Horizontal Snow

Once, when I was in New York for the Book Prize announcement, I decided to stay in my hotel room for a morning.  I could see a snow storm out of my window.  The snow was blowing horizontally down the street.  This was too strange for a California Girl.  (That is, by the way, my name in Kansas.  I spent the whole time there experiencing weather I'd never seen before.  Carina said, "Come on, California Girl" as I carefully walked down a frozen driveway.)

Today Eric and I went to the Barnes and Noble to buy books with the generous gift cards given us by the Clancys.  We drove into the outdoor parking area in windy, but clear weather.  As we approached a parking place we were looking at a grey/white cloud blowing toward us.  Then we were pelted by horizontal snow.  It was blowing so hard I almost couldn't get out of the car.  I asked Eric if we could just stay in the car and let it blow past us.  But we couldn't see an end to it.  It was exhilarating walking to the store.  

I'm currently reading Outliers.  That's a very good book.  I'll write more about it when I finish in a few weeks (love paper books and the slowness of my reading.)  I bought two books - Loving Frank, about Frank Lloyd Wright and one of his wives, and Shadow Country, the winner of the National Book Prize.  I have several friends who have recommended the Wright book.  I seem to recall that the docent at Taliesin didn't like it, but she was in love with Frank herself.  This is what was written about Shadow Country when it won the prize:

Shadow Country is an epic of American rise and descent—poetic, mythic, devastating. From his Everglades trilogy Peter Matthiessen has coaxed a masterpiece, a wrenching story of familial, racial and environmental degradation stretching from the Civil War to the Great Depression. His E.J. Watson emerges through a dazzling array of voices as a singular figure in our national literature, the looming personification of manifest destiny within the dark reaches of our history.

Doesn't that sound interesting?  But I can only read one paper book at a time.  Outliers is an easy and interesting read.  Maybe it won't take that long to finish.

Christmas 2008

As I mentioned before, we drove from Virginia to Kansas for Christmas. One of the highlights was seeing the St. Louis Arch.  I'd seen it once before.  That was 43 years ago.  The arch is the same, so is the Mississippi.  The city seems to have grown up around it, though.  

Another highlight was the snow.  The

 first day in Kansas was slippery.  It 

snowed the night before Christmas. The snow was a little better than ice.  I felt like more like Peggy Fleming with the ice than I would like.  The mutt face on the right is Bailey.  She was my companion in the car.  Katie was in charge of walking her and giving her water and, well, taking care of her.  My job was to pet her.  We became fast friends.  She is now sleeping in my room.  Strange.

Life at the Clancys was great.  Mostly I cooked.  But Cindy was a cookie making storm.  She,

 Carina and Cael are making stained glass cookies.  Cael and his great-grandmother are helping.  


They also made haystacks, fudge and lemon cookies.  There were about 4 people in the house who should really have been allowed to eat any of that, but we ate a lot of them before we left.  The

dogs helped.  May I just say that using Google Chrome is not very compatible with Google's Blogspot?  I had a very cute picture of Carina up there and it kept getting deleted.  She has a lovely smile as well as a nice arm.  You will just have to believe me.

Carina and Sean have a dog named

 Henry who has long enough legs to see every new cookie added and he does not have any sense in knowing that they might be bad for him.  Why should he be different from the rest of us.  This is Henry with Caitlin and Eric.  

Sean's sister and her boyfriend swapped Christmas outfits with them. This is their elf clothes.   

I didn't get any pictures of my favorite thing to do.  Cael wanted to listen to my iPod ear buds, so I played Riki Tiki Tavi for him.  But it is hard for a 2.5 year old to just listen to a book, no pictures.  So I found the book on YouTube and we watched it about 5 times.  He loved that book.  It was more like watching a three part cartoon, but you could hear Kipling in there every now and again.  

Of course, my ear buds were out because I was listening to two books. I read The Private Patient, which was an Adam Dagliesh mystery and American Lion, an Andrew Jackson mystery.   Both were well-written.  I found PD James' writing a little more satisfying than Meacham's.  American Lion seemed a little stuck in the soap opera of the day.  I suppose that's because Jackson was stuck in that soap opera.  One of his cabinet members was with a woman before her husband died.  The women of the capital shunned her, but Jackson was a little sensitive about the topic.  His relationship with his beloved Rachel was probably consummated before her divorce.  Oh well.  We would never get all caught up in irrelevant things today, would we?  It seemed to take a lot of his energy and the focus of the book.  Then there was his unfortunate method of dealing with the Native American "issue."  I really wanted to like this guy, but many of his actions made that difficult.  Much better to like the murdered Private Patient.  She had her scar fixed at a private hospital, but did not live to see a scarless face.  I'm not spoiling anything, this is mentioned from the beginning.  She seemed to be very serene when she died, though.  Maybe if the early America of Andrew Jackson was just a little more serene.  

47

We are spending Christmas in snowy Kansas with Sean, Carina and Cael.  All grandparents and great-grandparents will be here too.  One of the exciting moments for me was spending the night in Kentucky on the way to Kansas.  This is my 47th state on the way to visiting all 50 states. Somewhere along the line, someone suggested they didn't count if you don't sleep in them.  That's pretty rude, changing the rules along the way.  I think there are only four that I haven't slept in that I have been in, so I'm not going to worry about them.  I just have Arkansas, New Hampshire and Vermont left.  Considering how cold it is around here, I think I'll wait until spring to visit New England.

   
Riding in a car gives you a lot of time to read.  1421 was very interesting.  The author appears to be an old British Navy submariner who got a bee in his bonnet about where the maps came from that European explorers used on their voyages of "discovery."  They refer to the maps often, so it is known that they existed before these guys felt one gust of wind in their sails.  The book is like a proof of the thesis.  He says something like, "It was said that this, this and this happened.  Well, we need to find proof of that."  And off he goes to some far off country looking for skeletons of ships or pottery or Chinese genes in the natives of the country.  The writing is very clear.  The proofs are believable. It was fun going on this voyage of discovery with Menzies.  And thereby reliving the voyages of those Chinese in their huge junks.

Even more enjoyable was listening to Sarah Vowell read her Wordy Shipmates. My sister was put off by her voice at first and I could certainly understand why.  Whine, whine, whine.  I'm sure she didn't mean to sound like a petulant 13 year old.  But she does.  Eventually you get used to it. Mixed in with her whines are amusing smart-ass comments and more than a little sarcasm.  Now, I really like that.  Not only that, she has other people reading the writing of  various Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  Every now and then she throws in more modern references, like Ronald Reagan.  Reagan references John Winthrope's speech about the "city on the hill."  Reagan made it shiny and talked about it all the time, referring to the United States as a beacon to all those poor beknighted countries around the world.  Ms. Vowell is a little sceptical about adding shiny and the whole beacon thing.  I highly recommend this book to give one a better understanding of the Puritans and the period.     

I Can't Do It

I have been trying to read The Village for a while.  It doesn't help that it is paper.  We all know that I am a slow reader of paper things.  But this one is too hard.  For some reason I have been stuck in reading Viet Nam War memoirs.  When Tobias Wolff wrote about his experiences in Nam, he was more than a little self-deprecating.  His time in his village was an attempt to stay out of the line of fire.  That sounds like a great idea to me.  

Bing West's platoon got into the middle of everything.  His village was on top of a Viet Cong ant hill. I've just finished a chapter where many of the men were killed in a very daring VC attack.  No one can be trusted.  Nothing is light-hearted.  This is dirty, deadly war.  OK, I got it.  It is well written.  If it were not, I'd have stopped long ago.  

You have to understand that I have never seen a movie about Viet Nam.  I didn't want to see Platoon or Full Metal Jacket or The Killing Fields.  I didn't have to see it to know; I had friends who were killed and a husband who could not sleep at night without the radio on, he had to have noise to sleep.  Today I was loading my Ipod with music.  That's something new for me, but I have an 8 gb Ipod now, so there is room for music.  I always put Adagio for Strings on every computer I own, so I was looking for it for this download.  In the search, I found a spot on YouTube called Platoon Music Video.  It plays the full Adagio with scenes from Platoon.  That did it.  I'll keep the music, but I've had enough of that war.  Sorry, Bing, your book is good, but 2.5 books about Viet Nam is enough.

Escape

Why would a writer of minor courtroom dramas have a ghost writer?  I don't know Robert Tanenbaum from a bum on the street.  I can imagine Stephen King using a ghost writer; he is very well known and extremely prolific.  How does he write all that stuff?  But back to this, I see from Amazon that he has a new ghost writer.  I had liked the old ghost writer's books.  Whoa, I just looked on Wikipedia and see that Tanenbaum used to be mayor of Beverly Hills.  He used to write with his cousin and now he has other people to "help" him write.  Would all this matter if I had enjoyed this book more?  Probably not.

His protagonists are Butch Karp and Marlene Ciambi.  They used to just bicker with each other and solve cases brilliantly.  Now they are fighting terrorists.  This book, Escape, was pretty amusing because it keeps referring to recent books where they defeated everyone but the Nazis.  This time it is too similar to Extreme Measures in attempting to stop terrorists from blowing something big up and causing chaos in the Western World so some lunatic, power-hungry Saudi could take over the Entire World.  Diverting, but poorly written trash.

For all who are keeping score, I learned today that I am cancer-free in the middle regions of my body.  So that is really the Escape worth writing about.  

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Not me!  You may recall that my last book involved the torture of terrorists and my sensibilites.  Mrs. Dalloway was a relief.  Karen and I talked some time about this.  We both remember The Hours that came out a few years ago.  It is based on this story, itself and the writing of it.  What fun to listen to this day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway.  I've read a lot about the period and place - London just after WWI.  That and remembering the movie made this slice of life even more enjoyable.  It all takes place in one day, but each character relates what is happening in this day with other parts of their lives.  And no one was tortured.

Unlike me and all my friends at The Times and its ugly step-parent, the tribune company.  They declared bankrputcy.  What!!!  I am due to retire at the end of this month.  I should be okay, but then, the idiot Zell should not have brought us to this point.  Should.  "Seems, madam, nay it is, I know not seems."  First they decide not to offer Kaiser medical care to retirees after I just got a fabulous team of doctors to keep me healthy, then I wonder if they will try to screw me out of other benefits that I had expected.  All will be known soon, I imagine, but what that all is...?   I'm sure Clarissa would tell me to breathe.

Extreme Measures

This is a troubling book.  Extreme Measures is about the need of torture in this current battle with terrorists.  I don't know this Vince Flynn guy, but he sure comes from the right as far as condoning torture to get good information.  This flys in the face of what we read and what we sense by reading about Gitmo and rendition practices. 

Making the decision to brutally torture or not is easy in these books. You haul in people who obviously have the worst intent for the US.  It is known that they are through and through blackguards by our heros. Only foolish people would think it unwise to pop a shoulder out of a socket to get incriminating evidence or the key to the terrorist's plot.  

That is just a too, too simplified way of looking at this battle.  We don't usually know for sure that the people we pick up are villans and we surely don't know that torture will make them give us the information we need at the right time.  I could read the first 1/3 and the last 1/3 of the book.  It got a little preachy in the middle because of how detestable those liberals were.  

Do you think Mrs. Dalloway will get this tatse out of my mouth?  I do have to admit that I liked the bad guys getting killed in the end, so maybe Mrs. Dalloway will be too tame.

Tribune has declared bankruptcy.  No more paychecks from them.  Guess who I'll be calling tomorrow!

It's Winter!

It snowed last night.  Since Eric told me that snow rarely sticks here, I figured it would be gone by this morning.  But it is very cold out there.  It may not snow again for a while, but this snow is going to stay for a while.  

I am so happy it waited until Adrian left.  He does not like the cold one bit. Such a California boy.  The weather was beautiful while he was here. After getting of the first leg of his flight here in New York and hearing that it was 20 degrees outside, he was not looking forward to the cold.  But the weather turned warm - in the 50's most of the time he was here.  At Thanksgiving, Cael, Sean and Adrian went outside to play football.  Cael is delightfully all boy with the sweetest disposition.  He was always happy to be able to go outside to kick and throw the football.  Cindy got a little boy ball and a big boy ball.   He must have had trouble figuring out which he was.

We went to the Kennedy Center last Saturday to see Shear Madness.  A little silly, but had a lot of audience participation that was fun.  The Kennedy Center is, of course, awe-inspiring.  It's very grand and we will be 

going back there for New Year's Eve.  Isn't this a fun place to be?  On the left you will see us with JFK in the background.  He is looking very severe.  I don't remember that aspect of him.   

Maybe it was all that sitting.  I had a fever the next day and had to go to the ER.  It was an infection and I've been taking antibiotics ever since.  Once again, Cindy saved one of the Lundstrom kids.  She called my doctor and we agreed that I should go to the ER.  I wasn't too happy with the nurse, but Sandi shared her experience with blood-drawers and gave me a different perspective.  Okay, we'll let the nurse live. The good news is that I am feeling great, considering I had major surgery less than two weeks ago.

Yes, I've been reading.  I finished the second Civil War book.  The South is in dire straights.  They are considering changing the draft age, which was 18 to 45 to be lower and higher.  Grant has been found to be the hard driving General that Lincoln has been looking for.  Other generals on both

sides tend to hang back to make sure their positions are secure.  I 

will get the last book of  this series by Horton Foote a few days before Christmas.  

My friend, Marilyn, sent me a book from her book club.  This is The Giant's House.  The book on the left is the one she sent me.  The book on the right must be the paperback.  I like both covers because they tell a lot about the story.  The woman telling the story is a librarian.  She meets James, the giant, when he comes to her library.  He is a young man with a voracious need to read and learn about everything.  It started with magic and then roamed through most shelves of the library.  Another story line was how hard it was to keep this boy clothed and, particularly, shod.  I like the difference in the shoes on the right.  Adrian is no giant, but I can easily slip into his shoes when I was wearing my own shoes.  It looks like you could stuff a lot of shoes into James' shoes.  It is a lovely book.

Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

Today is a sad day in our house.  One of those two dogs who have lived here long before I got here, Sunshine, had to be euthanized today.  Put to sleep, put down.  So many euphanisms and no good way to say it.  Sunshine was very old.  She could not get up and down the stairs to go out to the yard to do her pooping.  She had trouble getting up from her resting position on your feet.  She sometimes was afraid to leave a piece of rug and venture toward her dinner bowl.  In other words, this was a necessary step.

The family is mourning her loss.  I'm glad she was here for Carina's family visit.  I'm glad that Cindy was in Ohio on her normal business travel.  Adrian helped Eric get her to the vet and I offered my ear and hugs to console Eric and Katie.  There was no Sunshine in any way today.