Thousands Attend Global Warming protest

"It was too unbelievable"

Republicans stick together and refuse to support Obama's stimulus bill.

They're trying to sneak a Clintonesque wish list past Congress and it didn't work. Maybe those emails to our representatives actually worked. Maybe the Republicans are growing a spine. Maybe Obama's appointment of the Prince of Darkness was just what the conservatives needed.

Let's hope so. Somebody has to lead us out of this quagmire and it's not going to be The One.

via The Daily Beast



Listen to the moonbat from ."Americans United for Change," a union-backed group running ads urging Republicans to support the$819 billion stimulus bill, discuss:

"Neil, I don't have enough information about what that program is..." So you're supporting a bill and you don't even know what's in it? Oh wait - a fish barrier - maybe it's a dam! Yeah, that's the ticket! A Dam! We need people to build more dams, there you got - there's the economic stimulus."

Still no word on the honeybee insurance

"Can't we get anyone better?"

The blatant hyposcrisy of
this astonishes me. Do I even need to spell it out? Confirming a man who cheated on his taxes as head of Treasury? What alternate universe are we now living in?

Do you think you could pull this with the IRS ("Sorry, I forgot; I was careless") and get away with it? Do you think he would have ever paid those taxes had he not been up for this cabinet post?

God, what a sorry state of affairs.

An Interview, Part Two

Sorry, I got distracted and forgot to finish Norma's interview:

1. What are you most looking forward to when you are able to retire?

I was just thinking about this today. While I love my job and the people I work with, it will be such a relief to feel I am not being judged constantly. Every decision, every action, every word out of my mouth, every email, every opinion, is fair game for eye rolling and second guessing. I will not have to justify anything to anyone but myself. And that's quite enough.

2. If you had $1,000,000, what would you do with it?

I'd see that my extended family was okay, as much as possible. Then I'd find a very savvy financial advisor (after much research) and invest the rest for my retirement. I might hold out a little for a nice vacation. Charity begins at home.

3. If you could re-do one thing in your life, what would it be?

I'd be smarter with money.

4. What living famous person would you most like to have as a dinner guest, and why? What would you serve?

I think I'll go with Norma's choice - Laura Bush, and she can bring George. I'd love to talk to Laura, since she is/was also a librarian. I'd like to know how it was for her as a politician's wife, since she was certainly not brought up to that. I'd love to hear George Bush's side of things, aside from just talking one on one with a former President who lived through and got us through such tumultuous times. I'd like to know how he was able to act with such class when he was so viciously maligned. I'd like to know what he really thinks Obama will do as President.

That's a total of five, including the previously answered question.

Now, if you’d like to answer interview questions:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick what they will be or I‘ll send this one.)
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Clark Howard Endorses....the Library!

My Interview

"What is it about blogging that keeps you at it?"
Norma at Collecting My Thoughts has posed this question to me. Here is my answer:

I sometimes ask myself this question. I feel as if I'm talking to myself most of the time. The number of blogs out there are mind boggling, and even more so are the ones that "make it" - become famous, income producing enterprises. My humble efforts will never reach that level.

In November I became so depressed that I deleted my first blog and determined I would never blog again! The Internet wept. But I couldn't stay away. I missed the interaction, however slight it is.

So I cranked up and started all over.

One very practical reason I started this particular blog was to keep up with what I am reading, to think more deeply about what I read, what I got out of the book, why it resonated with me.

Another is that I use blog posting to try and improve my writing skills. I truly enjoy writing but I think I'm pretty mediocre. I use this opportunity to hone those skills, force myself to improve my vocabulary and write with precision.

Another is to force myself to think and express myself clearly and freely. Blogging gives me the option of writing and editing over and over until I get it the way I want it. I find i'm less inhibited online (which can be good and bad).

Last, I hoped that the blog would be interesting enough to encourage people to read it and comment. It thrills me to get comments!

It still stuns me when I think about the folks I have meet whom I would have never known existed otherwise. Over the holidays, I met one of my blogging buddies and it was a very special moment. I had coffee with her, her husband and adorable little boy. There's another person I can call "friend" whom without the Internet would have never met. I think that's pretty special.

Geting to know and keeping in touch with people like
Norma, a fellow librarian and smart thinking person who is about my age (I'm assuming); and Beth, a fellow quilter, mother, and aspiring writer is one of the biggest reasons I keep hacking away, even though only 2 or 3 people regularly visit this humble blog.

I'll never be The Manolo or

Althouse or Pioneer Woman - but I guess I feel I have something to say and a need to say it, so thank goodness for Blogger.

Tuesday Teaser

"Edith started fingering through the medium's hair. It was warm and silky to the touch."

~~Hell House by Richard Matheson (Viking Press, 1971; Tor, 1999), p. 85.

Teaser Tuesdays are hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading

Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller, narrated by Lisette Lecat.
Recorded Books, 2002. 9 discs.

I chose this audiobook because I love Lisette Lecat's narration. I have listened to all of the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency audios, which she narrated in her beautifully expressive voice. I wasn't disappointed with the story, either.

Fuller tells the story of her childhood spent first in Rhodesia, where the family moved when she was two, then Malawi and Zambia. The Fullers were not wealthy, in fact, seemed on the edge of poverty. They lived a hardscrabble, unconventional existance. Her memoir is honest, unsentimental, and unflinching, told with humor and love.

Fuller has wonderfully descriptive passages of life in Africa. For example, here's a particularly vivid passage:

The heat in the kitchen is breath-sucking. There are two small windows at either end of the huge tacked-together room, and one stable door, which leads off to the back veranda where the diaryman (surrounded by a halo of flies) labors over the milk churh (milk spits into buckets, cream chugs into a jug; both are in danger of going off before they can reach refrigeration). The fridges, unable to compete with the heat, lead (they bleed, actually: thin watered down blood from defrosting chunks of cow) and add a fusty-smelling steam to the atmosphere. The aroma here is defrosting flesh, soon-to-be-off milk, sweating butter, and the always present salty-meat-old-vegetable effuvium of the dogs' stew toiling away on the stove.

And yet, in spite of this:

...a maid with a charcoal iron sweats over piles of clothes. She sprinkles water onto the back of her neck and onto the clothes ad slams the charcoal iron down onto the table where her ironing lies. Her sweat sprinkles the cloth along with the specks of water, and singes up with the steam. The crescent-shaped air vents in the iron glow fiercely red with fresh coals. The clothes are ironed to paper in the heat and crisp, starched with sweat.

I reminded me of how my mother would fire up the stove, even on a sweltering summer day to cook dinner. Georgia summers don't compare with African ones, I'm sure, but it goes to show. We would beg her to fix sandwiches or something that didn't require four burners and an oven but she wouldn't have it.

At first, Fuller's mother seemed harsh with her daughter but after all, this was Africa: no room for coddling. Alexandra grew up able to cope with numerous aggravations and hardships that most of us would have run from. Fleas, mosquitoes, snakes, the heat, the drought, the rains, the mud...no thanks!

I thoroughly enjoyed this audio. I could listen to Lecat's narration all day.

If you haven't heard her renditions of McCall Smith's series, please give them a try.

Teaser Tuesday

"He enjoyed Mrs. Bagchi's company, knowing that at the end of a few weeks she would board a separate plane and disappear. But after Italy he'd begun thinking of her, looking forward to receiving her e-mails, checking his computer five or six times a day."

~~Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, p. 9.


Teaser Tuesdays are hosted by Ms. B at Should Be Reading

The One Minute Writer Daily Prompt

The One Minute WRiter Daily Prompt: Photo.

My mother's family was almost obsessive about taking photos, so we have many moments immortalized. However, I do wish I had a more photos of my father's family. We did not know his family very well. His mother died when he was 3 months old, and there are no photos of him as a child.

Joan Crawford in Sudden Fear

Joan Crawford was surely one of the most formidable movie stars of her time.

Wathing the classic noir film, Sudden Fear (1952) (which was nominated for four oscars: Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design) all I could think was: "Work it, girl!" Those eyebrows! Those lips! Someone points out that there were numerous shots of Crawford's shoes and ankles in this film. And I didn't quite get (first time anyway) that whole white scarf routine - I'll have to watch it again.

The film costars Jack Palance, one of the great character actors. He's terrificly menacing in this movie, preying on Joan's vulnerable, woman-of-a-certain-age character.


Here's a great shot of the two stars, Joan Crawford at her most beautiful.

Both stars are pretty intense - wonder how they got along?

And, get a load of a really young Mike Conners as Junior Kearney.

Audiobooks Challenge #1

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris.

Screamingly funny. A good antidote to the world's woes. I laughted until I cried. Warning, do not listen to this in your car while driving!

Some people might be offended by Sedaris but I'm sorry, I think he's hysterical. These essays are primarily about his very quirky and downright weird family members. Funniest: brother Paul's wedding.

Jhumpa Lahiri

I recently conducted a book review of Lahiri's short story collections, Unaccustomed Earth and Interpreter of Maladies. No one captures the anguish of the human condition than Lahiri. Her work certainly encompasses the struggle of Indian immigrants in America who try to hold on to their own culture while blending into their adopted American one. The problem is compounded if you throw in a few kids who are raised in America with it's seemingly limitless social freedoms, but whose parents want them to respect the more reserved, old-fashioned Indian way.

However, a deeper theme runs through her stories: the basic condition of a lack of human understanding. In "A Temporary Matter" a couple drifts apart after their infant is stillborn; their shared grief is a wedge between them. In the title story in Unaccustomed Earth, a story told from both the daughter's and father's point of view, Ruma struggles with whether to ask her father to live with her family after her mother's death while the father keeps his new relationship a secret from his daughter.

Told with elegance and simplicity, Lahiri opens up the human soul to us. I do not feel sad after reading these stories, but resigned to the fact that as humans we will always (usually) misunderstand each other and wonder, do we ever really connect?

(.Unaccustomed Earth is one of my Notable Books Challenge selections

One Minute Writer

The One Minute Writer. Today's prompt: aliens

These aliens are polite and courteous. They think before they speak. They do not cut people off on the highway. They do not break in line. They say please and thank you. The dress conservatively, not showing butt cracks or navels or other ugly body parts. They use correct grammer and punctuation. They will have a difficult time infiltrating our society because they will be so conspicuous.

Memories of 2008

Time to get ready for work but here's a link I can't get enough of. The music is haunting as are the images. TCM does it every year:

Blog Improvement Project

Sounds like a good idea - take a year to learn more about blogging & make your blog a better place to be. So I signed up for 2009 Blog Improvement Project at Sophisticated Dorkiness (what a terrific name). Not so much a challenge as a project with bi-monthly activities to improve your blog.

I'd just like to get more traffic and more comments. I have no aspirations to make any mone from this enterprise. It's always been a means of self-expression; a way to improve my writing skills, and most importantly, to connect with people I'd never know otherwise. Thus, the desire to make it interesting enough that people want to participate.

I'm not courageous enough to do anything very controversial. The few times that I have unknowlingly done so and gotten angry comments, it's rattled me to my core. I may read the stuff but I'm not wired to handle it personally.

This should be interesting and educational. Thanks to Kim for hosting this undertaking!