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I hope everyone has a great 2006

I hope all of you have a happy, safe and more or less sane New Year’s Eve and that your new year will be a healthy one — with LOTS of good reading.

I finally finished The Painted Drum last night. I have been– and am–ailing from something, so I have done little for two weeks. I think I feel a little better today… anyhow, it took me a long time to get through The Drum and I was very disappointed in most aspects of it– the disorganized presentation of the plot lines, and, to me, an indication that she is short on a good idea for a novel. Or maybe it is just my bad mood showing through. Happy New Year, all. Phyllis

Sushi tonight. Yum.

No good Mexican or Japanese restaurants in Lebanon so I am enjoying this. Anyone care to go along?

My daughter and I both have XP and whether or not that’s the reason I got a sign-in screen, I don’t know but when I clicked on write a new post, that’s what I got. So - here goes.

I didn’t get any books or gift certificates to book stores for Christmas this year so I’ll have to be happy with booksfree.com, I guess. But that’s OK. They didn’t have Carter’s new book yet, but they DID have our January selection, BOOKSELLER OF KABUL, which I brought with me. I haven’t started it yet.

Son Les, over in Kissimmee (kis-SIM-mee), has loaned me a book which was loaned to him by Paul Thoreaux about a trip he took to Africa and went from Cairo to Cape Town. I think I shall probably put the review of that on in ROM Ideas and see what you all think, too.

Noise is right, Darlyne. Son Les has 3 girls, 15, 14 and 12, and you talk about NOISY! Oy vey and like that! I was delighted to get back here to Palm Harbor and the house of adults. JP is 25, Missy is 22 and it was their Mom’s 50th I came to in July. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO nice to have the relative quiet.

JP and Debbie are both at work and Missy left this morning around 7:30; her flight back to San Diego left at 9. I leave a week from tomorrow. The FL weather is great, folks. The house is cool, which is my preference as I’m sure you all remember from my humidity complaints! and, if there is a breeze or a wind (like yesterday when flags were standing straight out from their poles), it can be downright chilly. I was still comfortable in my sweater however. It sure isn’t down jacket weather here.

Time out for lunch and I don’t have much of anything else to say anyway. Stay warm, you all in the frozen north, and you in the south - enjoy your winter.

Well, Jenny Blog, I don’t think the weather thing likes my zip code. I type it in and I get a blank after the words “Weather for”. Oh well, basically I KNOW what the weather is here - COLD!

Hi Jenny - I don’t believe I’ve posted yet today but then - that’s no great loss. As someone wrote, Candace I think, Traude has been having some shoulder problems and finding typing to be somewhat awkward and no doubt painful.

The weather here has warmed up some during the day but nights remain cold and below freezing. Our layer of snow is quite slippery at night - mushy during the day. No decent snowballs there.

I’m done with Christmas finally and had it with g’daughter this evening. I leave for FL on Tuesday. I’m ready. 60° weather sounds heavenly.

Y’all stay warm, hear?
Jo

After nearly 2 weeks of 20° weather, give or take a few, we’re in the midst of a heat wave! I almost have to put on my shorts.

Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration but 40° weather after the last couple of weeks is lovely.

Gifts to wrap, a hole to mend - sigh. No rest for the wicked.

There is a large body of work by this author– and the early books, I think, are quite wonderful. I didn’t “google” her before I started this message, and so, of course, I can’t rememner their titles– but they are primarily about her Indian heritage, although they are novels. She has had a tragic life, I think– she wrote a lovely book with her husband– “Yellow canoe Blue water (?)”; he later committed suicide.This is about as imprecise a message as you will ever get– but I am sure you get the gist of it. Best, Phyllis

I do not know where I should post this, but here goes——-
I see that it is 19 degrees in Princeton!—Wow!—–It is presently
62 at 6:30 P.M. Tomorrow’s high should be 70!!!!!
JOY

One thing I’ve noticed is that under the heading but before the first post is a line or two in green. These are also new postings, I’ve discovered. Eventually you get to something that ISN’T new but . . . . THAT happens all the time!

This little ole thing is right confusing on occasion.

This morning I was baking a birthday cake for a friend. I was looking at the package of birthday candles and noticed on the back the instructions: “extinguish candle before throwing away.”
I find that rather frightening that such instructions are necessary.
“Keep out of the reach of children and pets” I can understand.
Don’t you wonder what incidents happened before they decided to print those words?

I was just thinking about this and wanted to share it with the group.

Judith

I had to walk four blocks this morning (lab draw) It was 16°. When I complained my sympathetic daughter said, “your arctic heritage will serve you well”. It did.

I have copied and pasted this from the entry in BB&B.

The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich

I just finished reading Louise Erdrich’s latest and it did not disappoint. She did mention some of her previous characters in the novel: Fleur Pillager (I am not sure of the spelling) and decedents for one.

Faye Travers while appraising the estate of a family in a small New Hampshire town discovers a bunch of valuable Native American artifacts. She isn’t too surprised because the family is decedents of an Indian agent who worked on a ND Ojibwa reservation that is home to her mother’s family. She is surprised to find a a rare drum, made of a large moose skin stretched across a hollow of cedar. It has red tassels and other ornamentation and without touching the drum she hears a sound. From her discovery we trace the drum from ND to NH and back and the history of it told by Bernard Shawano, an Ojibwa whose grandfather fashioned the drum, and the reason for making it. He was grieving for a daughter who had been thrown off a wagon to the wolves to save the others on the wagon. I was disappointed when I read that because I have read that story before. However, the author admits that there are similar folk tales. One similar appears in Willa Cather’s My Antonia. I knew that I had read it someplace. The Chicago Tribune wrote that Erdrich writes with a warrior’s heart and a poet’s voice. I agree.

I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it. I know some of you have read The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse and Love Medicine. The author lives in Minnesota with her daughter.

I just finished reading Louise Erdrich’s latest and it did not disappoint. She did mention some of her previous characters in the novel: Fleur Pillager (I am not sure of the spelling) and descendents for one.

Faye Travers while appraising the estate of a family in a small New Hampshire town discovers a bunch of valuable Native American artifacts. She isn’t too surprised because the family is descendents of an Indian agent who worked on a ND Ojibwa reservation that is home to her mother’s family. She is surprised to find a a rare drum, made of a large moose skin stretched across a hollow of cedar. It has red tassels and other ornamentation and without touching the drum she hears a sound. From her discovery we trace the drum from ND to NH and back and the history of it told by Bernard Shawano, an Ojibwa whose grandfather fashioned the drum, and the reason for making it. He was grieving for a daughter who had been thrown off a wagon to the wolves to save the others on the wagon. I was disappointed when I read that because I have read that story before. However, the author admits that there are similar folk tales. One similar appears in Willa Cather’s My Antonia. I knew that I had read it someplace. The Chicago Tribune wrote that Erdrich writes with a warrior’s heart and a poet’s voice. I agree.

I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it. I know some of you have read The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse and Love Medicine. The author lives in Minnesota with her daughter.

I’m liking this blog more and more, altho it doesn’t spell much better than some of the other sites, truth to tell!

Thanks again, Darlyne and Jenny.

First, of all, I apologize, Jo, for posting this in the wrong category. Until you posted the notice, I hadn’t even seen the place where it says “write a new post”.

This book, “Our Endangered Values” by former President Jimmy Carter, is a must-read in my opinion. It is a small book (only 202 pages) but a very interesting and important book.

He talks about the environment, global warming, the AIDS crisis (especially in Africa) and about how our government is not doing all we should or even all we promised that we would do.

No matter what your political beliefs or how you feel about the government, I think this is a book that should be read.

I hope our group chooses it because I would love to read the discussion here about the issues in the book.

Judith

CRS…BIG Time…I forgot to say that Vonnegut’s new book is “A Man Without a Country”.
Jerry

I hope you will all come into THIS area (under Post Categories) to write your reviews of our monthly ROMs. This would be the place to go if someone is looking at the ROM list and wonders what we all thought about it. There may be a way to ‘file’ them in monthly files so we don’t have to go thru a gazillion posts to find a September review! (When we get there, that is.) By the way, THIS post is only to get the category on the home page and not hidden away.