This is the 3rd generation of the "Dan's Place" blog of my random thoughts that I initially intended to be like postings outside my cubicle wall -- a virtual bulletin board kind of thing, which started in June 2003.
Cooper: Diane, last night I dreamed I was eating a large, tasteless gumdrop, and awoke to discover I was chewing on one of my foam disposable earplugs. Perhaps I should consider moderating my nighttime coffee consumption. -- "Twin Peaks"
I spent most of my weekend on the road. Or at least it felt like it. Here's my general route, showing the towns I stopped in. Even in the final destination towns, in Tennessee, most of my activity was observing from my car, so, that's a lot of driving.
Patoka and Sandoval were way off the beaten path, so to speak, at least compared to what I'm used to. I did find some expected and unexpected relatives in their final resting places at the Patoka Cemetery.
Civil War Soldiers' Monument at Patoka Cemetery
Sandoval Cemetery was a little larger and, even though I allowed more time to wander aimlessly through it, I wasn't going to spend all day there. Unfortunately, I left without finding any ancestors. Some of these small cemeteries are big enough to require hours to go down every row but still too small to have a searchable website or an office or some place you can look up records of where specific plots are.
Monument to all veterans of the Sandoval area
In Tennessee I did stop the car a few times, at sites such as the Cold Springs schoolhouse in Portland and Trousdale Place in Gallatin.
Cold Springs, a one room schoolhouse now planted in Portland
Monument to Confederate Soldiers in front of Trousdale Place
Another year gone by, another year of meager book reading. But really, there's so much in the way of television and movies out there, how can I be held responsible. Even worse, this short list contains pretty much lighter reading. No epic novels this year. I do imagine, in the distant future, after most of humanity is wiped out, that I'll have all the time in the world to read everything. Until I accidentally step on my glasses, that is. Oh, cursed fate!
And, besides my own limited personal db, I am still maintaining my listings on Goodreads and Shelfari. Who can choose.
+-----------------------------------+-------------------------------------+---------------+----------+
| title | Authors | yearpublished | Finished |
+-----------------------------------+-------------------------------------+---------------+----------+
| Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer, The | Jennifer Lynch | 1990 | 3/2012 |
| Early Dayton | Robert W. Steele,Mary Davies Steele | 1896 | 6/2012 |
| I Hate Myself And Want To Die | Tom Reynolds | 2005 | 7/2012 |
| Sword Of The Prophet, The | Serge Trifkovic | 2002 | 9/2012 |
| Predictably Irrational | Dan Ariely | 2008 | 11/2012 |
| Blessed Are The Meek | Zofia Kossak | 1944 | 12/2012 |
+-----------------------------------+-------------------------------------+---------------+----------+
"The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer", of course, is one of the better-known "Twin Peaks" memorabilia. It may come as a surprise, but there is no small amount of "Twin Peaks" stuff that I never acquired, much to my regret. And when I saw that they (for some reason) decided to do a second printing of this thin volume a year ago, I snatched it up.
"Early Dayton" was published on Dayton's centennial. I found it in Google Books. Today it would probably be a self-published thing, like a family might do for its own history. There are some good historical sections about the first settlers and a few old pictures, but the majority of it involves listing a prominent citizen, and then listing that person's descendents and current living relatives, without much flavor.
"I Hate Myself And Want To Die" is just a list of 52 popular, depressing songs -- sometimes surprisingly so for those who don't pay much mind to the lyrics. Each song's accompanied by a brief essay, emphasis on brief. I really like the idea of something like this, but I imagined it being much better. Besides the briefness, the comedian in the author shines through in some write-ups more than others -- not laugh out loud funny, though. I recall it feeling more like the style of VH1's snarky talking-head countdowns and "I Love The Whatever" shows.
"The Sword of the Prophet" explains Islam from its beginning; guaranteed to be hated and denounced by the politically correct and people who favor "coexist" bumper stickers.
"Predictably Irrational" is all about behavioral economics. It doesn't really teach or explain much about economics (of any kind) in any great detail, but it does describe, for the layman, several fascinating behavioral economics experiments that try to decipher how people really behave and are motivated.
And, finally, I just finished "Blessed Are The Meek", which is subtitled, "A Novel About St. Francis Of Assisi". Turns out it really isn't about Francis as much as it's about Sir Jean de Brienne and the final Crusade. (I think it was the final one.) Francis keeps showing up in the early part of the book and again in the latter part of the book when the Crusade gets going. And that was fine. I wasn't expecting a bio of St. Francis. And I do like me some historical fiction. Not being much of a historian -- and that goes double for the 13th century -- I don't know where the historical ended and the fictional began, but I'd say this turned out to be the most enjoyable read on this list. If it were written today, instead of 70 years ago, give or take a decade (1944 is probably just when it was translated to English) , it would probably be twice as long and only the first part of a trilogy. Several subplots might have been greatly extended. But I thought it was good; which was probably enhanced by my low expectations going in.
For the record, on Goodreads, I rated them all 3 stars ("liked it") except the Dayton book, which I gave 2 stars ("it was ok").
And don't forget, it's still not too late to enjoy some Christmas Punch:
I think it's been in the 90s for probably the last week. And today we breached 100. It may have rained once or twice in the last 3 weeks, but I haven't personally noticed.
Last weekend's storms, which I wouldn't know existed if I hadn't read about them, remind me that it was a year ago my power was out for four days.
I try not to dwell on this, but I don't know how I'd have made it through those 4 days except that places a mile or two away did have power, so I could go to the library, or the McDonald's, or whatever. Even if I had the 6 month food supply like the doomsday preppers, which I don't, although I've thought about it for a lot longer than there's been a show called doomsday preppers, I don't know how I'd make it through a real disaster. I wouldn't be able to cook anything. And if it was a real disaster, I'd die of dehydration before it mattered anyway. Where's the water going to come from if the pumping stations run out of gas for their generators? If I ever buy a house with a well again, first thing I'll have to find out is if there's some way to get to the water when the electric pump stops working.
Somehow humanity made it through thousands of years without electricity. Hmm. What would Ben Franklin do.
At this point in the year, it's safe to say I won't be finishing any more books -- since I'm not in the middle of any at the moment. Here's my list of books finished in 2011 in order read, which is longer than usual -- thanks, global economy!
(And I'm still maintaining my lists at both Goodreads and Shelfari, FWIW.)
Trickle Up Poverty
Michael Savage
2010
Anathem
Neal Stephenson
2008
Word Freak
Stefan Fatsis
2001
Stranger In A Strange Land
Robert A. Heinlein
1961
Foucault's Pendulum
Umberto Eco
1988
Complete Short Stories Of Ambrose Bierce, The
Ambrose Bierce
1970
I'd easily put "Anathem" and "Word Freak" at the top and the last two at the bottom. Really, I was disappointed in the last three. I'd heard so many good things about them. "Stranger In a Strange Land" turned out to be long stretches of dialog that sounded like lectures on philosophy, religion (a lot of opinions on religion), and the meaning of life. Where's the sci or the fi? Or at least some good Martian stuff. Maybe "Foucault's Pendulum" was the wrong Eco book to start with, but I like a good conspiracy. However, it seemed like lengthy passages -- dozens or hundreds of pages? -- that just droned on about nothing. Maybe it's a problem of translation to English. And then Ambrose Bierce. I'm guessing his more than 90 stories were amazing and shocking in the late 19th century. They're grouped into three categories -- ghost stories, tall tales, and war stories. Most of the time it felt like there were only actually three different stories -- and sometimes it seemed like only one. I mean, a lot of the war stories were pretty much the same as the main ghost story template -- except they took place during the Civil War. And all those ghost stories seemed like pretty much the same story with different characters and places. Was I ever shocked that the person the main character was talking to turned out to have died in a town 50 miles away a couple weeks earlier? No. Not the first time. Not the twentieth time.
Wow, it's pretty easy to be critical, yes? Well, I loved the writing style of "Word Freak"; kind of like the lengthier articles in "Wired" or "The New Yorker". And I admire that kind of obsession. And "Anathem", well, Stephenson is one of my favorite authors, if I had to make a list. Yes, the first 50 pages were a struggle, what with, not only all the wacky alien names, but worse, all the made up words, which I'd think a story of an alien culture could do just fine without. But once I got over that hump, it was a thrilling adventure. This is how I like my science fiction, I guess. I suppose it, too, was full of the philosophizing, but it never felt as if I were reading a sleepy lecture, no offense to the esteemed Mr. Heinlein.
I guess I shouldn't mention all the others and leave out one book from the list. The mere fact that I read Michael Savage's book should tell you enough, and I don't want to start a political fight with the haters. Instead, I'd rather remind you to enjoy some Christmas Punch!
Today I finished another double DVD. "Wings In The Dark" was kind of a boring, melodramatic story of a pilot who becomes blind. "Big Brown Eyes" was a little more interesting. It had the same, breathless, non-stop dialogue that was done much better in "His Girl Friday". And who could ever imagine such a huge, busy barbershop, where all the guys seemed to be getting manicures along with their haircuts?
Once again I've found a very early Cary Grant, um, project: "Hot Saturday". He's kind of a cad. And, based on his bad reputation, a nice chick who works at the bank gets her own bad reputation. But he's super rich. It all ends rather abruptly. But, hey, it was 1932. Also starring Randolph Scott. Yes. Randolph! Scott!
It's not really fair to compare today's entry, "Merrily We Go To Hell", with the rest of the Cary Grant movies, because not only is it not really a "Cary Grant Movie", he's in maybe a minute of it. So I just stuck it down near the bottom. He's an actor in a play and the play is hardly related to the rest of the movie. It's really about a drunken newspaper guy (Fredric March) who gets married to a lovely rich girl (Sylvia Sidney), but his drinking leads down a tragic path.
This is the earliest release on the list so far -- one of 8 movies Cary Grant appeared in that came out in 1932. What a year.
It's like a double feature. I'm adding "Kiss And Make-Up" and "Thirty Day Princess", both from 1934, at the same time. They're combined on one DVD. How about that! There's something about these pre-1937 Cary Grant movies, it's almost like they're still treating the movies as fancy theater productions. Not that the scenes are static or anything, but what I notice is that Cary Grant generally seems physically real stiff, and overly made up, even with thick lipstick. Well, that's my impression. And then it seems like some big leap forward happened between '36 and '37.
In "Thirty Day Princess", he's the thorn in the side of those nasty bankers keeping the common Depression-era man down. But this banker's using a hot princess-lookalike to raise money for a foreign country's bond issue. And how could a hot princess-lookalike not fall for Cary Grant. In "Kiss And Make-Up", he's some kind of smarmy beauty doctor, doing plastic surgery (or the 1930's equivalent) and promoting skin creams and diet and exercise. Because all women want to be beautiful and to be loved. Ah, some things never change! There's even a very 1930's-ish car chase scene, filled with longshots that look like a simple studio lot and closeups with fast-moving street scenes projected behind the actors. (The dude whose wife he steals is played by Edward Everett Horton, who was in no less than 5 movies with Cary Grant. He was 36 when his first movie came out -- but then, there weren't any movies before then. That was in 1922. Over the next 50 years he had a good 175 movie and TV credits. I kind of wonder if that provided a comfortable standard of living for him. I'm guessing he did alright; although it wouldn't surprise me if his lifetime earnings were less than a star is paid to be in one movie today.)
If you're on Shelfari, join me there. My profile name is KillerOwl. I'm also trying out Goodreads -- might have to search by my name there. And the BiblioCommons service that may be available on your library's website after you login to your library account. (Searching may not be possible. Might have to make a list or review before someone else can see you.)
