I broke a tooth

Today. My tooth. Broken.

Talk about ya fixa uppa . . . man I got some work to be done.

So I get home from work, dog tired, kick off my shoes, take off my earrings, plop down on the bed, fire up my laptop to check on the internet universe, hubby brings me a salad (he got home early), I take a bite - CRACK!!!!!!

Om my gosh, what the heck. Ok, I might not have said heck.

I look in the salad to see if there are rocks in it.

Nope, no rocks.

Take another bite - CRACK!!!!!!!

Oh my gosh - is it my tooth? Honey, do we have any flashlights? Yes. Where is one? Hold on.. here it is - what's wrong? I gotta look in the mirror at my tooth.

I broke my tooth. Badly.

Good grief Charlie Brown.

Well, I guess I gotta go to the dentist tomorrow.

Now I have something to blog about.

Stay tuned. I know this is not over.

Acrtress Carla-Rae in "We Shall Remain"

Have you been watching the PBS Series, We Shall Remain? If you haven't - I encourage you to catch next week's episode. It comes on Monday nights at 9, 8 central. I think there are two more shows in the five part series. Last night focused on the Cherokee Nation and then the fateful Trail of Tears. I never learned much about these events.

Let me say that another way. I never learned this.

I never learned what everyone should know and no one should ever forget.

Here's an interview with Carla-Rae, who starred in last night's episode.

More New Madrid Fault Info

Here's some very interesting first hand accounts of the great earthquake in the early 1800s along the New Madrid Fault.

"There was a great shaking of the earth this morning. Tables and chairs turned over and knocked around - all of us knocked out of bed. The roar I thught would leave us deaf if we lived."

Away From Her

I watched this movie last week. It is poignant.

About a woman (not old) who is beginning to be besieged by Alzheimer's. Her husband is heartbroken - broken into a million pieces. She does the best she can.

An amazing story.

By the way, Julie Christie (who plays the sick wife), is the young beautiful blonde in the movie, Dr. Zhivago.

Truly spectacular film (this one and that one). It will make you appreciate long term love and dimensions of love.

Gorden Pinsent is my newst craze.

Ok - For you Michiganders or Michigonians or Michiganites or . . .

You know it's all about the books - and there's cheap books in your area (if you're close to Detroit) today. Go see!

So says Freep.com (Detroit Free Press online). Books for One Dollar!

It is Bookstock, metro Detroit's largest used book and media sale. The sale features hardbacks, paperbacks, best sellers and classics, each selling for $1 to $10. Proceeds from the sale benefit literacy and education projects across southeast Michigan and metropolitan Detroit.

Bookstock has earned more than $350,000 for local literacy and education programs in the past six years.

The sale runs today through May 3 at Livonia's Laurel Park Place at 6 Mile Road, east of I-275 in Livonia. Members of the Detroit Pistons Dance Team Automotion will kick off Bookstock today with an appearance from 8:30-10:30 a.m. Detroit Free Press Columnist Rochelle Riley is an honorary cochair of Bookstock, along with Detroit News columnist Neal Rubin.

The event's presale is from 8:45 until 11:45 a.m. today. Admission for the advance look is $10. Admission is free to the regular sale, which runs from noon-6 p.m. today
and May 3, and 10 a.m.-9 p.m. all other days.

I'll have one in every color please.

Bag of Books for $5

This just in - for you New Yorkers and Jersey folks . . . next month, plan to get out to Roxbury, New Jersey and get some books!

According to the Roxbury Register online news, The Friends of the Roxbury Public Library will host a used book sale from Thursday, May 14 through Sunday, May 17 at the Roxbury Township Public Library (103 Main St., in the Succasunna section of the township).

My favorite part - A “Bag of Books for $5” sale is planned on Sunday, May 17- the final day of the sale.

The New Madrid Fault

Did you know there is a potentially very dangerous earthquake threat in the middle of America?

It is absolutely true.

The 1811 quake in New Madrid, Missouri, was the biggest in American history. To this day, there are little tremors in southern Missouri all the time. Recently, a woman at the U.S. Geological Survey commissioned a risk-assessment map of the two cities closest to this area, Memphis and St. Louis.

There are fault lines all through Shelby County that are hugely dangerous. However, she has been unable to convince local authorities of the imminent risk in this area (making the situation even more dangerous).

We all live on top of geology, that's a given. There's an old saying that humankind exists on this Earth subject to geological consent, which can be revoked at any time, without notice.

- Simon Winchester, Geologist

Guess what - Another Book - but not a review yet

I haven't read this book yet - but I will. It's titled Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, by Jamie Ford (his debut novel)...

Here's an author audio interview on NPR. Sounds fascinating really.

And Yet Another Book Review

And more audio.. Please, just listen to this. This is my favorite book. It IS fantastic, really.

Another Book Review of Sorts

Remember a few days ago (was it more than a week or two?) . . . I told you about a book I read, River Horse, by William Least Heat Moon -- he boated across the United States, from New York Harbor, up the Hudson, over through the Erie Canal, across a bit of Lake Erie, down to the Allegheny, on to the Ohio, to the Mississippi, up to the Missouri . . . more Missouri, and even more Missouri... then to the Salmon, the Snake, the Columbia and finally to the Pacific Ocean.. remember that book? It was a fantastic book.

Well, here's an audio clip from the author about that journey and of his writing.. I can't recommend it enough. Great writing and great adventures kinda go hand in hand don't you think? They did in this case.

Take a listen.

A Book Review

I recently read The River Queen. It's not a novel. It is a memoir of sorts - the author, Mary Morris, writes of her father who had recently died at the almost age of 103. The author mostly writes tho of her trip down the Mississippi River while throwing in stories of her dad who had lived much of his early life near (and one) the mighty Mississippi.

I enjoyed the book very much. There's a little audio clip on NPR with the author ... take a listen here. You might enjoy it too.

Rum and Coca Cola

Smiles on a Monday morn - it's possible. Drink up here.

This is the Fate You Carved On Me

This is Vienna Teng. This is great.

Lightning and Lightning Bugs

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” Mark Twain

This article - Writing Takes Perseverance, written by Karin Leeburg Larson, is a good read. Lots of quotes by writers who have persevered at a successful rate.

Avid Reader Blog

Here's another blogger who has an obsession with books. And I thought there were just a few of us.

Turns out there's a whole world of us out there.

:)

The Shadow of the Wind

A friend of mine at work told me about this book - The Shadow of the Wind. I think it'll be a fantastic read. My friend informed me that she's letting me borrow her book when she's finished with it - Yay!

Sounds like it very well could be my next favorite book of all time.

A book for lovers of books about lovers of books.

Perfect.

It's Easter Charlie Brown

Of Books and Clubs

Want to join an online book club? You can. Go here - the Pierce County Library (Tacoma, Washington). Give them your email address and choose a genre or two
(or more) and each week you'll be emailed a few pages or chapters to see if you like the book.

How fun is that?

Love it.

We Shall Remain

"Suppose a white man should come to me and say, Joseph, I like your horses. I want to buy them. I say to him, No, my horses suit me; I will not sell them. Then he goes to my neighbor and says, Pay me money, and I will sell you Joseph’s horses.

The white man returns to me and says, Joseph, I have bought your horses and you must let me have them. If we sold our lands to the government, this is the way they bought them." - Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Nation

Our America, our country, has a history. It is not necessarily what is known by all. It is not entirely taught.

Our history has a horrific and complex dimension. We have great heroes that equal and even exceed Grant, Lincoln, Reagan and others. Their names are not as widely celebrated. Their graves are lonely, sometimes desecrated places.

A series beginning Monday on PBS, titled "We Shall Remain" - will show our history and the history of those who were here before we came, those who remain still.

Becky Krystal, of the Washington Post has a piece about this important movie here, posted by the Kansas City dot com.

And in Indian Country Today, Victor Morales wrote about the upcoming movie here.

Finally, blogger author at Country Contemplative posts thoughts on all this here, with the challenge, in this Easter season - a time of rebirth, to remember and be awakened with renewal:

"Nearly everywhere I look and all of the land I own was once theirs. In fact it all really belongs to the Creator as they call him.

Thanks to Public Broadcasting System for bringing us this special television event. We who have been quick to condemn others in the world for ethnic cleansing have our own past for which to atone. Lent is a time of rebirth and renewal. I hope this special can awaken one for us too."

This is a book I am passionate about

If I had the influence over readers as Oprah seems to have with her viewers . . . this book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, written by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Shaffer's niece), would make the bestseller list of all other bestseller lists of all time I do believe.

I cannot say enough good about it. I simply loved it. It absolutely drew me in to a world I really did not know much about - to a place I certainly had not heard of. The small island of Guernsey is in the Channel Islands, very close to France - certainly closer to France that to Great Britain, very far from London.

The setting of the novel is this small island, during the Nazi occupation in the second world war. The characters are ordinary and spectacular in themselves because of this. I am so in love with these people and they are not even real. But - they are real. There were very real people like these people on this small island during the occupation that dealt with life in extremely harsh times.

The joys the people find tho - amidst the heartache - are what is so very exquisite. They form a bond out of necessity and out of delight.

This book will stick to you like glue and will not let you go - ever.

You simply must read it. You will not be the same after.

My World is Full of Color - Subtle tho

You Color Your Life With Subtle Coolness

You are a full of grace and peace. You don't let yourself get worked up. You tend to be a bit reserved. You only speak when you really have something to say. You aspire to a lot in life, and you're quietly working on your plan to take over the world. You are elegant and a bit of a snob. You can't help it... you like expensive things!

How Do You Color Your Life?

Duck Walks Into a Bar

DonaldDuckCast, originally uploaded by Not So Much.

Pause for humor. This one falls into the Moose Walks Into a Bar series.

- - -

Three fonts walk into a bar. The bartender says, "We don’t serve your type in here."

Then,

A duck walks into a bar. And he says to the bartender , "Got any grapes?" The bartender says, "No, I don’t have any grapes." The duck walks out, sorely disappointed.

So the next day, he walks back into the bar, asks the same question, gets the same answer.

The day after, he walks back into the bar, and again, asks the bartender, "Do you have any grapes?"

The bartender, having still not figured out why this duck seems to think he may have some grapes, says to the duck, "No, and if you come back in here tomorrow and ask me if I have any grapes, I will nail your bill to the bar!"

The duck frowns, turns around, and walks out of the bar. So the next day, the duck walks back into the bar, and asks the bartender "Got any nails?"

The bartender says, "No."

So the duck says, "Got any grapes?"

Next Earthquake - the New Madrid Fault?

A major earthquake in north Mississippi? Along the Mississippi River and the New Madrid Fault line system?

Not out of bounds, according to one Mississippi geo-scientist and professor, Darrel Schmitz. Read all about it here at the Starkville Daily News dot com in an article by Paul Sims.

There's been a major earthquake in recent days in at least three separate continents. Is our home plate next?

Well I hope not - but it is interesting article.

There has been an increase, generally speaking, since the Indonesian/Sumatra earthquake in 2004 which caused the tsunami, . . . It’s probably not a significant difference if you look at the historical records of earthquakes. It’s more than the average but not way out of bounds . . . Like most any natural activity, it’s cyclic . . . There are 'periods of quiet and periods of activity.'

There’s no way to make a direct connection. You’d have to say it’s coincidental . . . We believe our greatest threat for a major quake would be from the New Madrid system, although there have been smaller quakes which have been felt, such as the one in Belden within the last year.

Belden is located just west of Tupelo [Mississippi]. The fault is one of the exceptions to most earthquakes occurring at plate boundaries . . . There was an attempt for the continent to break apart, but it never did . . . and became at the time very similar to the Great Rift Valley in Africa.

I recall from one of my latest favorite books that I consumed and posted about here, A Crack in the Edge of the World, by Simon Winchester (a geologist), that author also was (and is) very concerned about the New Madrid Fault - and he also described how the New Madrid Fault is directly related to attempts for our continent to break apart.

Well, our planetary home is always moving and it is indeed alive, well and breathing. Breath is taken in and it is also exhaled. It is what we call life. Our Earth is alive.

The created Earth is our miracle of existence, yet it is ironically tragic when people are sometimes in the places of earth's inhalations and exhalations.

From Winchester's book:

Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dry as an old bone.

Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming, membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of the great drifts of white cloud, covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land.

If you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held afloat by the fire beneath.It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.

Four Mississippi

CB068378, originally uploaded by shoppinmom.

.

A little over a year ago, I posted about a story of mine that I intend to publish one day. The past few weeks have brought me closer - although the end is far far away.

.

More words are on the page. More thought is in it now. The characters are almost begging me to give them their full breath of life. If only I could write without fatigue. It comes on so fast sometimes, and then when my eyes are closed, I see the story, the colors - the early morning fog, a fence post, the dew on the clover. Then I hear the sea gulls off in the distance and feel a breeze blow across my face as I look up into the sky. The hours ahead are an open book, mine to write.

.

My story to write.

.

I almost cannot contain it.

.

Except that my body quit hours ago. I must sleep. The story is put to bed. I'm like a child imploring his mother, "No let me play some more - I'm not tired .. Really! I'm not t i r e d.

Yawwwn. I want to stayy up."

.

good night . . .

.

[lights out]

.

then I hear a train rolling down the tracks . . . and isn't that my granddad whistling something. . . he was always humming . . . the dog's barking at something. . . the house creaks in the night . . . dad says it settles in the cool weather and we only notice it at night when it's quiet . . .what should I wear tomorrow. . . did somebody put the clothes in the dryer . . . counting sheep . . . one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi, f o u r . . . three . . two . . . where was I . . . five m i s s i p . . .

A walk in the park

A walk in the park, originally uploaded by Mexicanwave.

I'm not having one - walk in the park that is. I'm in a funk actually. Work stuff is just too much sometimes - not hard, just alot of it.

Then there's the people - not the bosses, but the people who are bossy. I never liked bossy people. And then there's the bossy nosy people.

Arrrgggg I'm in such a funk. I'm just trying to work and live and be a mom who my kids will remember fondly (hopefully) one day.

Unless of course, I keel over from exhaustion first. Epitaph at my funeral: "She was always tired."

Lunch?

The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!

Frustration Number One of the Day (actually I've been stewing over this one for weeks).

Credit to the Sun Sentinel dot come editorial board: One of the latest things that some feds have decided to do - is mandate that old books be not allowed for consumption. Not allowed. I guess they are to be destroyed. Destroy the old books. Somebody's decided they are simply too dangerous.

I kid you not.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission wants some old books taken off the shelves. Seems they might have lead based ink.

However - the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the Associated Press that lead-based ink in books poses little danger to children, rating the risk, on a scale of 1 to 10, as 0.5.

Point Five - Oh My - there are dangers in the word people - you must go hide under your covers and don't come out until the feds say we're all safe and that hell has indeed frozen over (oops - I mean the polar ice caps).

So, according to this article - and I bet it wouldn't be hard to back it up with - oh I don't know, about five kadoodle dozen other sources:

". . . little Suzie would have to swallow the pages whole, lots of them, to actually expose her body to the relatively small amounts of lead there."

"Heard of any widespread problems with kids all too literally digesting their copies of Grimms Fairy Tales?"

Damn the torpedoes! Full Speed ahead!

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!

The Battery Park Book Exchange

And here's another used book shop to visit - for you North Carolina area people. This shop is in Asheville, the Battery Park Book Exchange. I'd like a report please. A personal blogger report.

Anyone?

Thank you to the Citizen Times dot com correspondent Anne Fitten Glenn for writing about it.

Books are our friends.

An Erie Story (in Ohio) . . .

A used book shop rises from the 'ashes'. Read about it here. And there's even a cat.

Oral Argument

Some long time loyal readers may remember my post shortly after my first (and only, thus far) oral argument - while I was a first year (and only, thus far - once again) law student a couple years ago (it seems I've deleted my post - rats).

I have to say - other than experiences with my husband and children ( and parents - you know the drill ) - that my oral argument was the single most thrilling moment of my entire life.

Single most thrilling moment - of my entire life.

I can not imagine actually doing that in front of Chief Justice Roberts (although I would sacrifice much valuable for the chance) ... but students at North Carolina Central University are getting that once in a lifetime chance (maybe more than once for some) on April 14.

What a thrill they will have. Wow.

Man I miss it.

May It Please The Court.

It's Worth It

Sometimes I go for days without posting a one-thousand-posts-to-read-before-you-die-post, and then sometimes I find 'em every day or even twice a day or more.

Today I found this one.

This - is - really - good. Thank you to Carla, at Kootenay Bliss - for sharing it with all of us - so I could find it, and share it some more.

Read it. Read all the others here.

It's called Life Over 100, and it's by Michael Gartner, who apparently won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Be prepared to laugh.

The piece is about his father who quit taking left turns.

It's nicely summed:

Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
So love the people who treat you right.
Forget about those who don't.
Believe everything happens for a reason.
If you get a chance, take it.

If it changes your life, let it.
Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it.

Smacks of Wild Cherry

Play that funky music white boy!




That boy can saaaang.

Sunset, by one volcano called Redobut

Want to see a beautiful sunset photo of a beautiful alive volcano? Laura Merle has one here. It's from last night as best I can tell.

So magnificent.