yarn – I’m using Louet superwash merino worsted left over from my kimono sweater.
Notice how well-defined the cables are? Not. The yarn is Drops Alpaca Sport, luscious stuff but not at all suitable for good stitch definition. I have since frogged that effort and am instead doing a mistake rib pattern that works much better with the yarn. It is also nice mindless knitting :-)
Actual color is somewhere between the two photos, orangey-red like the second but darker like the first.
Sock for me.
This was to be my fall-back project, the one I would carry into restaurants, etc. Instead the mistake rib scarf has become the take-along. That’s okay; I’m not dying to have the socks done. Yarn is some OnLine Supersocke 100 Circle Color that was on sale at Webs last year.
These last two projects got packed to come along when I was apparently on drugs and in a fantasy daze, thinking how awful it would be if I ran out of knitting projects. The chances of either of them even getting cast on during this tripe is roughly... zero.
I was thrilled to match this yarn with a pattern. The yarn is 1600+ yards of Brooks Farm Acero, a sport/DK blend of superwash wool, viscose, and silk. It is not enough to make a sweater for me and has been yearning for a pattern for several years. I think it will be perfect for this shawl, although the pattern will use only about half of it. I am not wild about wearing shawls, but this one seems like it will stay in place without fussing.
As I typed that, the vision of a short- or three-quarter-length sleeved lace cardigan came into mind. Lace takes less yarn than stockinette, right? And I am now lace-qualified, right? I may need to investigate that. I have some other, not-enough-for-a-sweater yarn in my stash that would work for the Braided Glory, actually better than the Acero. Stay tuned.
Winterdance: The Fine Magic of Running the Iditarod / Gary Paulsen. This is my favorite book EVAH! It is funny, spiritual, and amazing.
The Prey series / John Sandford. Best, most intelligent police procedurals I have ever read. Characters and dialog are so real you can see and hear them in your mind. Set in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and regions within driving distance. Start with the first one and read them in sequence because there is real character development.
Emperor of All Maladies : A Biography of Cancer / Siddhartha Mukherjee. I read this recently and found it fascinating. It reads like a suspense novel -- I didn't want to put it down when I got sleepy because I wanted to know what happens next.
Ripped : How the Wired Generation Changed Music / Greg Kot. Another fascinating read for anyone who occasionally -- or frequently -- downloads music or obtains it in some non-DRM manner.
The Tortilla Curtain / T. C. Boyle. We read this in my book group several years ago, and it still haunts me.
Five Quarters of the Orange / Joanne Harris. Same author wrote Chocolat. I loved this book, set in rural France during WWII. Have listened to it twice and read it once.
The Song of Fire and Ice series / George R.R. Martin. A Game of Thrones, the first book, is now an HBO series. I have listened to the audiobook -- four of them, very long -- twice. Book five is due out... soon. Medieval fantasy, but with richly developed characters. I adore this series, will probably listen to it again later this year.
The Exception / Christian Jungersen. I wrote a post about it. Have read it twice. Disturbing.
Infidel / Ayaan Hirsi Ali. An Ethiopian woman's story of how she ran away from her homeland and a forced marriage. Author is now a member of the Dutch Parliament.
The Stand / Stephen King. My favorite of all his books.
I keep a list of the books I read each year, and a few years ago also started keeping a list of the ones I started and gave up on. For the first time ever, my list of "Did Not Finish" is currently longer (10) than the ones I actually finished (9). As might be true of any such list, the DNF is more reflective of my mood when reading than it is of the quality of the books. Right now, while doing taxes and consequently brain-dead after 8 pm, I find that it is the rare book that I can actually read and comprehend. I have finished only one book, a thriller, since I started work on February 7. Apparently a job is the enemy of literacy -- in my case, anyway.
* * * * *
A friend emailed this to me, and it touched my heart. Googling revealed that it was first published here.
Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.
During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out a sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.
It's utterly amazingly that where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, "Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another."
Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.
We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on. But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.
There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun. People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.
Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled. The mountains are Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.
And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.
They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend's husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.
Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.
Thank you again for your care and Love of me,
With Love in return, to you all, Anne
* * * * *
You may have read / seen / heard about the gas main explosion in Minneapolis on Thursday. I missed it entirely, having been back in Wisconsin for meetings on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. If I been in Minneapolis I would most certainly have known about it; the site is about 1.5 miles from our house.
Caution: this video was made, apparently, by a young man with a limited vocabulary; his commentary is definitely NSFW. But it is the best video I found on YouTube. After the young man's initial comment, he spliced in some audio from a local radio station, which includes an announcer who doesn't know how to pronounce Nicollet (NICK-o-let, not Nick-o-LET).
If you don't want to watch the video, here are some choice screen shots of cars that were parked close to the site.
The melted stuff reminds me of that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they open the Ark of the Covenant and the Nazis' faces melt.
To orient you, here is Google's shot of the area looking north toward downtown. The orange star marks the approximate site of the blast, the orange arrow points to the tree that is no more, and Cub Foods, a large supermarket, is outlined in red. Our house is somewhere off to the upper left. I think the man who took the video was standing on Nicollet Avenue, initially up between 58th and 59th Streets, and later, after the fire was out, near 60th.
The freeway at the right , I-35W, is one of the busiest in the country, and the explosion occurred near the end of the morning rush hour. It is amazing, considering the neighborhood, that no one was injured.
I propose that, on Hallowe'en or during the week of Hallowe'en, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books they'll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they'll enjoy.
A book-giving holiday! A new book-giving tradition! Awesome! Of course, as authors, Gaiman and King and Hill have a vested interest in promoting the sale of books, but NG specifically says "...new books or old or second-hand..." so I forgive them completely. Besides, my take on Gaiman, having heard him speak and read his blog faithfully and heard/seen him interviewed many times, is that he is a genuine and humble and thoughtful person who is more interested in getting people to read than in selling his own books. So there.
Somewhere on his blog I read a comment from a person -- a mother, I think -- who said that one year she bought a sh!tload of R.L. Stine books at Goodwill or some such and handed them out to trick-or-treaters. More awesomesauce!
We don't get trick-or-treaters here in the rural woods so I cannot partake of that last idea, but I am thinking deeply about what scary book I can give to whom.
I have had a good run on reading lately. Three Four really good ones in a row. My books; let me tell you them.
Ironically, since I don't particularly care for historical fiction, two of these beauties were set in 14th century England -- priests, The Plague, and everything.
A few weeks ago I read somewhere on the web -- probably Neil Gaiman's blog, but, really, it could have been anywhere -- that if a non-science-fiction-reading person wants to read a science fiction book to see what all the fuss is about, s/he should read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book. Being a person of obedient temperament (hah!) I followed that advice and requested it from the library. Turned out to be good advice; I enjoyed the book a lot. It is set in mid-21st century, from whence an Oxford student is sent back to 1320 via the University's time machine thingy. An epidemic breaks out in the present, paralleling the plague in the past. Willis is a well-known and prizewinning sci fi author -- I had read To Say Nothing of the Dog a number of years ago and enjoyed it, too. Both of these books employ time travel from the mid-21st century to the past, the latter to both 1940 and 1888. Both books are also well-written, engrossing, with endearing characters, and are bouncing good reads.
Next up was Ken Follett's sequel to Pillars of the Earth, World Without End. Follett loves to write gargantuan epics (redundant much, Kat™?) and this is no exception. He doesn't necessarily write great literature, but his books -- and I have read half a dozen or so over the past 40 years -- are always engrossing and highly readable. This was no exception. It is slightly over 1,000 pages long, and I was a bit intimidated by that length, mainly because I have nine other books from the library to read, plus one and a half books for next month's book club, and did I really want to spend all that time on just one book? But I did, and it was good, and I recommend it.
After reading those two books I feel that I am fairly well-informed about the bubonic plague, at least from the view of 14th century folks. Which is not nearly the same as current knowledge, but there it is.
Last night I grabbed The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club by Gil McNeil for my bedtime reading. This was at 11pm or so. An hour and a couple hundred pages later I glanced at the clock and recoiled in horror -- it was 3am and clearly I was not going to be able to finish the book before sleep. Damn, it was so good, and I didn't want to put it down! (But I did.) I awoke at 9:30 this morning, picked up the book, and finished the last 150 pages.
Most knitting novels teeter on the edge of trash, imho, with way too much of "...she fingered the soft yarn and dreamed of wearing a beautiful shawl in a meadow of daisies yada yada yada" and not enough of plot development, decent writing, character development, and, for want of a better word, realism. Not so this one. The heroine is a recently widowed mother of two boys, aged ~5 and ~6; anyone who has every birthed a boy can identify with the constant challenges they present. Realism: check. She takes over a smalltown yarn shop that her grandmother has run for decades and modernizes it (with Gran's full approval -- we should all have such a grandmother). Realism: good enough. There is no claim that she suddenly makes the shop so profitable that she can vacation in the south of France, just that she appears to be able to make ends meet comfortably. She makes new friends, has a satifying one-night fling, knits (natch), and generally copes with life. One could quibble with the fact that this one woman is friends with a network news anchor (female) AND a major movie star (female) AND a world-renowned photographer (male), but one wouldn't want to pick nits about such an enjoyable and otherwise well-written book. Her mother and inlaws and the local PTA president are proper a$$holes but she deals with them all splendidly and satisfyingly.
Several things endeared this book to my heart. First and foremost, the author has completely mastered the art of the sentence that goes on for nearly half a page and reflects a delightful sort of stream of consciousness narrative and whose rhythm is perfectly balanced with sentences of a more conventional length. I found myself thinking in those elongated and looping sentences after finishing the book; much fun. Second, the dialog between the heroine and her friend Ellen and with, really, every other adult in the book, is so charming and witty and warm that dammit! I want her for my friend so I can be charming and witty and warm, too. Third, she meets the challenges presented by those two active little boys so realistically -- often patient, sometimes exasperated, occasionally on the verge of an Atomic Mommie Meltdown -- that those scenes could be part of a parenting textbook.
Oh, as I was writing this post I remembered the last audiobook I listened to -- The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. Bryson* is gently hilarious as he recounts growing up in Des Moines, IA in the 1950s. I found myself LOLing in the car when listening. Read it or listen to it, you will enjoy it.
* I am pretty sure I am distantly related to Bill Bryson (by adoption). My adopted mother's maiden name was Bryson and her family was from Iowa. That's enough for me -- clearly, Bill and I are related. Once, before the advent of the internet, I wrote him a fan letter about one of his books -- A Walk in the Woods, iirc -- and mentioned our possibly being related (with the disclaimer that I wanted to make no demands on him, just to be able to brag about our distant cousinship in casual conversation). He actually wrote back, thanking me and saying he had forwarded my letter to his brother, who was the family member interested in such things.
Still on vacation. Weather beautiful. Drove through Glacier NP yesterday; glaciers not impressive. Global warming triumphing.
The laptop that might allow me to post photos is working again (yay, Smokey!) but refuses to accept photos from my camera (boo, Microsoft!) or to go online (boo, generally!). I'm typing this two-fingered on Smokey's netbook, sitting at a table on the patio of the campground office and taking advantage of their wi-fi. If you are really, really good I'll post a photo someday of how picturesque this spot is.
Instead, I'm going to tell you about the books I brought along. A couple of you asked about them; I deliver :)
The Missing by Tim Gautreaux. I was reading this before I left but was not finding it terribly interesting. It's not a bad book, and it is well-written; no idea why I was so lukewarm. Once I gave up on it, the pace of my reading picked up. Nemesis by Jo Nesbo. Police procedural translated from the Norwegian. Coincidentally, the NYTimes book review mentioned this author in its recent article about publishers' mad scramble to find more Scandinavian mysteries to follow up on Steig Larsson's three best-sellers. This one was okay, a bit depressing, 2-1/2 stars out of 5. Black Water Rising by Attica Locke. Another ho-hum murder mystery, 2-1/2 stars. I tend to agree with the Washington Post review at the linked Amazon page. The Last Child by John Hart. Another 2-1/2 stars; I had to read the Amazon synopsis to remember it, even though I read it last week. The 13-yo protagonist was not believable to me. The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston. Started it, decided I didn't want to read a novel whose narrator is such a loser. But it did seem entertaining; I may try this one again.
There you have it. Now it is time to stop writing about books and go read them*. TTFN!
* For those of you at home keeping score, we have been on vacation for ~3 weeks and have 1 week left. I brought along 18 books and have read 5. What is wrong with this picture?
"A music-industry speaker at an American Chamber of Commerce event in
Stockholm waxed enthusiastic about child porn, because it serves as the
perfect excuse for network censorship, and once you've got a child-porn
filter, you can censor anything:
'Child pornography is great,' the speaker at the podium declared
enthusiastically. 'It is great because politicians understand child
pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start
blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start
blocking file sharing sites.'
The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in
Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title 'Sweden -- A Safe Haven for
Pirates?'. The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy
Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry
associations, like IFPI and others...
'One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close
cooperation with IFPI* and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on
the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an
issue they understand,' Johan Schlüter said with a grin, his whole
being radiating pride and enthusiasm from the podium."
* IFPI = International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. From their website:
"IFPI represents the recording industry worldwide, with a membership
comprising some 1400 record companies in 66 countries and affiliated
industry associations in 45 countries. IFPI's
mission is to promote the value of recorded music, safeguard the rights
of record producers
and expand the commercial uses of recorded music in
all markets where its members operate."
* * * * *
I just finished reading this book. It was absolutely fascinating -- I read until 2 a.m. two nights in a row because I was so enthralled.
Markopolos was a quant -- a numbers guy in the securities industry -- who figured out after five minutes analysis (5 minutes!) in 1999 that Bernard Madoff was a fraud, either doing a type of trading that is illegal or, more likely, running a Ponzi scheme. Markpolos's boss at the investment firm where he worked wanted him to reverse engineer Madoff's trading strategy so they could duplicate it. They were losing clients to Madoff and wanted to be able to compete with him.
From Amazon/Publisher's Weekly:
"Markopolos, the whistleblower who filed five unheeded complaints against
Ponzi king Bernie Madoff over nine years, has produced an astonishing
true-life whodunit set amidst the personalities, plots, and
international intrigue of Wall Street. Having collected damning
information on money manager Madoff -- the respected co-founder of NASDAQ
who ran the largest financial scam in history -- since 1999, Markopolos's
work as a chartered financial analyst and certified fraud examiner,
aided by an industry journalist and two colleagues from his days as a
derivatives portfolio manager, lays bare the Security and Exchange
Commission (SEC) as a tragically inept regulating agency that 'didn't
give a rat's ass about protecting investors,' and seemed to consider
Madoff 'just another guy cutting some corners.' Realizing he had not one
but two powerful opponents -- 'Madoff and this non-functioning
agency' -- Markopolos refused to give up, despite fearing for his life and
his family; accordingly, he transmits his team's determination and
fascination in contagious detail. The hows and whys of Madoff's eventual
arrest, Markopolos's subsequent appearances before Congress, and the
carnival of press coverage makes a satisfying conclusion to this strange
epic; Markopolos also includes complete documentation of his formal
submissions to the SEC, plus his recommendations for much-needed reform
at the agency."
Part of my fascination with this story stems from my professional history. I was an auditor for three years and by sheer chance ended up specializing in the securities industry. After that I spent seven years at a regional financial services firm. This was back in the 1980s and things have changed since then, but enough has remained the same that I recognized the industry I was acquainted with. Plus, after I had finished the book, I realized that a number of my tax clients probably had invested for years in one of the funds that had >$1 billion *invested* with Madoff; the head of that fund committed suicide two weeks after Madoff was arrested.
If you have any interest in the world of finance and/or fraud and/or government regulation -- or you just like a good thriller -- you should read this book.
* * * * *
This video brought back memories. Back in about 1987, when #1 Son was 2-1/2, he loved Labyrinth. He must have watched it 50 or 100 times. Srsly.
He would put on a pair of tall black dress winter boots with 1" heels that I had then (the boots were knee-high on me; on him they came up to his crotch) and carry some kind of stick to be a scepter/wand, just like The Goblin King. He would stand in front of the TV and [attempt to] sing along with "the baby song", all the while wiggling his butt and dancing back and forth in an imitation of TGK. I especially liked it when he would yell "Quiet!" at the goblins, right along with David Bowie.
Smokey sent this YouTube video to #1. We are waiting to hear if he remembers anything of those days.
* * * * *
Speaking of sons, #2 Son is, even as I type, hosting the No-Hater Rolling Dance Super Bike Mega Party 2010.0. Perhaps you remember the N-HRDSBMP2K9? Apparently that one was such a success that he is repeating it.
As you can see in the photos in the linked post, one Saturday night in last October he and about 20 others rode their bikes together through light rain and partied and danced (under bridges, where it was dry) until the wee hours. This time? As of some time last week there were already 248 people signed up to attend.
He got a parade permit from the City of Minneapolis, just in case.
* * * * *
On the knitting front, my multicolored striped top-down raglan now has a yoke, two sleeves, and a few -- say, 3 -- inches of body. I will definitely have it ready to wear by next winter. I hope to be able to wear it if necessary when we go camping near Glacier National Park in June.
Currently, I also have the second sock of two different pairs OTN and am having great fun making log cabin felted potholders for the Friends of the Polk County Libraries to sell this summer. I also have committed to at least one hat for a Relay for Life in fund raiser in June. Progress on all projects is being documented photographically. Stay tuned.
That, my friends, is today's Saturday sky as viewed through my OPEN sunroof today. Seeing a blue sky through an open sunroof -- in February -- may not be a big deal in California or Arizona or Texas or Alabama (I'm looking at you, Yarnhog and Cookie and Squish and Carrie and Elizabeth) but it is cause for great rejoicing here in northern Wisconsin. We still have 100% snow cover (except for roads and sidewalks that have been cleared) but the sun was warm enough today to go parka-less. Yee-haw, yew betcha!
* * * * *
Have you read Driftless by David Rhodes? He is a Wisconsin author, and I heard him speak today in a nearby city as the kick-off event for that community's Big Read.
I had just finished the book last weekend, having followed the recommendation of someone in my book club, then got an email on Tuesday announcing today's author event. Serendipity scores!
I loved this book. Great story, captivating characters, excellent writing. The further I got in the book the more it became evident to me that this author had thought about things. A lot. It seemed that every other sentence had something in it that demanded me to put the book down and spend the next day mentally chewing on it.
The author published a couple books years ago, then spent the last 20 years on a wheelchair as the result of an accident. He said today that it took him ten years to write Driftless. Yep, he thought a lot.
Anywho, I recommend the book. If you read it, let me know what you think.
The event today was held at the St. Croix National Scenic River Visitor Center. The visitors center is a beautiful newish building near downtown and right next to the river and surrounded by native plantings.
There was a good turnout for the event.
The author was low-key and friendly.
And, as always, the hand-knits made a good showing.
I finished this book last night. The author describes the neurological bases of our decision-making processes. There is the prefrontal cortex, which is the rational, analytic bit, and then there are the emotional bits, whose names I don't remember except for the amygdala. All the bits interact, they argue, sometimes they help us make the best decision, sometimes not. But the whole thing was utterly fascinating to me.
A couple years ago I read Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals About Morality. (Confession: I didn't finish the book; it was a tougher read than the one I just finished.) Both of these books present recent research showing how brain physiology relates to behavior. I'm oversimplifying, of course, but you get the idea. The effect of both books is to, once again, make one reflect on the relationship between scientific knowledge and religious and moral beliefs.
Sixty dollars is what I get paid for attending a committee meeting. Today was the second day of testimony in the hearing. Tomorrow will probably be the rest of the testimony, and Friday the committee will deliberate and decide. As secretary of the committee I will write up the minutes of that meeting and document our decision. Whatever that is.
Sixty dollars is really not much, but it keeps this elected official stuff from feeling entirely like volunteer work. I should have put my checks into a special account and dedicated it to a special purpose. Maybe next year.
Tonight, though, is Fun Night. We have a free dinner and overnight stay at the Native American-run casino near us. The hearing session today adjourned unexpectedly early, at 2:30 instead of 5:00, so Smokey and I were able to drive to the casino a couple hours earlier than we expected.
Right now he is off somewhere, presumably feeding the slot machines, and I am taking advantage of the free wireless internet. In an hour or so he will come fetch me for dinner, after which he will return to the slots and I will return to this comfortable room to enjoy knitting, cable TV (we do not have that at home), The Graveyard Book on my iPod, and Lolita in the paperback analog version. It will be an exciting and satisfying evening for all.
Let me tell you a little bit about Lolita. I am trying, bit by bit, to at least attempt to read all the books that are classics, or famous, or that for some reason I feel that I should have read. I cannot remember now why I clicked on Lolita in the library catalog to request it, but I am enjoying it. Surprisingly, it is funny! There are plot twists that make me laugh at their irony or incongruity.
Edgar Humbert Humbert is an admitted pedophile who lusts after pre-pubescent nymphets. But not all pre-pubescent nymphets; he is only attracted to the ones in whom he senses a certain evil, a certain seductive allure. If you are old enough to remember 1981, think of Brooke Shields in that infamous Calvin Klein ad. That kind of nymphet.
So after various escapades and a failed marriage and some lightly touched-upon interludes in sanataria, EHH comes to America. He takes a room in the house of a widow who just happens to have a 12-yo daughter, Dolores. He lusts after Dolores, whom her mother calls Lo. EHH transforms that name into Lolita and devises a brilliant plan: he will marry the widow, who lusts for him, in order to be near Lo. However, Lo acts suggestive and seductive around him, and her mother is jealous. After the wedding she sends Lo off to summer camp. EHH is heartbroken but tells himself he can wait until fall when she returns from camp.
Then the mother tells him that she is going to send Lo directly from summer camp to a boarding school, from whence Lo will eventually go directly to college! EHH is devastated.
He contemplates murdering the mother but cannot bring himself to do so.
She snoops in his desk and finds his diary, in which he has written of his feelings for Lo. Wife is disgusted, tells him she will not allow him ever to see Lo again, yada yada. She is writing letters, presumably telling her friends or relatives of his despicable character and desires, but when she leaves the house to mail the letters she is hit by a car and killed.
Whee! thinks EHH. She's gone! Lo is mine!
He persuades the various friends and neighbors and officials not to contact Lo at summer camp with the tragic news. Once he has taken care of any necessary funeral arrangements, he will drive there to tell her himself.
All goes as to plan. He picks her up from summer camp, telling her that her mother is sick, in a hospital, and will need an operation. Lo is fairly indifferent to this, as she and her mother fought most of the time anyway. Eventually he tells her that her mother is dead. No reaction.
EHH and Lo travel the US for a year. He drugs her so he can feel her up at night (he considers himself honorable because he makes no attempt at penetration.) She seduces him, he discovers he is not her first lover, but he continues to lust for her. Although EHH now has his heart's (and other bodily parts') desire, she turns out to be not nearly as much *fun* as he had expected. She is moody. She is petulant. She is childish. She is greedy. She is manipulative.
The year of traveling reminded me so much of The Ransom of Red Chief, the short story by Mark Twain [edited to correct] O. Henry, that it made me laugh out loud. I'm only a little over halfway through the book, so I can only imagine (actually, I cannot imagine) what will happen next.
The book is so different than what I expected. When I finish it I must re-read part of Reading Lolita in Tehran so that I can understand what they are talking about.
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Smokey just walked in. Time for dinner. He is $102 ahead right now. Yay for the luck of The Bear!
My book group read this in September. Unfortunately, the discussion was just a couple days after my ankle surgery so I missed it. I had read about half the book when I put it aside after the ankle break and found it intriguing. Then it got buried under the slew of mysteries and other brain candy that I read during my convalescence, but I pulled it out a couple nights ago. I was a little leery of trying to pick up a book I had dropped over a month ago, but as soon as I read a paragraph I was completely immersed in it again.
A plot summary from Publishers Weekly, via Amazon.com:
When Georgette George and Ann Drayton meet in 1968 as freshmen
roommates at Barnard College, Georgette marvels that her privileged,
brilliant roommate envies Georgette's rough, impoverished childhood.
Through the vehicle of this fascinating friendship, Nunez's
sophisticated new novel (after For Rouenna) explores the dark
side of the countercultural idealism that swept the country in the
1960s. Hyperbolic even for the times, Ann's passionate commitment to
her beliefs—unwavering despite the resentment from those she tries to
help—haunts Georgette, the novel's narrator, long after the women's
lives diverge. In 1976, Ann lands in prison for shooting and killing a
policeman in a misguided attempt to rescue her activist black boyfriend
from a confrontation. The novel's generous structure also gracefully
encompasses the story of Georgette's more conventional adult life in
New York (she becomes a magazine editor, marries, and bears two
children), plus that of Georgette's runaway junkie sister. Nunez
reveals Ann's life in prison via a moving essay by one of her fellow
inmates. By the end of this novel—propelled by rich, almost scholarly
prose—all the parts come together to capture the violent idealism of
the times while illuminating a moving truth about human nature.
I remember the sixties, although I was slightly too young and way too rural to really partake of them until the seventies. This book does a remarkable job of recreating certain of the ethos and conflicts of the period, plus it has fascinating characters. I recommend it.
"I tell my sons, 'When you bring a
girl home, I don't care about her family background. I don't care what
colour she is, or what she wants to be... just don't bring me a girl
who peers warily at her plate and says, "What's in this?".' "
* * * * * One of the duties of being a mother of a kid who lives faraway is the packing/repacking and shipping of stuff.
This duty also includes removing any hazmat from the shipment.
* * * * *
My newest wallpaper, featuring a hanging basket from my deck.
* * * * *
"You might very well think that. I could not possibly comment."
-- from House of Cards / To Play the King / The Final Cut.
Awhile back I included that quote in a blog post and it got me to remembering the source, this BBC miniseries. A quick trip to the library's online catalog and the 3-CD set was on its way to my house. I watched it last week whilst recuperating from that little bout of food poisoning.
It was every bit as good as I remembered. Ian Richardson plays the most deliciously scheming, malevolent, downright evil politician one can imagine in 20th century politics. Hitler could have taken lessons from this guy. I recommend it highly to anyone looking for something to watch this summer while the TV plays reruns and other assorted crappe.
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This business of quoting from stuff I have watched or read can have unanticipated consequences. When I said, Winter is coming, I of course had to go check my reference to be sure I had the title right. Lo and behold, I find that book 5 of the series comes out in September! Can I get a w00t?!
I am speaking of the epic The Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. It is a fantasy series, but unlike many books of that genre, these have engaging, fully-developed characters. The series is great. I listened to the audio books of #1 through #4 a couple-three years ago and was completely captivated. After browsing the plotlines again at Amazon I find I need to refresh my memory before I listen/read #5. Whee! My summer listening has just been decided!
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After knitting six pairs of woolly socks since the end of tax season, I think I am ready to move on. I still have 1-1/2 socks to finish before I can truthfully say I knit six full pairs, but still. When those little details are cleaned up I am on to other game. Summer has finally arrived here in the Great North, complete with 80° temps, humidity, and swarms of mosquitoes so thick in the evening that it is problematic to open one's mouth to inhale. The onset of those all-too-brief weeks of balmy weather has inspired me to attempt my worsted-weight bamboo version of the Summer Raglan from More Big Girl Knits.
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 (or more) pages. Stories that Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century, edited by Carl Jensen, Ph.D.
2. Open the book to page 123 and find the 5th sentence. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year. (An excerpt from Silent Springby Rachel Carson)
3. Post the next 3 sentences. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streans which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay.
Bold the titles you’ve read.Italicize the titles you own but haven’t read.Strike out the ones you couldn't finish/stand. Put an * next to the books you've read more than once.
1. The God of Small Things 2. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present (Too depressing to finish; I can read about horrible stuff in fiction, but in non-fiction it upsets me. Go figger.) 3. Cryptonomicon 4. Neverwhere 5. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell 6. Anna Karenina 7. Crime and Punishment 8. Catch-22* 9. One Hundred Years of Solitude 10. Wuthering Heights 11. The Silmarillion 12. Life of Pi* 13. The Name of the Rose 14. Don Quixote 15. Moby Dick 16. Ulysses 17. The Odyssey 18. Pride and Prejudice 19. Jane Eyre 20. A Tale of Two Cities 21. The Brothers Karamazov 22. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies 23. War and Peace 24. Vanity Fair 25. The Time Traveler’s Wife 26. The Iliad 27. Emma 28. The Blind Assassin 29. The Kite Runner 30. Mrs. Dalloway 31. Great Expectations 32. American Gods 33. Atlas Shrugged (Didn't everyone read Ayn Rand as a teenager?) 34. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a Memoir in Books (This one inspired me to read some Henry James. I'm in the middle of Portrait of a Lady 35. Memoirs of a Geisha 36. Middlesex 37. Quicksilver (Never heard of it.) 38. Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West 39. The Canterbury Tales (And I can still recite the opening lines. In middle English. Such a worthless talent.) 40. The Historian 41. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 42. Love in the Time of Cholera 43. Brave New World 44. The Fountainhead (More Ayn Rand.) 45. Foucault’s Pendulum 46. Middlemarch 47. Frankenstein 48. The Count of Monte Cristo 49. Dracula 50. A Clockwork Orange 51. Anansi Boys 52. The Once and Future King 53. The Grapes of Wrath 54. The Poisonwood Bible 55. 1984* 56. Angels & Demons (No Dan Brown for me ever again. His special talent seems to be seeing how many cliffhangers he can cram into one book.) 57. The Inferno 58. The Satanic Verses (#1 son read it for a world lit independent study course in high school and loved it. Me, not so much,) 59. Sense and Sensibility 60. The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde is enormously witty and entertaining. Must read more of his work.) 61. Mansfield Park 62. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 63. To the Lighthouse (Never heard of it.) 64. Tess of the D’Urbervilles 65. Oliver Twist 66. Gulliver’s Travels 67. Les Misérables 68. The Corrections 69. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay 70. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time* (Loved this book.) 71. Dune 72. The Prince 73. The Sound and the Fury 74. Angela’s Ashes 75. A Confederacy of Dunces (I slogged through the whole thing. What a waste of time. Pulitzer? Genius? Not imho...) 76. A Short History of Nearly Everything (Really only natural history and physics and maybe chemistry. Nothing about literature or psychology or economics. But fun anyway.) 77. Dubliners 78. The Unbearable Lightness of Being 79. Beloved 80. Slaughterhouse-Five* 81. The Scarlet Letter 82. Eats, Shoots & Leaves 83. The Mists of Avalon 84. Oryx and Crake (My note to myself after reading this book: No more Margaret Atwood for me.) 85. Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed 86. Cloud Atlas (Never heard of it.) 87. The Confusion (Ditto.) 88. Lolita 89. Persuasion 90. Northanger Abbey 91. The Catcher in the Rye* 92. On the Road 93. The Hunchback of Notre Dame 94. Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything 95. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values 96. The Aeneid 97. Watership Down* 98. Gravity’s Rainbow 99. The Hobbit* 100. White Teeth 101. Treasure Island 102. David Copperfield 103. The Three Musketeers right now.)
I love lists like this because I read so much and because I am so disgustingly competitive. But I didn't compare my % read (57.3%) to Carrie's; that would be too rude, even for me, after taking the list from her blog. Thanks, Carrie!
Finished a book yesterday, The Exception. Excellent. Disturbing. Nasty. Still thinking about it. Go read about it here, the plot description is better than I could do. The depiction of evil and its effects in everyday life is chilling.
Before that, I read Invisible Prey by my favorite author. The Prey novels are soooo good -- intelligent and clever and absorbing. Besides which, Lucas Davenport so rocks! I like the Kidd novels, too, almost as much. Last year Sandford tried his hand at a political thriller. Not to put too fine a point on it, it sucked. Big-time. Hard to believe that someone who writes the best police procedurals/thrillers ever can write such a dud in a slightly different genre. Go figger.
Query for any other Prey readers out there: when, not if, one or more of these is made into a movie, who do you see playing Lucas? My pick is Ed Harris, who doesn't fit the physical description of Lucas at all but somehow seems perfect to me. Another internet friend said she always pictures Nick Mancuso; physically right, although I had to google a bit before I knew who he was.
WTF? I just checked IMDb to see if there was perhaps a movie already out there or in the works, and I found this. I'm sorry. Lucas is NOT black, especially in MN.
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Ya know what this is?
This is what 270 worsted-weight stitches on a 32" circ look like. It's Red Scarf #2, a lengthwise-knit scarf. I like to think it looks a bit like chocolate-covered cherries. Maybe I'll include some in the package.
