Saturday, January 31, 2015

TODAY'S SURPRISE VISITORS

Having read late last night, I got a late start on this Saturday. I had a tiny bit of breakfast in my apartment in time for a tiny bit of lunch in my apartment and then it was rime to go to Trivia. In a hurry, I opted for a short-sleeved yellow top to wear over a long-sleeved winter white tee, my first experience with such informal attire and I hoped no one would pay me any attention because of it. After my side lost the game, I debated going back to my apartment or going downstairs for my mail and then on to the dining room for an early supper. The apartment won that and I was glad. Not far from the elevator I would have taken down were two wingback chairs in which sat two ladies I didn't recognize at first glance. I spoke to them and up they jumped. One was Laura Hodges, a former student of mine (in both English and German) and the other, her sister Bonnie. Laura carried a little pot of live yellow tulips with pink wrappings. Yellow and pink make up a gorgeous color combination. Laura had read my blog about another visitor who brought me yellow tulips when I was still doped up from my surgery and I thought he was someone else, remember him? Anyway, these young tulips are so special for coming from Laura. And I was pleased, too, that I'd worn the yellow blouse. 

Laura and her husband Tom live in Colorado and they have often made comments on my blogs. Before Laura and Bonnie left, Laura sang a bit of "How Great Thou Art." What a beautiful clear voice she has! She is also reading Unbroken, or has done so, or has started it. 

And I expect to read the last 40 pages of that tonight.



Friday, January 23, 2015

TWO RED-LETTER AFTERNOONS

Yesterday I went shopping for a chair. At a Lay-Z-Boy place I looked and looked for a firm chair in a color I could live with, also one that was easy to work to get my feet up. Almost every chair I saw was extremely soft and in awful colors. Those that push you up from the chair were completely out of the picture -- too undignified as well as iffy. Then the saleslady took me to yet another room where I found it, an unfuzzy surface (part leather and part polyester, but with the feel of leather) and with two wide arms in one of which was the control for power around a "well" for keeping your drink cool, just the size to hold a milkshake. That I chose to be on the left arm. The right arm then can serve as a place to write, figure taxes, or count and stack your gold coins, and surely hold the book you're reading. And the color? A gorgeous soothing red! It is to be here in six weeks. 

After supper, I read in Unbroken. With it and the new chair in mind, it took me over an hour to get to sleep. 

Today Russ, my computer tech, was to be here around 3:30. While I waited for him to arrive, I exercised my legs and feet, and then read in Unbroken. It turned out he is also reading that book. Then I asked about his wife. Surprise! she sang the National Anthem yesterday for President Barack Obama's visit to Boise State University, where he was to make a speech. But he missed her singing, for he was 20 minutes late. 

I asked, "Why?" I wasn't asking about his tardiness

Russ answered that by talking about her career. Yesterday she signed with the Opera here and is also involved in the Shakespeare Festival. Russ is also a singer and musician. He is a handsome, fine young man. I wish them great success -- so long as he still takes care of my computer too!  




Tuesday, January 20, 2015

LET'S HAVE THE REST OF IT, AOL

How long do you suppose it will take AOL to acknowledge it needs to enlarge the captions under the nice big pictures of the news? 

Saturday, January 17, 2015

THE REASON

The reason we have a plethora of books and stories about World War II appearing recently and in the near past is that the generation that lived that war is fast dying out. Soon there will be no one to interview who was there and witnessed it. After that time, it will be only hearsay -- except for what did get down on paper and film. 

The best WWII nonfiction work I've run across is the one I'm suffering through currently -- Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It is highly enlightening and it is hard to lay the book down. I say suffering through, and that means the war was just so terrible. I did not really know that many service men lost their lives before they had tine to reach their first target. I didn't know the gigantic number of planes lost. I didn't know there were so many sharks in the ocean, itching to devour our men. Some succeeded. 

So far (I'm on only page 90) the squadron on this B-24 bomber are outstanding heroes. 

The Japanese were particularly cruel and had already enslaved people from other countries. They were going to show the world they were the greatest people on earth and the rest of us would become their slaves. I am not for war, but we had to do something about this situation. Eventually, their emperor Hirohito had to declare before the world, something such as he was not a god, as he had led the Japanese to believe.   

I asked a friend of mine if she could get to sleep easily after seeing the film version. She said it took a while and she delayed her bed time. Well, the book has to tell more than the film does. Books are usually better than the films made of them. And if I were Empress, no one under age 18 would be allowed to see it in a theater. 

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

During recent months, a historic calamity or catastrophe or tragedy -- I can't think of the word that is as bad as needed here, save the big one -- has been uppermost in my mind much of the time. So many books newly published in these recent months and years touch upon it and these are best sellers or have been. It seems so many people are writing about this huge calamity, and yet many younger people than my generation have no idea how big and how serious this calamity was at one time or that it can be repeated. Perhaps it seems that I'm talking in riddles, but I'm not. Let me set the stage for you. 

One such best seller is All the Light We Cannot See. Another is The Book Thief, each over 500 pages. They are about the same historic calamity. The central figure in this calamity is not drawn, in these two books, as horrible as he really was. Then the book I'm currently reading, Unbroken, had this horrible creature in the chapter I read last night. At the time of this chapter the world doesn't know much about this horrible creature, but in hindsight, one can determine what to expect from him in such books. 

Add to what these books have to say to what the news is reporting about the turmoil waging in France. Murders of four in a kosher grocery store in Paris, for one thing. All of Europe must be alert to what could happen. Does Europe remember more clearly than does America? Perhaps, for that is where the calamity occurred.

Of course, I am talking about the Holocaust. Don't let anyone tell you it didn't happen, for it did happen. And Hitler was the name of the horrible creature who brought this terrible crime about. 

What bothers me now about this calamity is the treatment of the name Hitler. It seems the Nazi leader today is sort of a joke from the people who didn't learn history. It's a well known fact that if you don't know history, you will have to repeat it. Instead of Hitler, will the next war be because of the demonic ISIS? Perhaps. 

Friday, January 9, 2015

CATCH-UP TIME and DOWNTON ABBEY

It's far past catch-up time, but here we are together again. As this is a literary blog, here's the latest in that department. In The Book Thief, a book given to me, ordered for me, brand new, I lack only 75 pages out of 550, which, I trust, will be completed tonight. Itching to get ahead, I've also read the preface and the first two chapters of Unbroken. Many of you readers have probably seen the movie  of this book, but I have not, and do not anticipate doing so. I much prefer reading the book to seeing the movie of it. I like to do my own thinking. 

I did my bit for the writers' group here and gave away four books, or at least I tried to. Two of them were autobiographies of Nobel Prize winners. The books traveled around in the circle but no one opted to take one for himself, and they were left to go on the library shelves.  

The new project at hand is critiquing a short book by an Idaho writer whom I have not met in person. I've discovered how to do that on the screen by using a click with red ink, so to speak. How excellent that is, but I've hardly started. There is not enough time to do any of these things and I have yet to write some 2014 Christmas letters! My eyesight grows dimmer by the day, it seems. The television is mostly not on at all.

 The one program I watched last year the few months it ran, and the years before that, and which resumed this January, Downton Abbey, was a great disappointment with this year's first airing. There were too many people in the action and apparently few of them had learned to act on the stage. Therefore, they were not easily understood in their run-away British lingo. My guess is that many Americans stopped watching it because of these reasons. More interesting is the hour before the program starts each season that showcases the real people who live at Highclere Castle. If you Abbey watchers missed that, remember to see it next January. It's great.