Friday, July 31, 2015

Quote of the Day-----Goodreads




Maybe the grass is greener on the other side depends who was standing in it. Sometimes you have to go over there and look.

Lynne Rae Perkins


Happy birthday, Lynne Rae Perkins! The Pittsburgh native studied art in college and didn't consider writing until an art director asked if she had a story to go along with her drawings. Perkins discovered she did indeed have a story—the result was Home Lovely, her first published children's book. 

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Quote of the Day------Goodreads




There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.


Beatrix Potter



Beatrix Potter (born July 28, 1866), author of the beloved Peter Rabbit books, showed an early interest in animals. As a child, she and her younger brother took care of mice, rabbits, a hedgehog, bats, butterflies, and insects. 

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Quote of the day-----Goodreads





If you have two friends in your lifetime, you're lucky. If you have one good friend, you're more than lucky.

S.E. Hinton
Happy birthday, S.E. Hinton! The author of The Outsiders is a huge fan of the CW show Supernatural. She's visited the set multiple times and even appeared in an episode in Season 7.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

bloom county is BACK!

YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!
Welcome back Opus and gang!  

I sure have missed you in the comic section!

No IF ONLY the Daily Herald (Everett WA.) will put you back in!

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Muscle Shoals, documentary


We watched this documentary, if you are of an age that remembers "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy, or "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" by Aretha, or when the Stones first came on the music scene - well, this documentary is right up your alley.

The Muscle Shoals influence is in the music of so many of today's musicians.  

Muscle Shoals, Alabama - who would have thought that a little "backwater" town would have had such a HUGE impact on the music industry?  

Great music, interesting interviews with Percy, Mick, Keith Richards, Bono, lovely photography. 

Hope you will give it a shot.

Free Spirit : Growing Up on the Road and off the Grid by Joshua Safran

This is my review from Goodreads.

Free Spirit : growing up on the road and off the grid

This is an amazing story, reads like a fast paced novel, yet no one could ever make up Josh's story. How one young boy lived through adversity and became an award winning author.

The Stanwood (Washington) Library was a place of "shelter" for Josh when his family finally moved to Stanwood. I have been a staff member at the Stanwood library for 37 years, and do remember Josh as a very polite, articulate boy, always pleasant. At the recent author Stanwood Library/community event (standing room only), I commented to Josh that I had never known his "back"story, he has become a remarkable human being. It was wonderful to see him again after all the years that have passed.

Josh and his mother, Claudia, were "wanderers" in the true sense of the word, they lived in conditions that can only be described as "third world living conditions" in many different areas along the West Coast of the US. Throughout his young life, Josh would "wish" for a place with running water, electricity and indoor plumbing. Claudia, somehow, always managed to keep them together in good times and bad. When asked at the author event, about whether he should have been placed in foster care, he gave a most interesting answer, No, although they wandered around and never had a real home, Claudia did love him immensely - this comes through his book Loud and Clear.

Josh received a full scholarship to Oberlin, with triple majors, and eventually became a lawyer.

Due to his background, Josh has become an advocate for victims of abuse and those falsely imprisoned. He also has embraced his Jewish heritage - even though Claudia, for years, did not address their background.

He has found peace with himself, his mother, and has a loving wife, Leah, and three beautiful young daughters.
 

Quote of the Day-------Goodreads




Where did feelings go when they disappeared? Did they leave a chemical trace somewhere in our minds, so that if we could look inside ourselves we would see via the patterns of neurons some of the important things that had happened to us in our lifetimes?
Evelyn Lau


Happy birthday, Evelyn Lau! Her parents pressured her to become a doctor, but the future Vancouver poet laureate had other ideas, publishing her first poem at the age of 12 and her first memoir—of two, so far—at the age of 18.

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Quote of the Day----Goodreads




I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

Dorothea Mackellar
Australian poet Dorothea Mackellar (born July 1, 1985) wrote one of Australia's best known poems, My Country, when she was just 19 while feeling homesick in England.


Somehow, I think Goodreads got her birth year wrong - in searching Google images for her, most of the photos showed someone who looked past the age of 30 - I wonder if they meant 1895? or 1885?   Anyway, the above verse is quite beautiful.