Cammykitty returns to the 75ers - January

This is an old picture of me with a 6-week old Irish Water Spaniel puppy. I'm dog crazy. That's the first thing people seem to find out about me. The Irish Water Spaniel is my breed of choice; for those of you who don't know, they are Rastafarian poodles. Standard poodles 55 lbs or so. I own two, Wanda and Sage. Wanda recently was bred to Sage's brother Ghan, and had a litter of 5 grrls. One of the grrls, Bertie Bott, is living with me for awhile while her owner has back surgery. She's a breeder and is hoping I'll co-own Bertie, but geez! Three dogs! I'm afraid of becoming the dog version of the crazy cat lady! I don't think I could do justice to all three of the dogs.

For paying the bills (ha ha, bills? Need to be paid? I thought that was all a someday maybe sort of deal) Okay, as for what I do for work, I'm a paraprofessional at a very diverse "urban" middle school. We are actually in a suburb of Minneapolis, but I've been told our population and their income levels means the school is "urban." Wow, sounds like "urban" is code for underprivileged or something. I work with kids with disabilities to help them keep up with and participate in mainstream classes. Disabilities can be about anything, from ADHD and a little crazy to Autism Spectrum Disorder. I've done this for 10 years and love it, but to be honest I'll be looking for a career change this year. It's that bill thing. So if you see a job lead that looks like it makes adequate $ without requiring the sale of a soul - in the Minneapolis area - let me know. My other job is cashier at Goodwill, which is mostly fun. So the latest goodwill find, baked ham scented candles. No kidding. Blech!

As for reading, I read almost anything. Sometimes voraciously, sometimes not so much. I've also become a slightly impatient reader, liable to Pearl rule under 50 pages... and I've a year to go before I can start subtracting pages per Ms. Pearl. I read a lot of YA, fantasy and science fiction, but that is by no means all that I read. I also coach the school's Future Problem Solving team, so sometimes you'll see me researching madly some bizarre topic so I can help the kids solve problems in the year 2040. 2040 seems to be the year all the competition "fuzzies" for Future Problem Solving is set in. I also attend/speak at Diversicon every year, a convention dedicated to diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Last year's guest was Jessica Amanda Salmonson who was an absolute hoot. She is expert in the history of horror written by women and I have a few books she has either written or edited that I'm hoping to get to this year.

So, what do I plan to do with this thread. I plan to be active in the 75ers (we'll see. I never do get enough thread time) and have a new thread each month. Each month will have a theme that I will follow as strictly or as loosely as I choose. I've done the category thread for years, so this year we'll see. I may rebel against following monthly themes. That said, there are three categories I can't leave behind. I plan to read at least 5 books in each of these before the end of 2017. 1. Dog/Human behavior, 2. Reading around the world - this year's area is Southern Europe, 3. Books in the Spanish Language. A friend I met through LT and I are hoping on going to Argentina this summer and my Spanish is not bad but not good enough for getting lost in Argentina and finding my way again. Getting lost is easy. Finding your way again is a bit harder

So off to this month's theme!

In 1948, these people met in Paris with the United Nations to present The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Some of these rights seem very common sense, basic, but some of them are still radical concepts even today. I don't think there is even one nation in full compliance with all of them.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who was one of the writers of the UDHR, was a forward thinker and an idealist. She was both loved and loathed for her beliefs. Who would have thought human rights would be controversial? But they still are.

The kids at my school could tell you about that in the coming month. They are studying the UDHR, and will be picking a person who has fought for human rights to right a report on. They've already begun discussing them, talking about strikes and the local shooting of Philando Castille. They think everything is clear cut right now, but already are finding it isn't the case. For example, what we first showed them about Castille was that he was an African-American man killed by a white police officer, which wasn't the case. The officer was Latino, and there is very little about the case that is clear cut. I'm not saying there isn't a problem, but I am saying the kids have to dig deeper if they want to truly understand it. And I hope they do understand it because it's going to be up to them to fix the problems that we, the older folks, leave in our wake. Anyway, I want to join the kids in spirit at least. I'm not going to write a report on Huey Newton, but I am going to read books that illuminate issues around human rights.

So, more about my dogs. Yes, they are the center of the universe. And at the moment, they are destroying something in the living room. I'm pretty sure it's a cardboard box, but I should go look.



Yes, Bertie Bott was attempting to destroy a cardboard box but since she's little, there isn't much damage. Bertie Bott is the puppy. She's about 11 weeks old in this photo. This monday, I think she'll be 12 weeks. She's a temporary addition, spawn of Wanda. Wanda is the lovely Grrl in the back. Sage, or Uncle Sage to Bertie (literally, her father is his brother), is the one in the middle. Jerome, my SO, took the photo. He's a sweetie, but a bit fictionally challenged. All he reads are true crime books. ;)

Ongoing topics:
Animal/Human Behavior

1. Winter World
2.
3.
4.
5.

Possibles:

Believe it or not, I find this category a bit hard to fill up. I own tons of dog books, but I also am an assistant trainer at TCOTC, Twin Cities Obedience Training Club. A dog book for me is part going "yeah, yeah, I know," part "I disagree," and hopefully part "Oh, that's an interesting way to look at it" or "that's a good way to explain it to my students" or even "Wow, that's useful." In other words, I've read so many that it takes an unusual book to interest me. Yet, I feel I need to keep reading to keep up-to-date. Dog training is just like every field. It is constantly changing, and some of the changes are just stupid trends but some of it is real growth or break-throughs. So since I'm talking about reading so many dog books, I've got to put in a plug for my favorite, The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McConnell. It isn't so much a dog training book, but shows the communication necessary in good training. And also the common dog/human misunderstandings.

Ongoing Topics:
Southern European Authors
Authors from Italy, Andorra, Macedonia, Gibraltar, Greece, France, Spain, Portugal, Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

visited 45 states (20%)
Create your own visited map of The World
1. My Father's Books by Luan Starova Albania and Macedonia
2.
3.
4.
5.

Possibles:

Ongoing topics:
Books in the Spanish Language

1. Spanish-American Short Stories
2. Spanish-American Short Stories counts as two because time-consuming
3.
4.
5.

Possibles:

The image is Blacksad, a Spanish graphic novel originally published in France but set in the United States. Love it! But sadly, I've caught up with what is available in the US. I've heard rumors about another coming out though.

Short stories - I have tons and tons of collections of short stories and tend to read a few stories and then set the collection aside, so here's where I'm going to keep track of my short stories because otherwise I'll have no clue. My brother would say "So what's new" but he doesn't know where to find me on LT, so I don't have to stick out my tongue and give him a raspberry back for that would-be comment.

The Weird Compendium
The Town of Cats by Hagiwara Sakutaro
The Tarn

Long Hidden
The Witch of Tarup
Marigolds
Diyu

TIOLI - Yup, this is my space for the Take it or Leave it, if I decide to take it.
#12 I am Malala
#12 20 years at Hull House
#13 Winter World

Possible group or team reads:
February Nights at the Circus with Berly

Katie - how wonderful to see you back and so energised. I am doing a challenge for Around the World in 80 Books which is basically reading a book written by writers from 80 different nation states outsidre the UK/US which is my normal comfort zone.

I think I should therefore be able to chime in with your Southern European Writers challenge at least once or twice.

Hi Paul - energized for now! Its easy to have energy and lots of plans during Winter break. Yes, it would be nice to share ideas on Southern Europe, and I'm going to try to focus on the smaller countries that will be harder to find. I've read Italian, Spanish, French and Greek authors before, granted only Ancient Greek, so I'm going to try for the others like Andorra etc. So, is the Around the World challenge supposed to take place in only a year? You could do that, but I wouldn't get past the first continent.

Hi Katie
I am Anita, a major dog lover like you are. My husband and me used to own and breed smooth Chow Chows, but because of health decline we live with a Pekingese male now. We lost our last Chow Chow in August.
I haven't been active in the 75 challenge for some years and returned last year.

>1 cammykitty: My sister used to have an Irish Water Spaniel years and years ago - she was a lovely dog.

>4 cammykitty: Have you read John Bradshaw's In Defence of Dogs? That's the best book on the topic that I've come across. (Looks like it might be called Dog Sense in the US).

Welcome back!

Anita - So sorry about your Chow Chow! I'm sure you made a great life for him, but yes, I'm sure a Peki is much easier in some ways. Certainly not as active a breed! I'm sure we're going to have a good year swapping dog stories this year.

SandDune - LOL! So you know the bog dog! My automatic reaction was "what's your sister's name?" because now that we've got fb, it seems like all the IWS owners in the world know each other. Although if it was years ago in the UK, probably not. I haven't heard of John Bradshaw so I'll definitely look for that book.

& Dr Neutron, thanks for stopping by and of course for keeping this group going!

----

So, today - took Wanda and Bertie to the vet. Poor Bertie drools so bad she starts looking like the bubble-machine on Lawrence Welk when she has to go into a car. Got to work on that. Neither were happy to be there, but it was pretty painless. Wanda just had to have her heart listened too for the health registry and Bertie had to get one shot. Then Sage and I tried to go to Home Depot, but note to self, they may be "dog friendly" but they aren't dog friendly. Back-up beepers and loud bangs everywhere in the store. Sage made a not-so-graceful exit and return to the car. Then I stocked up on towels and sheets at Goodwill for Bertie's crate, came home and started reading These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas which I quite like so far. It's a memoir of a Newyorican boy during the 40s.

So what can I do today to avoid working on the house? Read of course... And I took Bertie and Wanda with me to Walgreens and we made one woman's day. She was older and had just lost her 19 year old poodle. She made much over Bertie. And it made me start thinking again about that half-formed idea I've had for awhile about having small dogs stay with elderly people during the day while their owners are at work... or a volunteer pet services group that helps elderly people take care of their pets. Being a dog person, I dread the day when I won't be well enough to take care of a dog because frankly I don't know if my sanity could take that.

Those are great ideas, Katie, I dread that day too. The Chow Chows are now too strong for us, I barely could hold our last one when she saw a cat... I have seen too many people taking a large dog again, because they were used to large dogs, even if they could not handle them anymore.

Anita, I know. At least I can ramp down my breed size a little. The American Water Spaniel is similar but smaller, but even an American would be too much for someone in poor health to take care of alone. They are active dogs even if they are smaller, and even a 15 lb dog can pull someone down if they are walking on an icy sidewalk. I wish I had more time, or less need to make a living! But when I worked at a Doggy Daycare (which made me uncomfortable. it wasn't run in a way that I thought was always best for the dogs.) we had Minn Pinns and Chihuahuas come in regularly even though they obviously hated it there. They wanted to be on someone's lap all day, or to have a quiet spot in a patch of sun. Instead they were surrounded by young, busy dogs. Those dogs would have been much happier visiting "Grandma."

It's winter break and I'm turning nocturnal so...
A look at These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - through pg 104

Violations:
Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. It's a quarrelsome brotherhood at best. Everyone is a spic, wap, blanca or paddy. Paddy seems to be used as an all inclusive term for whites, irregardless of national origin. It does recognize gender though. Paddies are male. Blancas are female.

Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Life and liberty sure, but if you move into a new neighborhood you better be ready to prove yourself. With your fists or choice of weapons. Once you're known as tough, everything will be okay. You may have to go to the hospital first, though.

Article 23, item 1: Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Piri and his white friend both apply for a job as a commissioned door-to-door salesperson. Piri is asked all sorts of questions that wouldn't be allowed in an interview today. What religion are you? Catholic? Oh, what church? Do you know Father so-and-so? His interview lasts for a long time but he's told, no we don't need salespeople in Harlem. You'd have an area assigned to you. An area may be opening up in a few weeks so leave your phone number. His white friend goes in and in three minutes, has a job and starts training on Monday. They go to the front doors of the company and interview people coming out. White people are starting on Monday. Black people had to leave their phone numbers for when a territory opened up.

Article 26, items 1 and 2: Everyone has the right to education...Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms... This is a tough one. Piri doesn't say too much about his education, but he does say he made it a habit to sneak out of class. He obviously enjoyed amusing the class by being bad. Not the kind of student every teacher loves. So by the time he is seventeen, he has dropped out of school. Yes, he threw away a chance to become a high school graduate and that's on him. However, I think if we took a look at teaching practices in New York schools during the 40s, we'd find they fell short in engaging the kids, especially ones of color. Not to mean this is a dated problem. At the school I teach, we certainly have students very much like Piri was. They cut class. They are disrespectful toward the teacher. They fight with other students. They talk in raps and don't care if their rap is appropriate or not. They don't trust any adult. Part of that is being a young person in this world. Part of it is a failure of education. How do you get past that?

Article 27, item 1: Everyone has the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. This is kind of a tricky one. What is freely participating? Does that mean all movies, museums etc should be free? Affordable? Even without going that far though, I think it's clear that Piri's identity as a black Puerto Rican damaged his ability to participate in the cultural life of the community. While living on Long Island, he went to a school that was "mostly Paddies" and attended a dance there. He had just moved to the area so didn't know the ins and outs of the social life there. He made the mistake of asking a blanca to dance. She was nice to him but told him her boyfriend was very jealous. She'd have to say no. Once he walked away, he heard them talking and it was terribly racist. Basically they thought he had some nerve asking a white girl to dance. Piri tells the story much better than I do, with the emotions included. It would be worth it to get a copy and read this scene, although most of you have been to high school and most of you can imagine it. High school isn't exactly the world as the United Nations envisioned it.

I am part of the group.
I love being part of the group.
I love the friendships bestowed upon my by dint of my membership of this wonderful fellowship.
I love that race and creed and gender and age and sexuality and nationality make absolutely no difference to our being a valued member of the group.

Thank you for also being part of the group.

Katie, your thread looks great! I'll be following, even if (mostly) lurking.

A happy, healthy, and safe 2017!

>16 cammykitty: My automatic reaction was "what's your sister's name?" because now that we've got fb, it seems like all the IWS owners in the world know each other.
It was a long time ago - probably 25-30 years ago thinking about it - but she was the only Irish Water Spaniel I've ever come across in real life. My sister doesn't have any dogs or cats now - she's allergic to them, and an afternoon in our house is enough to get her sneezing constantly. Turns out that she'd always been allergic to them but because she'd never lived in a house without them (and she was allergic to quite a lot of things) she'd never actually noticed.

Happy New Year, Katie. Maybe we'll see each other in 2017.

Hi, Katie! I'm a dog person, myself - if I could, I'd have 10 or so! As it is, we have two...

Rhian - Yup, IWS are pretty rare. I heard once that a reporter for the American Kennel Club went to Ireland to write about the IWS in its native land and had trouble finding one. He even went to a pet store and was told "they aren't pets." Meaning they are a working dog that didn't come into the house. To bad about your sister's allergies!

Hi Gail, Beth and Amber! Thanks for stopping by. Lurking is good. Glad to know people lurk. & Beth, yes. There are plenty of bookstores in Minnesota that we need to visit! Maybe we can convince Berly to visit again so we have a reason. Amber, I'm beginning to be afraid I'm going to have three! I'd love to have three or ten or... except I feel I can't be fair to all of them! But two is a great number. They keep each other company, when they aren't squabbling like siblings!

Hi Katie! Happy New Year! >17 cammykitty: I like your ideas about pets and older people. I'm fairly new to dog ownership, but now that I've had Adrian for 3+ years, I can't imagine life without a dog. I will always have small dogs. Adrian is 15 lbs and very strong with it, and he's as much as I can comfortably handle.

I can't imagine life without dogs either but MrMorphy is getting tired of taking care of them and I'm too disabled to. I'm afraid Maia might be our last which makes me very sad.

Happy New Year, Katie! I am glad you are back.

Hi Katie, thank you so much for stopping by my thread. I am looking forward to following your reading and anything else that may be posted here, including any antics your lovely dogs may get up to!

Relying on my Irish heritage to leave you the following Happy New Year wishes:

Katie, I love your idea for seniors to dogsit during the day while their owners are at work. Seems like it would be a wonderful thing for all three parties. We may be on our last dog. Lucky is our rescue Lab who adopted us over 12 years ago. We think he was around 2 at the time. I don't think it would be fair to adopt another dog in our 70s but I would love a daytime companion. I may reach out to my neighbors when the sad day we lose our Luck comes.

Happy New Year...and please keep up your thread so I can find out about all the cool stuff at Goodwill. Lol

Hi Carrie, Morphy, Rhonda, Kim and Lori! Thanks for stopping by. Wanda is helping me (not) type this and she says hello too. She's got her paws on my arm, which is better than paws on the keyboard. & yes, it's good to be back.

The dog&elderly project is one that makes me feel guilty. I don't have time for it right now but really feel it needs to be done! I guess when I retire.

Thanks Berly for the wine! Let's see if we can stretch the New Years partying out for days!

Lori, love the blessing. If you hadn't guessed it, I've got a large dose of Irish heritage too.

I'm still reading Piri Thomas' memoir Down These Mean Streets and loving it but hating him. What can I say? He's dealing heroin to feed his addiction. Then, he decides he has to quit so a friend, who is also a dealer, takes him to his mother who has gotten a lot of people through their addictions. They basically lock him up for a few days and he goes cold turkey. Meanwhile, his friend won't supply him but he's supplying countless others, and presumably the mother knows what he's doing. That's just messed up, as the kids would say. He's a fighter, but I don't mean a won't quit kind of personality. I mean physical, blood letting fights with his coworkers, brother, dad, and girlfriend. In her case, he calls it "beating her up for money."

As for racism, it's all over the book. Especially once he grows up a little and moves out of the barrio. But he pushed my buttons there. I'm used to being referred to as "white," "honky" or "cracker" and those don't phase me but his racial epithet of choice is "Paddy." That one makes my blood boil because I know about the Irish mining camp in the US that some anthropologists found about ten years ago. They'd all been slaughtered. I know the term Paddy was used in sentences like "Just bury them. We'll get some more. They're just Paddies" by the people building railroads across our country. And he's using the term Paddy to refer to the people who were killing the Irish as well as to refer to the Irish. Did he do this deliberately? Did the author pick the one term I'm not used to to make me mad?

Two things, maybe three, are getting me through the book. One, it's like watching a train wreck. Two, it has a cynical sense of humor. Three, despite all this I can see some humanity in Piri and understand why he does what he does. There is hope for redemption for him. After all, I can find his author pic on the internet and he looks like someone you might want to talk to.

I admire your perseverance. I don't know that I could get through this one.

Happy New Year to you, Katie! Good luck with your career change -- stupid bills :( Do you think you may stay in education?

Happy New Year! (dropping a star)

Happy New Year, Katie! Sorry for the late greeting, but I've finally finished with my Christmas and New Year's Day work stretch and now have time to make the rounds.

Interesting comments about Down These Mean Streets. I can't remember if I've read it before, but I've certainly heard of it, and I may have read it when I was in high school (not for English class, needless to say).

Dropping a star and wishing you a great year of reading!

Thanks for stopping by and Mall the New Years wishes!

Gail, I've actually enjoyed Down These Mean Streets quite a bit. It's just been uncomfortable pulling for Piri because he's made so many wrong choices, to put it mildly and in school talk. It's kind of like reading Manhunt: The 12-day Chase for Lincoln's Killer and finding yourself pulling for Booth. Yuk! But it happens because we're used to reading for a protagonist so even when there isn't much "pro" about the person, you still want things to work out for them... usually. When I was reading Manhunt, I'd caught myself and remembered that JWB was a real person and a right bastard to boot so when he died, I didn't weep for him.

Anne - Thanks for wishing me luck! I need to remember to make it happen! I like what I'm doing, so it's hard to get motivated and make it change. Although I hadn't been at work for a whole hour yet when I was called an f-ing female dog today. Gotta laugh!

Roni - what a shiny star!

Darryl - I'll bet you were busy!!! Thanks for doing the work you do, and keeping your compassion. I think you'd like Down These Mean Streets, but yes, I can't see many high school English classes wanting to take it on, even though classes are more daring now than they used to be.

RP - Good to see you! Are you doing both the 75ers and the Category challenge? I went back and looked at the Cat threads today and I miss you guys!

_____

General advice for the day. Ya know how they say not to go grocery shopping when your hungry? Well, don't go shopping when you're cold either. It's 3*F here, which for you Celsius people is way colder than 0*C. I went to Costco for dog food, and came home with kleenex, 6 pairs of wool socks, a pair of furry boots, a king-size blanket and two thermal tea/coffee/water bottles. At least I remembered the dog food.

15 pages from the end of Down These Mean Streets and what better thing to do than read with three dogs in the bed on a night like tonight. Hopefully, I'll have some closing comments on it tomorrow and will have started I am Malala.

>41 cammykitty: Yeah, we can't go into Costco without dropping some serious dollars.

>41 cammykitty: I'm doing the Category Challenge and the ROOTS (read our own tomes) challenge. :)

Reading in bed with three dogs sounds cosy indeed!

Jim, I don't know how they do it! It's like they shake ya down and then stuff so much stuff in your cart that it can't possibly fit in the refrigerator, and then you go home thinking you got such good deals!

RP - I was in the ROOTS challenge my first year. I don't think I was any more successful then than I am now! I was going to try to be really good about reading my own books this year, but I'm already starting off bad. It looks okay because book 1 is from my shelves, but books 3 and 4 will not be for sure. Who knows about 5, and at this rate I'll never deal with the books I already own.

#1
#1
Book 1, off-shelf #1 Down These Mean Streets
I sort of feel I'm getting into the spoiler zone, but a lot of what happens you can figure out by the table of contents. "Prison" Yup, you can guess he goes to prison. He also managed to publish this book, so it's a pretty good guess that he turns his life around. The book has been available for 40 years now. Pretty impressive! Happy 40th Publication Anniversary, Piri Thomas! Yes, I would highly recommend this book... but not to a middle schooler. It has a few similarities with the Autobiography of Malcolm X which might make you careful about the maturity level of the reader, including what to do with nutmeg.

As for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Piri benefits from Article 10 "fair and public hearing" and Article 11, #1 "Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense." These human rights probably saved his life. He was pretty young when he went in, so perhaps maturity would have straightened him out but it is also possible that he needed a time when he was forced to stop what he was doing combined with help from some of the people around him.

You gotta start with one, right? My first was a library book. From my library, but I can't exactly count it as my own.

Don't go shopping when it's cold -- good advice! LOL. I decided I had probably better shop yesterday as the snow started coming down hard. My and pretty much every other human who lives in my zip code!

Anne - you've got a point! And at least book 3 and 4 are going to be library books. Book 2 is an audio book Mostly Harmless. 3 is I am Malala. If I can maintain 50%, it's an improvement over past years.

Stay warm! Glad you've got the blizzard rations stocked up yesterday! And why is it that when it is snowing horribly outside, I get this sudden and strong urge to order pizza delivered. Humanity usually takes over and I resist, but... it... is... so... hard...

I made the jambalaya recipe Darryl shared a couple of years ago tonight -- perfect for a snowy night. But without I might have gone the pizza route!

FYI, the kids will be in book groups reading Fiction/memoirs involving a "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" issue. Perhaps we're not doing the reports this year. I don't know. The report list was an odd mix of Human Rights and Black History month. It included James Brown, which was awkward. I remember helping a kid do a report on James Brown and he found out about some of his domestic issues. The kid's parents were going through a divorce at the time, and it hit a little too close to home. He went from being really excited about James Brown to telling me "He wasn't a very nice man." Sigh...

So, here are the books they are choosing from. We're talking 6th grade, so about 11 years old.
The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano which I'm excited about because it is about El Barrio, which is where Piri Thomas grew up. It is also written by Sonia Manzano, better known as Maria from Sesame Street.
Audacity by Melanie Crowder written in verse
Hidden Girl by Shyima Hall a memoir about child slavery
Crossing the Wire by Will Hobbs which we used to read together as a class. Most of the kids liked it.
New Boy by Julian Houston which may be the choice of the girl I work most closely with, so I may be trying to crash read this one so I can help her better.
Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals - a memoir from the Little Rock 9
The Skin I'm In by Sharon Flake
Out of my Mind by Sharon Draper which may be interesting because it is about a girl with a disability that affects her speech. I haven't read it, but I suspect it is talking about Cerebral Palsy and we have a boy in the school with that particular disability so I'm hoping some of the kids can make connections about it. He isn't in their grade so I'm not sure how many of them know him. And yes, he "speaks" with a computer. He types in what he wants to say and the computer speaks it for him. It's kind of cool. And he's a generally happy kid.

Mmmmm - Jambalaya!!! I need to do some creole cooking!!!

Looking at it hurts! Cuz I know it isn't really in the house.

The Pearl rule was a new one on me but Google turned it up. I like the idea.

Anyway, dropping my star here and looking forward to seeing what you are reading.

>48 AMQS: Thanks for the reminder, Anne! I haven't made jambalaya in several months.

>50 cammykitty: Let me know if you'd like the recipe for chicken and Andouille sausage Creole jambalaya, Katie. IIRC it's one of the first recipes in the 2014 or 2015 version of The Kitchen in the 75 Books group.

I like seeing what your kids are reading. Thanks for sharing! I haven't read any of them but Out of my Mind looks interesting.

Happy New Year, Katie! Your chosen categories are very interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with for each of them.

>51 sirfurboy: sirfurboy - yes, the Pearl rule is very useful! Thanks for stopping by. I'll be looking forward to your thread too!

Puppy in the morning. Its so cute. I'm making noises at the computer and she's poking my nose to see what's wrong.

>52 kidzdoc: Darryl I've got a new crock pot/pressure cooker to try out and Jambalaya would be perfect for that. As long as the recipe doesn't have shrimp in it (allergies), I'd love to have it.

>53 Morphidae: Morphy, doesn't it though! I haven't seen a YA author tackle someone who is non-verbal before as a protagonist. Closest I've read is Marcello in the Real World and he isn't non-verbal. He's Autistic, and high functioning. I think it's important for people to remember that a person can be non-verbal and still have a very active mind.

54> Thanks Rosalita! For me, this isn't categories at all! I usually have at least 10 categories. The Southern Europe ones might be the hardest to find because I'm going to try to represent some of the smaller countries.

#2

Book 2, off-shelf #2 Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

Mostly Harmless is the last of the Hitchhiker's Guide series. So you're thinking, how is she going to fit this in with the Universal Declaration of Sentient Beings' Rights? Easy. Article 13, 2 Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. In Adams' Universe, there is incredible freedom of movement. There are no green cards, no refugee camps. If you want to move, you just go to some planet where they might think you're weird, but you may find a special niche market because of it. Problem is, Arthur can't return to his country. He can't even return to his planet, because as most of you know, Earth was demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. He spends much of this book bopping around alternate Earth's trying to find one that feels like home.

This is my least favorite of the series. Zaphod doesn't show up except in passing mentions, and we lose an important character in a rather bizarre and flippant manner. Also, the story line doesn't feel like it holds together with a logic of its own. Yes, I said "logic." The others aren't logical, but they make sense in their own weird way. This one, not so much. I'm sure I'll read it again and maybe it will start hanging together for me, but I'll never be as fond of it as of the others... although we do find out what happens to the crazy being that Arthur met in its last life in a cave. Poor sot.

>50 cammykitty: Jambalaya looking good Katie.

I haven't read anything by Douglas Adams and I really ought to correct that before my bookcases are demolished for a inter-site by-pass.

Paul, yes you should. At least the first one. And it might explain US politics at the same time.

I've been really bad today. All I've done is read I am Malala which is interesting and feeding the washer and dryer. I've folded a few towels but not nearly enough stuff has been put away. And in the news, I see they are calling for a US wide gender-based strike to dishonor Trump's inauguration. No women are supposed to engage in paid or domestic work for a day or two. Now what will that prove? So the kids at school won't learn anything that day and I live alone, so my cooking and my cleaning won't be done. So what's different? (Sorry, couldn't resist the snark.)

And, again, all it would hurt would be the poor. You know, the ones who need the help the most. The ones leading this have to be middle class or higher. It doesn't make sense.

Hi Katie, I've tracked you down and left a star so I can keep up with you in 2017!

Hi Katie - You have some interesting reading going on here. How many books are there in the Hitchhiker's Guide series? I've only read the first one...

59> Morphy, so right. I don't want to go without a day's pay to send a message to Trump that he'll ignore.Now, if we could get Melania to agree to a Lysistrata-style strike...
Judy!!! Good to see you! I'm missing everybody over at the Category group!
Hi Beth, There were 4 of the Hitchhiker's Guide books written in the late 70s, early 80s and then Mostly Harmless came along 10 years later. The first three Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Restaurant at the End of the Universe and Life the Universe and Everything feel like a complete trilogy. Then So Long and Thanks for all the Fish does a few world changes and adds some new characters, so it goes along with the series but doesn't feel as integral to it. Mostly Harmless has quite a few new characters and a few new world building rules, so it doesn't really feel like it belongs to me, but then again I've read/heard all the others multiple times and Mostly Harmless only once. Perhaps it will grow on me. The best thing about Mostly Harmless is the return of the Vogons, although we don't hear any more of their poetry, alas.

I've got 3 chapters left of I am Malala and probably not enough time to finish it before bedtime. Shoot! As for the books the kids are reading, the neediest group will be reading New Boy so I'm assuming I will be too. We aren't finishing it until sometime in March though. I hate dragging a book out for that long! But some of the kids read really slowly. I'm afraid it may be a bit over their reading levels. It is one of the longer books, but they were interested in the topic. So, we'll get them through it somehow.

#3 I finished I am Malala and enjoyed it, if enjoy is the right word for such a horrific story, quite a bit. Of course, by now you all know Malala was the schoolgirl shot by the Taliban for going to school. She was a bit more political than "just" a schoolgirl. She was the daughter of the school's founder, and both she and her father were outspoken advocates for female education far before the Taliban ever plotted to kill her. To kill them both, actually. Some family friends had been killed before she was shot and they knew she was on a hit list, but didn't believe the Taliban would actually attack a girl.

So, the main UDHR issues that Malala fights for are first education for women, and second career options for women. As she herself says, her shooting changed her from a local advocate to a global one. And yes, she is working on this very passionately and has the Malala Foundation to help her bring safe education to girls all around the world. Yeah! It's great to read a book that not only is a witness to the abuses, but also offers some solutions.

As for the Human Righs abuses that the Taliban are guilty off, Articles 1 through 30? Seriously, I'll bet someone who knew the Taliban well could find an example of a violation for almost all of these. Maybe not #15 Everyone has a right to a nationality, but maybe. After all, they made several people become refugees in their own homeland.

--------

And on a lighter note
Dangnabit! Bertie has a taste for books! She just took a chomp out of Seed to Harvest by Octavia Butler and I was just thinking how beautifully smooth all the pages were and what nice shape the book was in, even though I've been reading it off and on for years. Free puppy? Nah, I'll forgive Bertie... but yes, we've got a training issue. This is the second book she has savaged.

I just read my first Douglas Adams book last year -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy narrated by Stephen Fry. So much fun, but I think I could be done:)

Anne, the audio books are the way to go. Stephen Fry does the first and "Arthur Dent" does the others, aka Martin Freeman. But Adams does have a pattern to his humor, so it can get to be "enough for now." That's why I read the first three about when they came out and waited 20 or so years for the next one.

So, apologies in advance. I promised myself I wasn't going to post anything overtly political, covertly yes, tons. Overtly no,,, but the news just... like Lewis Black says, his job is to make the news funny and with the way headlines are going these days, he'll be out of a job.

So, the New York Times is saying that the part left out of the public-consumption report on Russian interference was some very salacious intelligence on Trump. Come on. We didn't need spies to tell us that he was way more salacious than a President should be.

Next, there's a photo of an angry congressmen with the headline "if Russia has blackmail on Trump, we have the right to know!" Well, the thing about blackmail is that it isn't blackmail anymore if everyone knows. Next, according to Snopes the rumor going around that Trump was blackmailed is unconfirmed. So, think about it... We're talking about Trump... and blackmail... In order for blackmail to work, Trump would have to think the Russians could prove something. How many times have we seen him deny doing something and then the news source shows a clip of him doing what he denied? I don't care what the Russians got, Trump would deny it a lot sooner than he would cough up $. "Photoshopped" and "they couldn't afford Alec Baldwin for the video, so they got Ivan." If they really annoyed him, he'd send his lawyers after them. That's what he does when people say something about him, true or not, that he doesn't like. If the Russians really have something on him, we'll find out eventually and it will be gooooood, and it will be something no one will want to explain to a middle schooler.

>63 cammykitty: I have lost some books to puppy teeth though the years... Always blaming myself for not properly putting away the book!

>66 cammykitty: Oh my

>67 FAMeulstee:, but Anita, she chomps in if you put the book down for a second! She's voracious!

So today, I started reading New Boy to my middle school group of three and got sick of defining words for them so I actually started dropping words out - His long, aquiline nose just became his long nose... I think I'm going to read ahead and finish the book fairly soon because obviously I'll be simplifying as we go.

>69 cammykitty: Your touchstone seems to link to Treasure Island! Is this New Boy by William Sutcliffe ? If so, I read that a while ago and quite liked it. Also I can't seem to get the right touchstone to work either.

Ha! Some of the touchstones are really weird, Fur. I fixed it, I think. It's New Boy by Julian Houston. It's really good so far but one of my kids is either not listening or it's way way over her head because I'm asking questions like "What do the other kids think of Vinnie" - Answer, they're being appallingly "racist" towards him because he is an Italian-American and she said "I don't know. That he's nice" but one of the boys rescued me and said "They're bullying him." It's going to be interesting seeing a book on an only African-American in a school who is doing better blending in than a "white" person, but I expect it's going to get ugly. What is New Boy by William Sutcliffe about. Sutcliffe comes up as Herman Melville! LOL. Really weird touchstone.

>71 cammykitty: Ah ok, different books then, although yours sounds interesting.

William Sutcliffe's book is about a Jewish boy who transfers to a school in north west London, about his struggles to fit in and his teenage infatuations. In that it has some similarities to Adrian Mole, although the humour and style is different. There is also a nice touch in which the book manages to defy expectations about a book defying expectations about teenage sexuality.

It was not my favourite work by this author. I much preferred his wonderful Bad Influence , so if you are thinking of trying this author my recommendation would be to read that book rather than New Boy. All the same, he is an accomplished writer and different people will enjoy different things so your mileage may vary.

>72 sirfurboy: Bad Influence is on the Wishlist now! Unfortunately, the wishlist is a mile long so it may not happen soon, but it looks good! And it's a fairly new book, which is a plus too.

So, the weekend update. Bertie is at puppy camp. She's staying with a teacher that I work with. He's really a cool person. He's our media teacher, really up to date on all things tech, and really a creative teacher. He also taught special ed for years so he's rock solid and patient. Anyway, their family lost their 12 year old lab on New Years so they needed a puppy fix. I checked with them yesterday and Bertie was down for a nap because she'd exhausted herself playing with the kids. I'm kind of hoping that they will fall in love with her and that we can work it out with the breeder so they can co-own her. That would be a win for everyone because she'd have a perfect home and she'd be close enough that I and the breeder can visit her. Wanda seems to be a little worried about her. My two will miss her, but I still don't feel I can do justice to three dogs.

On the reading front, I've got 75 pages left of Octavia Butler's Patternmaster. I've read Clay's Ark, but unfortunately don't remember it well, so if anyone else is reading the Seed to Harvest series, my recommendation is to read them a little closer together! I remember Clay's Ark as being a little like a post-apacolyptic novel in feel, even though it isn't. With a bit of 60s feel, communes, but gone real bad and violent and I remember a massacre. But that's what's still in my brain about it and either she has allowed those people to evolve quite a bit between books (which is quite possible) or I've forgotten some key details. Patternmaster is quite gritty, as Butler usually is. For you people who have just read Kindred, you have no idea how masterful Butler is at making the reader uncomfortable.

Back to dogs, I've just had Brown Cow yogurt for breakfast (fully fatted, better than ice cream in the winter!) and the dogs are waiting to see who gets the container. Sage was already naughty and snuck a lick when I came in from outside. Can't really blame him. Hard to resist.

Other reading, a friend of mine is planning on doing a self-taught study on the Jazz Age this year. My reaction was blah - not into Hemingway or F Scott etc - but the books she has picked are mostly by the women, and are a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and include a lot of authors I haven't heard of so I'll be happy to help her. I've picked out a book by Jane Addams about Hull-House to start with, which fits under the TIOLI of book by a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I'm running into trouble lately of having too many books that I want to fit into January. And I already know my February theme but have no idea what books will go with it.

Katie--Good luck with the puppy sharing! And I read I am Malala last year and really appreciated her story. Nice review.

Thanks for stopping by, Kim! Bertie did great at puppy camp. She played non-stop and even went sledding but they handed her back to me saying "We love her, but we're not ready for a puppy." Hah!

>76 cammykitty: Sorry the puppy plan did not work out, Katie, three dogs is more than a handfull, I know. That is why we keep it at one for now ;-)

I wish we could have two dogs, much less three. But Maia is Queen Bitch and won't put up with another dog in the household. We've always had an older dog and a younger dog, but she gave Tawnie (our older dog when Maia was brought in as a puppy) such an awful time, that we decided to wait. Now MrMorphy is muttering about not wanting another dog. Eek! I don't want to be a dogless household!

Thanks Anita and Morphy. One of the kids at school has very seriously told me he will help me with my puppy and he will take her as soon as they get a house. ... He's a recent immigrant from Jordan and I'm sure this wasn't cleared with his parents! And he didn't realize that I don't live within walking distance of him. So, probably no. Very sweet offer though.

Eventually, we'll figure out Bertie's situation but I want to keep her until she's done with Tweeners class (socialization). Which is another 2 to 3 weeks. Her owner is gong to meet me at Tweeners class tomorrow, so I'll have a chance to ask her what kind of home she's hoping to get for Bertie and where she has been/is willing to look. We were both a little bummed that my teacher friend didn't totally fall in love with her, but if it wasn't meant to be, better to know that right away. Morphy, I know what you mean! Hopefully, Lady Maia intends to stay on this planet quite a few more years and will change his mind.

#4

Book 4, off-shelf #3 Patternmaster by Octavia Butler

I finished reading Seed to Harvest before Bertie could finish eating it! Wild Seed was my introduction to Butler, and as for the novels, is still my favorite. But that was years ago, so like me with any series, it has taken a long time for me to read this series. As with most of her writing, she is exploring forms of power and coercion in both political and private matters. This one is typical Butler in that it is not a comfortable read. The world and the way it works is clearly presented, complete with rules that have developed over the time of the series. You understand why these rules exist, but I don't think any of us would be happy following them. As for the main powers/characters in Patternmaster, Rayal, Coransee and Teray, you find yourself hoping one of them in particular will come out on top... but with the uncomfortable feeling that he might not be much better than the others and that you might not like him if you knew him. He certainly makes several decisions I am uncomfortable with, and a few that he is uncomfortable with. Yet it is not a story about power corrupting. If anything, it's about the intersection of power and necessity.

So, the UDHR on this one:
Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. No. There are at least three types of "human beings" in Patternmaster. One is nearly feral. One is called "mute" and are viewed almost on the level of livestock. They can easily be controlled by a patternmaster and even have one patternmaster assigned to oversee their duties and wellbeing. Then you have patternmasters, who are further broken down into various classes including "outsiders."

Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration... ha ha ha

Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. if you are the person with the most power in any given situation.

Article 4: No one shall be held in slavery... Butler never uses the word slavery, but the mutes are certainly in a condition of slavery. The outsiders can be bartered or sold, controlled. In Wild Seed, her main character comes to the United States on a slave ship so it is naive to say that Butler was not exploring the loss of power alongside of power.

Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. I won't give you spoilers here, but Coransee is the master of degradation.

Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy... So what does arbitrary mean? The main means of power in Patternmaster inherently involves a breach of privacy. Whether it is given up willingly or not is the question.

Article 13: Everyone has the right to freedom of movemet and residence within the borders of each State if you own your own house. If you are a mute or an outsider, you better stay where you were told.

Article 16: (1) Men and women of full age... have the right to marry and to found a family. Nope. Your housemaster can determine who you marry or mate with, and control when or if you have offspring. Sounds like slavery?

Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion... But a patternmaster more powerful than you can easily read your thoughts and make you pay for them.

Not all 30 of the UDHR rights are violated. Some of them just don't apply. So, anyone still want to be a patternmaster? Is that a special super power that still looks worth having if others have it to?

>79 cammykitty: We can hope. She has a heart murmur and enlarged heart so to be honest, it's a day to day thing. We could have her for years... or not. And, unfortunately, the older she gets, the crankier she gets. She is *not helping* with my intent of getting a new dog. Though we both agree NO PUPPIES. We've done the puppy thing twice and 1) we're done now and 2) we're too old for that sh**. :D

>80 cammykitty: and sh** it is! Lots of it. Poor thing. I understand getting old and cranky.

So the next book started is Winter World about animals surviving in the winter - for hibernator's TIOLI. So do you think I can apply a Universal Declaration to them? All animals have the right to food, shelter and... I don't think they want clothing?

>81 Morphidae: Hahaha and it is literally all that sh** isn't it?

I will reacquaint myself with that pleasure at some point this year as I intend to introduce a puppy into our family when we move back to the UK. Belle will definitely cherish one. I am thinking spaniel - either English or Welsh Springer.

Have a glorious weekend, Katie

Thanks Paul! Spaniels are awesome. Right now, the puppy failed to do it's business outside, meaning business is still left to be done, so I'm not going to be foolish now. She's hanging out in her crate for another 15 minutes and then I'll take her out again. Dang, it's tiring! For me. She never tires.

January 21 and the United States hasn't gone up in a puff of smoke. Phew! And the North Koreans didn't celebrate our poorly attended presidential (gasp, that hurts to say) inauguration with a missile or two as they had suggested. Once again, phew. One of my teacher friends said the speech tried to include all people and therefore took the right tone, but must have slept through this comment: "an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge." Where is that cash? I haven't seen it? And from what I've heard, the US has promised $ for special education for at least a decade but has only delivered a fraction of what was promised. So enough politics...

It is my Birthday!!! I'm entering my second half-century of life! I'm 50 + 1! And I've decided to start lying about my age. Next year I'll be 50 again.

Happy first anniversary of your 50th birthday!

#5

Book 4, off-shelf #4 Twenty Years at Hull House by Jane Addams

My next book is by the 1931 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Jane Addams. She is best known as the co-founder of Hull House but is also the co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization I am thankful for and will have lots of work to do in the next four years.



Jane Addams was the daughter of a Quaker, and the first quarter of the book talks about this and her great admiration for her father. This Quaker upbringing is probably why she was able to stay humble, yet accomplish so much while being inclusive and honoring diversity before the word "diversity" came to be used as it is today. Twenty Years at Hull House isn't written in the most riveting style. The personal tales she tells are fascinating but few, because they are told about others. I'm sure she could have written an entire book on the personal struggles of the people she met through Hull House, yet didn't because she was respecting people's privacy.

Hull House began simply. It's first goal was to feed a poor Chicago neighborhood full of immigrants from all over the world. It grew organically, responding to the neighborhoods needs. First it was food, then it was space to gather and have fun. Soon they added programs, English language classes, a library, a theater where each culture put on their own plays in their own language, advocacy for worker's rights, work training programs, day care. It was amazing, and a place that we could still use today and hopefully will need because of the (Ahem, Trump I hope you are listening) refugees the US will need to take from Syria, possibly Venezuela, and other countries.

So instead of a list of Human Rights violations, I'm pleased to list just a portion of the Human Rights needs that Hull House addressed. Way to go, Jane!

Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 14. (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion...

Article 20. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

Article 21. (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

Article 23. (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 25. (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.(1) Everyone has the right to education.

Article 27. (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

Article 29. (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

Wee! A long list! I don't blame you if you skimmed them!

>88 rabbitprincess: Thanks RP! I haven't decided how to celebrate yet.

Happy happy birthday to you, Katie! Do something splendid and unexpected today, whatever that might be.

I very much enjoyed Hull House when I read it a few years ago. I learned a lot about the dire conditions for poor people in large cities back then, which have changed in the details perhaps but not in the direness, sadly.

Happy Birthday, Katie. Many happy returns.

Happy 49th birthday! All joy to you.

Rosalita, Beth & Morphy - Thanks for the birthday wishes! I spent the day doing boring things - mailing a bookmooch package, renewing drivers license, puppy-pee laundry because her owner is hoping to stop by tomorrow, dishes because puppy's owner might stop by tomorrow, wonder if I have stomach flu, postpone birthday dinner with brother & sil till tomorrow... Saw Jerome, showed him clips from Daily Show making fun of the powers that be... or want to be...

So I always say birthdays are best when you stretch them out.

>91 rosalita: Rosalita, I've already seen Jacob Reis's photos and been through the hurried "industrial age" unit that skims over this I don't know how many times as a teachers assistant, but it's still shocking. The story that stands out in my memory is the one where she was doing as their partner agencies instructed, which was to push people to get work instead of assistance. She pushed someone to take an outside job in the winter even though he thought his health couldn't handle it. He got the job, and two weeks later died of pneumonia. I'm sure we've made huge improvements in healthcare and child labor laws since then, but on some level, it sounded like she addressed several problems that are still problems.

All three of the dogs are playing king of the mountain on my bed and I want to sleep just a few minutes longer. Help me!

Aw! You share me Dad's birthday! Hoping it was full of happy.

I have a dropped a star on your highly entertaining thread, and I had a good time catching up with you.

Mamie, great to see you! I'm stretching my birthday out. The pup visit isn't happening today, so no more house cleaning!!!

Last night, I read this passage from Luan Starova's My Father's Books. This goes out to everyone like Mamie that has lost a father.



My Father's Dictionaries

In the final years of his life, as he slowly lost the strength to read, my father became less and less alive. When I saw that he no longer read or commented on the books I brought him, but only held them absently in his hands, appearing to read, taking in some meaning that he alone understood, tears would come unbidden to my eyes. I would gently try to take the book from him and read alound from the opened page, but this created a different problem, since he could not completely follow what I was reading. Thus I slowly lost my father and he his books.

In a life extended across many languages, my father never attained complete mastery of one language. He had within him the energy of the many languages he knew, that he had studied in depth, compared, and enriched.

Toward the end of his life, as his strength for reading decreased, my father, to our great amazement, continued to learn new languages, to peruse old and new grammars, to buy new dictionaries, to fall into a strange associative language dream. He learned new words, ccreated interlinguistic coinages, believing that he would come at last to his own linguistic eureka, which would enable him to move, when necessary from one language to another and so be understood by everyone. He died with a dictionary in his hands.

My father died untranslated...

So I am reading Winter World and Bernd Heinrich mentions a 1970s Minnesota biologist who frequently visited occupied bear dens during the winter. Now why would you do that?

Happy birthday, Katie. xx

Great to see you back with us in 2017.

Ah, I've found you. And it looks like I'll have to keep up with you or your thread will be too long to catch up on!

Thanks Paul! Great to be youthing with the group!

Thought we needed to end the weekend on some cuteness. This is a picture Jerome took of Bertie - while she was actually being devilish. You can't tell, but she's thinking about climbing through the screen door again. I don't have a screen in it at the moment because Sage scratched the screen up by mistake.

>87 cammykitty: LOL. Well played. And since you want to stretch the celebration out a little...

>101 RidgewayGirl: Hi Kay!!! I've read a few good ones already. Going a bit more in depth into the reading was part of the idea of moving over to this group. I'm hoping to roll on to a new thread each month. Great to see you!!!

>104 Berly: Mmmm!!! Thanks Kim! One for each work day this week! Orange chocolate, Lemon chocolate, Grape chocolate, Lavendar chocolate and mint chocolate! All my favorites!

My brother and SIL took me to a French restaurant tonight and I'm so stuffed that I'm surprised I can type! I had salmon/fennel/polenta and they brought me what my brother called "profiteroles" for dessert. It was like an ice cream eclair with two sparklers stuck into it.

>106 cammykitty: Profiteroles are an absolutely standard dessert dish here, but ours are always a collection of small choux pastry balls, not one big one. And I don't think I ever had them with ice cream, usually a creamy filling. It was a low point in our marriage when I went to a Christmas dinner with Mr SandDune and he insisted that he'd preordered my prifiteroles and left me with the fruit salad.

>107 SandDune: and Mr SandDune survived? LOL You're forgiving. These were two little pastry puffs stuffed with ice cream and little chocolate candies, covered with chocolate sauce and amarretto. Yum

Bitey puppy. First thing in the morning. Oh noes!

an education system flush with cash Ummm, what? I live in a fairly conservative county with an aging population that routinely rejects school-related ballot measures. What do we need more money for? Well, have your utility rates increased? Have your health insurance rates gone up? Do you have to pay to keep technology up to date and internet connections secure? Do things ever need to be replaced in your home, like snow removal equipment, or maybe toilet paper? Do you think students should have current books in their library, or should I keep the one called The USSR Today? BEYOND the debate about whether teachers should be paid, or well-paid, or if they should volunteer their 60+ hour workweek for the love of children, don't people ever compare their increasing expenses to schools? Not the president, of course, I can't imagine he connects anything to anybody but himself.

>110 AMQS: You said it Anne! Even your conservative aging population probably wouldn't call their schools "flush" with cash. Enough, or perhaps they feel their particular school district has mismanaged it, or perhaps they think it has nothing to do with them so go hang it all, but "flush with cash?" I knew politicians lied, but someone has no credibility left. The USSR Today sounds like some good reading. ;)

Kurtz

Book #5 The Third Man by Graham Greene on audio. I picked this one because someone had mentioned listening to a Graham Greene novel narrated by Colin Firth. Alas, I couldn't find Colin Baby, but this one was beautifully narrated.

For those of you who aren't familiar with either the movie or the book, The Third Man is a noir thriller set in post-war Austria when the area is carved up and occupied by various allied countries. The setting alone is reason enough to read the book. Greene made a brilliant choice for narrative voice. He used a British police chief who was secondary to the story to tell of a young chump asked to come to Vienna by his childhood best friend. He arrives for what he thinks will be a happy occasion, but finds he has just missed his friend. His friend has met with an unfortunate accident and he has just enough time to hurry to the graveyard to see him off. No this part isn't the spoiler. It's just the beginning.

I haven't seen the movie for a long time. I love it, but felt I needed to take a break from it because it loses something when you know, well if you know, you know what I'm talking about. And I've seen enough spoofs on it like "The Third Mouse" that I feel like I've watched it more often than I have. So, I couldn't help compare the book to the movie. The movie is incredibly faithful to the book, so much so that I knew Greene had written it too without looking up that fact in wikipedia. I usually hate movies compared to books, but in this case I'll go the other way. The movie is such classic Noir, shot with expert use of light and shadows. The zither music is perfect, sounds light and quaint at first but gradually gets creepier and creepier not because it has changed, but because they viewer has noticed something creepy about it that has been there all along. Kurtz oozes slime, even though he's petting a cute little dog all through the movie. In "The Third Mouse," Kurtz is petting a cockroach. But the following speech is not in the book (unless Bertie distracted me at that exact moment), which is my strongest reason for preferring the movie:
in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

>112 cammykitty: Nice review, Katie! I've not read the book but I remember being spellbound by the movie. That quote is fantastic!

Thanks rosalita!!! That quote is pretty famous. Check out Pinky & the Brain's take on it here

Book 6 My Father's Books by Luan Starova is the first book in my exploration of Southern Europe this year. Starova was born in Albania but fled with his family to Macedonia when he was three years old. The book covers the lives of his parents, the tale beginning around the 1920s when his father travels to Constantinople to work with Ataturk and to study Sharia law. Starova's father was a polyglot translator with a great love of books. The family frequently were refugees, forced to move, but somehow his books always survived the move with them. Perhaps one of the most telling and amazing sections in the book told of his mother's habit of buying or trading for flags from every army she had a chance to. Even when they had very little food, she would still trade for a flag. Why? Because when one army invaded, she would fly their nation's flag from the top of the house. Then when that army was being routed, she would fly the flag belonging to the next army's nation. This protected her house and family from being raided.

I own an album called "Balkans without Borders" that was a fundraiser for Doctors without Borders. Reading this book brings new meaning to that title. Starova's family dealt with so many changing borders and changing rulers that it felt as though his family had become generalists. They were from the Balkans, not a specific country in the Balkans. They were Muslim. They were also Christian. Or the better term would be to say they were a holy family, having copies of the Koran, the Bible and the Torah all under their roof. They quietly followed their own way, while outwardly adapting to whatever government's pressures were around them.

As for the writing of the book, its flaw is also its charm. It is a bunch of stand-alone essays, almost prose poems, that are organized with some sort of logic, but it certainly isn't chronological logic. Some of the pieces are stunningly beautiful, whereas some of the pieces feel like repeats of other pieces in the book. I'm torn between advising one to read it all at once to get the subtle picture of what the region was like, or to read it over a period of years to savor more the poetry of it, and the intense connections between the physical books with the personality of his father.

So, on to our discussion of human rights. Education was the right most exercised in the book. Even through the political unrest of the region, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Stalin, the fall of Stalin etc., his father lives a very intellectual life and for much of the time is employed by the Macedonian Institute of National History. The children are educated, and go off to various universities once they are grown. As for violations, I'll pick Article 28. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized. Meaning in this case, a human being has a right to rule by a stable government. Easier said than done.

And as an aside, Starova's comments on the Janissaries - the military of the Ottoman Empire made up of Christian boys taken in battle and forced to convert to Islam - is helping me make sense out of what is happening in present day Syria, North Africa etc. The areas where most of the refugees flooding Europe are coming from were parts of the old Ottoman Empire, which didn't fall that long ago. Not really. I don't know much, but lightbulbs are starting to go on.

Great review!

>114 cammykitty: Yay, Pinky and the Brain! That video also reinforces how good Maurice LaMarche's Orson Welles impression is.

>116 drneutron: drneutron Thanks! It was an interesting book to read, and I'm sure one that most people have never run across unless they are doing a country challenge.

>117 rabbitprincess: rabbitprincess Yes! (Imagine that said like the Brain) Maurice LaMarche is awesome! And the artwork. I was wondering what the weird lighting on the Brain's face was until I compared it to the original. Funny!

My Future Problem Solving kids!!! Congratulations go out to them. They totally surprised their coach (Me) this weekend at the regional competition when they came home with an award! They used the 6 step process to discuss sending an unmanned probe with a self-directed 3D printer on it to an exoplanet that is as of yet undiscovered. They received the 2/6 award which is for a solid underlying problem and proposed solution. 4 of these awards were given out to the junior division (4-6th grade). This means they may go on to compete at State, and I was certain I'd have a short season this year ending at regionals. Looks like I underestimated them!

So at a Future Problem Solving competition, they throw the coaches into a teachers lounge stocked with bagels and you either talk about Gifted and Talented programs, dogs if you're around me or politics. Or you read. You aren't allowed near your kids except at lunch and after the Presentation of Action Plan. So, I've learned to ignore that weird feeling of being forced to let your kids do what they are going to do without you and read a lot of Winter World but it still looks like I won't get that book finished in time for Hibernator's TIOLI. Instead I finished

Book 7 on audio Bunnicula Strikes Again
Bunnicula is my go to when I'm too tired to actually read and don't mind if I fall asleep or loose the thread of the story. This one was a new Bunnicula to me, and Chester is as inscrutable as ever. Poor Bunnicula, but despite the foreshadowing, I knew he wasn't going to die because this isn't the last Bunnicula book.

As for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 20. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. was used. The family was involved in a protest to save the movie theater where Bunnicula was first found. Way to exercise those freedoms!

All caught up with you, Katie, and I had fun doing it! Happy Sunday to you.

>98 cammykitty: I love that passage! Thanks so much for taking the time to share it.

>103 cammykitty: Too cute! I think I can see the mischief in the eye.

>112 cammykitty: I was the one who was just listening to Colin Firth read me The End of the Affair. And you are reminding me that I have "The Third Man: Enhanced Edition with Film Clips, Script and Archive Material from the Motion Picture Kindle Edition with Audio/Video" to get to on my Kindle Fire. Could not resist picking it up when I ran across it.

>115 cammykitty: Fabulous review, and if you posted that, I will add my thumb.

>119 cammykitty: Lovely photo! What sweet smiles.

>119 cammykitty: This is the second time I've seen the grey circle with the white line through it instead of a picture. Is this something new? A new app or something?

>122 Morphidae: Morphidae - odd. It's on google photos which is probably the problem. I quit using them because they were weird about what they showed and what they didn't. Usually my photos are from fb unrestricted viewers but I didn't want to do that with the kids. Mamie could see it though? Anyone else having trouble???

>121 Crazymamie: Thanks for stopping by! Your version of The Third Man sounds awesome. And as for the review of My Father's Books, you're right. I should post it. I've gotten lazy about posting my reviews but I'll bet no one has reviewed that book yet.

#8

Book 8, off-shelf #5 Winter World by Bernd Heinrich
TIOLI challenge #13



This one has been sitting on my shelves too long. It is by an author I have read and enjoyed before, but once it got onto my shelves it grew in size and seriousness until I was thoroughly terrified of it. So when I picked it off my shelf this time, I said it as 8 pages and then it either stays or goes. It stayed. Bernd Heinrich's Winter World is half memoir and half biology, and over half of it involves tromping about in the woods of Maine. What's not to like about that? In the meantime, you learn about bees, overwintering insects, turtles, frogs, beavers and most of all, golden-crowned kinglets. All through the book, Heinrich has scattered his field drawings of animals, insects, trees and nests. I kept wondering why he didn't just take photos, but the drawings are an impressive touch... and I'm working with a teacher who is doing a study on learning and scientific drawing with the U of MN, which made the drawings even more interesting. I'm wondering if the process of drawing is part of Professor Heinrich's thought process.

As for UDHR, we have the right to arm bears. ... er, something's wrong here. Too late. Must go to bed.

Katie, somehow I ended up way behind here! Best belated happy birthday wishes to you! Oh, and your photo of your kids isn't showing up for me.

Hi Roni! I changed the photo. It's hosted by Flickr now. Is it visible?

>126 cammykitty: Yes, adorable!

This is a memorial made by some of the students of my middle school for Luis Ronquillo. Those of you who know me from the category challenge already know some of his story. I'll apologize now for talking about sad issues, but he's been on my mind for quite awhile so I feel I need to do this. Next month, I'll be cheery and fluffy.

Luis Ronquillo's story. He was 13 years old, an 8th grader, A honor roll student, bilingual English and Spanish, super shy, the kind of kid that always flew under the radar. You never noticed him, but he was always there at school. Until one Friday, he wasn't. Over the weekend, we learned what had happened to him, and for me I kept kicking myself for thinking everything was fine in his life. I kept thinking I might have been able to help.

So that Friday morning, his mother went to pick him and his sister up from their father's apartment to take them to school. I don't know how long they had been divorced, but they were. The father was a quiet man, and ran his own business putting in floors. Something happened, and the outcome was Luis and his 5th grade sister were shot dead, his mother was injured very badly and is still not living on her own, and his father shot himself. Even though I personally didn't know him well, it was devastating for our school and very painful to watch the kids come together and support each other to mourn someone most of the kids had known since kindergarten, but many had not known well because he was so shy.

I am terribly proud of how the kids came together, especially of his two best friends who extemporaneously eulogized him that Monday when we had to tell the kids that he had died. Even though he was an A student, he had a lot of friends who are EBD and are some of the kids I work with, struggling every day to keep them in class, in their seats, even tempered etc... I look at them on an off day, and have to remind myself that things run deeper than just what I see at that moment, in the hallway at school. They tease each other hard, talk about who is dating who and try to skip class to go hang out in the art room, but on some level they know what happened and try not to think about it too much. So do I, and the very few times we've talked about it, I can see I've surprised them because they didn't really think I'd care if one of them was lost. They don't realize that I've invested a part of myself in them, that my goal is to have everything turn out well for them and I want to protect them, and up until this school year, I sort of believed I could. A little bit at least.

So moving on from here. This month, I'd like to read with Luis in mind and with the question, how do we protect those around us. Our counselors at school are very good. Every time I've gone to them to say _____________ has an injury that I'm worried he may have gotten from a parent, or ____________ has something going on. He's not the best student, but now he seems like an angry young man, more so than a couple weeks ago and____________. They are always ahead of me. They know more and assure me they are working with the student but of course can't give me details. In Luis's case though, I think they were as surprised as the rest of us. If a kid won't talk, no one can make them.

So calling the police. What would that have done? Neighbors report they'd never noticed anything until that day. The police came as soon as they were called, but the kids were already dead. I have to believe that the father loved the kids. If he hadn't loved the kids, he probably would still be alive. So all I'm left with is the theory that mental illness or addiction had a part in this tragedy.

So here's the reading challenge - to read books and ask myself how do people support others in these potentially extreme situations.

And next month, I promise something fluffier. Even this month. I'm like the kids. I can only be so serious for so long, and then some inappropriate or goofy joke has to come out of me. So don't be shocked if smack in the middle of February, I review Captian Underpants.

Planned reading:

I've ordered A Kind and Just Parent by William Ayers for the Obama read. Hopefully it will come sooner than the website said, which is the end of February. It's an older book, but has questions about minors in the criminal justice system.

I'm planning a tandem read of Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter with Berly

I've started Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan for the American Author Challenge

Still reading New Boy with my small group of kids at school. Still over their heads. Found myself having a discussion with one of them today who had found a swear word in some dialog. When I asked him "would a person like that character describing that situation (an associate being murdered) have sworn?" he wasn't sure what to say. I'm sure he'd noticed the swear word more than the context.

I'm also reading a side-by-side Spanish/English anthology of Latin American literature. Sadly, it's old stuff. None of it is from this century. I can read some Spanish without "training wheels" but not really literary writing. Middle Grade yes, YA probably, a wikipedia article yes but an Allende or Garcia Marquez novel? Ha ha ha... don't even think it. I'm trying to read one short story out of this anthology a day.

British Author Challenge??? Don't know. I like both Mary Stewart and Terry Pratchett but have read little of the works by either for adults. I first read Mary Stewart when I was in grade school. She had an MG series of mysteries set in exotic locations and I think I read all of them. Pratchett, I've only read Good Omens Love! (required reading if you're going to be in fandom... otherwise you won't understand when people start talking about Agnes Nutter) and Wee Free Men which is pretty fun too.

February TIOLI go here:

I have no words of comfort for you, Katie, for these kind of things there are no words... just grief and sadness needing a lot of time to heal.
((((hugs))))

That is just so incredibly sad, Katie. Keeping you in my thoughts.

Katie--I am so sorry. You are an amazing person and I love how you are always fighting for your kids, to help them learn and grow and to be safe. Thinking of you.

Ohmygosh, Katie. I'm so sorry for your school family. Adding my hugs to the pile.

Katie, how awful. We love our students so much and just ache for them. This is a devastating tragedy for your community. No need to promise to be light and fluffy -- things are very serious right now generally, and for your school in particular. I'm so sorry.

Yup, what they said.

Thanks everybody. It is taking me a while to wrap my head around this.

I read a short story today "The Witch of Tarup" while waiting in the urgent care with Jerome. We were walking Sage and Bertie-now-Betty and Sage started pulling as Betty wrapped Jerome up with her leash and bam! Right in the middle of the street. He felt like he'd broken something but after several X-rays (while I started reading Eifelheim), we found out nothing was broken. Yeah for no broken bones, but not sure what I think of Eifelheim so far. Easy to be put off by a book that feels it needs to list characters, but takes three pages to do that. This isn't War and Peace!

Book 9: This morning before the fateful dog walk, I finished Songs for the Missing by Stewart O'Nan. The book was about the response by family and friends to the disappearance of a woman, just 18 years of age. It rang true and reminded me both of Jacob Wetterling and Katie Poirer, both Minnesotans who lost their lives due to sexual predators. Patty Wetterling definitely had her life completely redirected by Jacob's loss, just as Fran does in this book, but she had to wait many, many more years for closure than Fran of the novel had to. Heavy book, and I can say more honestly that I admired it than I liked it. As for my question, how do people support others in these extreme situations... I was hoping for something that would be a light bulb for prevention, but it isn't in this book. This book is all aftermath, and the perpetrator is an unappealing man who should've been isolated from women long before this particular crime ever happened. He had a history, and no friends. The question is answered in another way, how do we support people, and answered with several different examples. At first, they bring hotdish. How midwestern!

>139 cammykitty: Interesting. And I like O'Nan's writing, so I'll look for this one. I listened to a fascinating podcast about the Jacob Wetterling case called In the Dark, which was very well done.

Hi Kay! It's good to know that the Jacob Wetterling case is known outside of Minnesota. As a Minnesotan, I feel I witnessed his family's grief, even in the posters of Jacob that were up way longer than he could've possibly been alive. His parents have made Minnesota safer, and I'm sure they've had an impact across the country too. As for Jacob, the 8th grade kids at school were asking me last year if I knew who he was. Shortly after, a charcoal drawing of him was posted in the lunch room and it was kind of eerie, because the kids who drew it were born way after his death, and were already older than he ever became.

>141 cammykitty: If anyone would like to know more about the Wetterling case, I can highly recommend an excellent podcast called In The Dark, which did an in-depth dive on the case last year. Just before the first episode was released, the arrest of the killer was announced. It's never said in the podcast but seems fairly clear that their digging around in the case spurred law enforcement to finally do something.

The podcast was produced by American Public Media:
In The Dark podcast

Thanks Rosalita. Sounds like the same podcast Kay was recommending. With two of you recommending it, I'll have to watch it. The case got confusing after years and years, but I'm sure Patty Wetterling never let up on law enforcement and she kept Jacob in the public's awareness, which is sadly probably what you have to do. I know about 3 or 4 years ago they got a warrant to search a property right near where he disappeared, so think about what it must have taken to get a search done so long after the fact. I also know they found porn that they thought was Jacob in the last ten years. Personally, the way I've heard it is they had the "person of interest" in for a similar crime. He knew he was likely to never see the light of day so he plea bargained by confessing to the Wetterling case and telling them where they hid the body. I know sometimes the police have to wait to arrest someone until they have enough evidence to hold up in court. Fair, but frustrating. Once they know, you'd like them to be able to arrest, but if they can't prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, they just wasted their chance.

Update for today. Read short story "Diyu" in Long Hidden which is a collection of fantasy and science fiction alternate history short stories. I felt I'd read stories similar to "Diyu" before, but to be honest, I don't think I've ever read F&SF about a Buddhist Chinese immigrant working on the railroad. I'm still reading Eifelheim and liking it better now. No need for the 3 pages of characters yet, although I have consulted the map which doesn't show quite what I want it too. I've read no Spanish today. Bad me. But I have been reading it. It's old Spanish, so fortunately it has the English translation side by side because I don't think I'd get through the archaic? vocabulary otherwise. Sometimes there are footnotes saying the translator guessed what the word meant. Really? And I'm supposed to know then? My BF ordered Nights at the Circus for me with his Amazon prime account, so I should be able to get my tandem read started anytime after Wednesday.

As for Future Problem Solving, I got the evaluations back today. Not likely that the kids will be going to State. They were ranked 3 out of 5 by one judge and 5 out of 5 by the other, same points though. Since there were only two of them on a team that is usually four, I don't think they were able to write enough problems and solutions. Also the solutions mostly weren't elaborated, so they lost points that way. Oh well. They did their best and it's a solid booklet. We'll celebrate with pizza, and then the season will be over.

As for dogs, the puppy class I assistant teach had a 7 week old Great Dane pup tonight. Black with white stockings and taller than all the other, older pups. All legs. It kept sitting on a yellow lab. Funny! Sage is in disgrace. I have had a super chocolate craving for the last couple days, so tonight I swung by the coop and bought healthy food and a gluten-free mint-chocolate denser-than-dense brownie. I put the refrigerator stuff on the counter as I put away the freezer stuff, then noticed it was missing. Sage had it down in two bites, and this things was huge! I pried his mouth open, but all that was left was a little mint frosting. So did some go-to-mat training with Betty that she did with much enthusiasm if not much understanding. Then did some dumbbell retrieve with Wanda, although Sage kept saying it should be his turn. No, he was in disgrace. Wanda was doing fine until I threw the dumbbell into the crate. Then Betty ran in and retrieved it. A four month old puppy retrieving a dumbbell? What a grrl!

Now, I don't know what to do about my chocolate craving. All the decadent places are closed and there's no way to make Sage feel guilty.

Tomorrow night, no work (2nd job), no class. Hopefully I'll catch up with threads tomorrow!

Congrats to your future problem solving kids, who did great, with a small team!

And so sorry about Luis. That must be very hard for you and the kids.

>141 cammykitty: I remember the Jacob Wetterling case. So sad.

Congrats to you and your problem-solving kids--you guys still did great!!

>144 cammykitty: I ordered Nights at the Circus today. Mine is coming Thursday. I will try to finish up something soon, but I may not be able to dive in right away. I'll keep you posted. : )

I'm sorry you lost your mint brownie. I usually lose treats to teenagers.

>144 cammykitty: Please, Katie, be carefull with dogs and food containing chocolate.
I hope you do know chocolate can be deadly to dogs, the theobromine accumulates in their liver... larger dogs can survive larger amounts, but a small piece of dark chocolate can kill a Chihuahua...

LOL Kay! I would've kept it under lock & key if I had a teenager in the house!

Anita, thanks. I know. Toxicity is 1 oz of chocolate to 1 lb of dog. If the puppy had gotten into it, I would've been making her throw it up. Sage though is a big boy and it was far from pure chocolate. More mint than chocolate. He didn't even get a tummy ache. And he isn't going to pull that trick on me again!

Wow, love those "this message has been deleted by author" messages. Makes it look like I lost my head and went on a twitter rampage rant. I just somehow posted the same message twice.

So update time. I'm sooooo sleepy because last night Betty tried a new experiment. She decided to see how many times I would take her outside if she did the "I got to go potty" squeal constantly, even if I saw no potty happen.

On the kids, they fooled me. They did make it to State for Future Problem Solving as an "at large" team, which means they weren't in the top four of the regionals but were good enough that they are being given a chance to compete again. Next time, we'll have three people on the team, so they should do even better. The subject is identity theft, so I'm looking forward to giving them the WIRED article on Trump's cell phone. He's given it up already, but apparently while he was using it, a hacker could have used his phone like a listening device/remote camera. They'll get a kick out of that, although the article doesn't mention the identity theft possibility of someone hacking into his old twitter account and causing more mayhem than he himself does. And to be fair, I've heard they've made his twitter account more secure too.

Books: finished reading all the identity theft stuff I had to read! Both Nights at the Circus and A kind and just parent showed up today.

Dogs: Sage hasn't stolen any food today, but he's just fine. Wanda is a sweetheart who would never do that. Betty is too short to reach the counters. Me, I haven't gone to the store so alas, only chocolate in the house is a couple of sad wafer cookies.

Katie, it broke my heart to read about Luis and his family. So sorry for them and for the rest of you dealing with the aftermath.

Empathizing with the chocolate craving, alas. Sure glad my dog is too short to reach the counters.

>143 cammykitty: Argh! It is the same podcast and I completely missed that Kay had just recommended it to you. Still, if another endorsement induces you to listen, I'll consider that a job well done. :-) I'm glad that Sage is not showing any ill effects from his choco-snatching. It's fortunate that chocolate is not nearly as toxic for dogs as it is for cats (at least that's my understanding, but I've never owned a cat). I was fortunate that my dog Odie was actually really good about not stealing food in the house, but if he found it in the middle of the street on a walk it was fair game! Old french fries from McDonald's, run-over pieces of pizza, you name it; he would inhale it like the finest caviar. Silly doggo.

>153 rosalita: We had a black lab, Sara, that had the nickname "Garbage Hound" because of how often she got into the trash. She could have also been called "Iron Stomach" because no matter what she got into, including eating a full-size banana bread loaf that had gone bad, her stomach never bothered her.

Hi Katie - Our kids are so vulnerable. We need to take better care of them. It sounds like the kids are lucky to have you.

We're working on a poverty initiative at the college. 68% of our students are at poverty level, something I'm sure our new Sec. of Ed. understands - NOT - but I won't get started on her. At a recent seminar, one teacher told about a student who seemed very inconsistent in her class; it turned out he only was eating every other day.

Well, off to buy stuff for our food bank.

>155 BLBera: There are homeless kids (usually living in motel rooms) at my son's middle school. They run a program called "Bob's Backpacks" where a backpack is given to the student as they leave for the weekend that contains enough child-appropriate food and toiletries to get them through the weekend, with more added if they have siblings. It's not enough, but it at least means that they get to eat every day. I donate to that and I like that it's done so that the other students don't know it's going on. Middle school is hard enough without adding that level of insecurity.

Also worried about what will happen to the schools here. My kids will be fine, but a lot of kids will not be.

>156 RidgewayGirl: This is a great idea! I should check locally for something similar.

We have the backpack program in our public schools here as well.

Hi everyone. We don't have the backpack program, but from time to time, I've known we had a few homeless kids. FYI - that backpack program was started by a kid! I think he was about 8 years old when he got it started. We watched a documentary on it a few years ago in one of the Sp Ed classes I assist. His mother was really supportive of him and they did all sorts of fundraisers to get it off the ground.

Our school doesn't have the backpack program, but we have a room full of second hand clothes they can have, and there's a food shelf at the high school.

>152 ronincats: - Thanks, it's been hard. A lot of the kids have photos of Luis tucked into the cover sleeve of their binders. Like I say, seeing the way they've come together to support each other is great. ... and I still haven't gone back and replaced that choc mint brownie thingy!

>153 rosalita: Ack!!! Isn't it amazing what they eat! And they never seem to get sick from it, unless you change their dog food suddenly. Then it's urp all over! Green chicken or fuzzy pizza, no problem. I'm pretty good at knowing what's toxic for them, but I appreciate the warning! After all, I gave my first dogs a few raisins as training treats before I found out. Luckily, I found out within a week of having that "brilliant" idea. The Bunnicula books have Harold the dog eating chocolate cupcakes and drinking hot chocolate. Obviously the author didn't know, because in the third book Harold says something like "I know you're going to tell me I'm going to get sick from eating all this chocolate. I'll remind you, I like it and this book is fiction, and I am fiction too."

>154 Morphidae: Oh Morphy, I used to have neighbors that obviously couldn't cook because about three days before trash pick-up day their garbage can would be overflowing, and I mean stuff scattered around the can over-flowing, with beer cans, pizza boxes and kfc boxes with about 1/4 of the chicken still in it. My old dog found out and made a detour between the car and the house so many times that I started telling him "You are not a garbage dog." The chicken freaks me out! The bones...

>155 BLBera: Beth, you are so right. I feel like we could put all our energy into taking care of and helping the kids, and it would never be enough. There's so much need. 69%! I'm surprised and not surprised at the same time. I'm pretty sure that's about where our free and reduced lunch figures are at so the fact that there is so much poverty doesn't surprise me. What does is that so many of them are choosing to and finding ways to go to college despite the poverty. Good for them! As for Betsy... boo! Not much she does seem to understand. I can't believe it. I feel like half of congress is afraid of the great orange one so they've become Yes-men.

>156 RidgewayGirl: Hi Kay - I think a lot of homeless kids "sleep over" as often as they can at a friends house. One girl I remember always fell asleep in class, and I'd get so frustrated with her because I didn't know then that she was homeless. She had a friend though that would tell me "she was at my house until midnight," etc. and I kept wondering what she was doing out that late. Once I knew, I was glad she had friends watching out for her. Let's hope things don't get as bad as we're fearing. Do you still have ties with that book program for kids that you used to work for?

>157 drneutron: Jim, they would be a great charity to support. Hope they do have that program by you. In the documentary we saw on it, the boy made sure there was something fun in all the backpacks like a toy along with the practical stuff. I'm so impressed at how thoughtful the kid was that started it.

>154 Morphidae: The thought of chicken bothered us, too. I think only once was there chicken bones in a can she got into and she left them alone. And it's not like we didn't try to keep her out. She was just smarter than we were to the day she died. We did finally get it down to a minimum though.

>161 Morphidae: I don't remember how I stopped Dillon, but I did. He never had a problem with chicken bones, but there were a couple times I was afraid he ate some so I power-fed him smooshy bread, like wonder bread. That's what you're supposed to do if they get chicken bones. And yes, all my dogs seem to stay one step ahead of me too. We've got the bigger brain, but they spend all day scheming and watching for opportunities.

>162 cammykitty: And the thing is, she was so damn adorable when we fussed at her. She come all hunched over with her tail wagging like crazy and these huge, brown moist eyes staring at you pathetically. And then she'd LEAN on your legs. Or even worse come up from behind and stick her head up between your legs to stare up at you. It took all we could do not to laugh. Fussing and breaking out into gales of laughter do not mix.

>128 cammykitty: So sorry to hear your story about Luis. It's so difficult to understand how something like that could happen.

Hey! My copy of Nights at the Circus finally showed up. Have you started yet?

>165 Berly: No Berly, but I have it. Let's start now.

>163 Morphidae: Aren't they good at that! Mommy, I see that you are upset and have no idea what it could be about because I just had a lovely dinner from a garbage can and I would share it with you except I ate it all and I feel soooo nervous and want to appease you because you're so upset but I honestly have no remorse.

>128 cammykitty: Rhian, thanks. It is really difficult. It seems like something that just happens on tv.

>166 cammykitty: I'm cracking up here because I read Mommy as Morphy and thought you were talking to me. I was going out of my mind (WTH?!?) until I went back and read #163. *still laughing*

Book 10&11, off-shelf #6: Spanish-American Short Stories is a side-by-side English to Spanish collection of short stories from Latin America written between the 1850s and the 1920s. Once again, a collection without a single female author. And why are all these side-by-side books by long dead authors? They aren't bad practice for my second language, but they could be more ideal. I keep wondering what words aren't used anymore, such as "lecho" to mean "cama" or bed. I've never heard lecho before, but trust me, cama is in use in half of the Latin pop songs current now. Por que me cama esta tan frio? That kind of use.

I liked several of the stories and the editor, Stanley Appelbaum, did a good job at representing many countries, even the smaller ones such Guatemala and Paraguay.

So as for my question of the month, how do people support people in extreme situations. An answer outside of the text, they learn multiple languages. It makes it easier to reach out and understand more people. For an in the text answer? I don't know. The last story, "Los Inmigrantes" by Romulo Gallegos from Venezuela might shed a little light. It follows two immigrants to Venezuela, one from "Palestine" now Jerusalem and one from Italy. Ironic, because the Venezuela of the 1920s definitely isn't the Venezuela of now. Now, that poor country can't support immigrants. Then, both of the immigrants worked hard as small merchants and saved up enough money to start successful businesses. Then we begin following the story line of the Jewish man, who marries a woman who worked for him in his boutique. She becomes a society climber and insists the kids are raised to disrespect merchants, retail workers and Judaism. The man becomes isolated in his own home, goes back to Palestine, but comes back again. Toward the end, Gallegos says "their new country had swept from their hearts their love for their homeland, and had taken from them the children they had given" the new one... Damningly sad. Which makes me wonder if there isn't often some sense of alienation within the family that happens when the spouses and children are more from the new land than the old? And does this alienation warp some of the ties within the family?

In Luis's case, I doubt it. Both parents were from Mexico and were doing well adapting to the United States. His mother actually worked part-time at our school as a paraprofessional with the DCD kids, (Developmentally/Cognitively Delayed). It was her first year at the middle school and I never met her, other than passing her in the hall. I believe she had worked at the elementary school before. Something obviously broke down the family though, whether the seeds were in the marriage before hand or not. So, this sounds too simple, but strengthening the families, especially family communication, might help???

"Strengthening families" sounds so much like political buzz though, I find myself distrusting the thought. It kind of has the feel of someone trying to get a 90 year old man to quit eating red meat because it's going to damage his health. You can find all sorts of solutions to other people's problems, but getting them to do it is another thing. And adopting those changes for yourself yet another.

So I've got two things to say this morning.

1. I listened to Trump's press conference yesterday. Lot's of non-information shared. I respect reporters more now, but for my own mental health, I think I better do a news fast. If I need to build a fallout shelter in my backyard in the next few weeks, please tell me.

2. I started reading Nights at the Circus last night, and this is what I see in my head: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YwnAdT9I_o Warning, it's a bit raunchy.

>169 cammykitty: Oh dear! I did not need that in my head! LOL. 100 pages in...

LOL! Sorry Berly!!! I'm not that far. I'm in chapter 2.

Not to worry. You'll catch up and then blow by me I'm sure. ; ) Happy Friday!!

>172 Berly: As long as I stay away from the news!

I know what you mean about the news, Katie. >169 cammykitty:

Often I have to press mute when the Trump is speaking.

>174 BLBera: I should be so smart! I turned it off when I heard him address a reporter as from the "failing New York Times." It isn't funny. Never was. Then I went against my instincts and listened to an 1 1/2 hour of him not answering questions.

Oh noes! Bertie has learned to bark from the big dogs! She thinks the boom car outside at 11:00 pm playing some sort of boom pop with female vocals needs to be scared out of the neighborhood. Thing is, she's reminding me of that Super Bowl half-time show when Britney Spears helped Aerosmith out with "Walk This Way." Hard to take her seriously.

Went to Goodwill where I work today to buy one thing and came back with several. On the book front, I got Eats, Shoots and Leaves and The Road. For the dogs, I got a few stuffies with embroidered eyes. The toucan was decapitated within minutes of getting home. The big dogs tussled over possession of it.

So, this thread is missing some of the cuteness factor it should have. There's a puppy in the house until March. Then she is going to a friend of mine, so I'll have a quieter home and visiting privileges. Here's a Bertie pic my boyfriend took:



I'm strangling her to keep her in the photo, or so she says. Note the muddy claw marks on my arm. Yup, guilty squirmy pup.

And the half-photo. This is Sage just chilling in the unseasonably nice (and muddy) weather.



Wanda refused to pose today. But she's got "Dumbo" in her mouth now. I left Charlie Brown in the car. He's too cute to get torn up in a day, so I think he's going to my niece dog so I don't have to see it.

Beautiful dogs, Katie. Pretty good, considering they probably don't pose on demand. :)

Hah! My first dog, Dillon, did. We photographed him every second as a puppy so he started posing whenever he saw a camera. These guys sure don't! I delete 5 photos at least to every one I keep.

>169 cammykitty: I hear you. I recently read an article by Timothy Snyder who gave the sensible advice of limiting one's exposure to a half hour a day - you can keep informed but not have it rule your mood. I'm calling my rep and senators often and getting used to being content with that being my action for any given day. Courage. There are more people who care about others than those who do not.

>181 RidgewayGirl: Kay, that's sensible. I feel kind of ... resigned? right now? I know my representatives are all liberal so I don't really feel as though there's anyone to call. I voted them in and they'll represent me, thank heavens! 1/2 hour a day sounds reasonable, and I should also remind myself (and train my newsfeed) that 54 isn't the only news in the world.

I'm on page 126 of Nights at the Circus now, and if I had to choose one word to describe it, it would be subversion.

It also seems to be playing a lot with Midsummer's Nights Dream, which sadly I've never read but I do have some recollection of seeing a young Judy Dench, topless and painted green, running around as Tatianna. I'm feeling that Walser, the young reporter in the book, is becoming Bottom, an ass, perhaps for daring to spy on the queen, in this case Sophia the winged woman. Can't really call her a lady; she's cockney and grew up in a whore house. This is certainly the crudest Angela Carter I've ever read, but it is still Angela Carter, filled with more nuances than I can possibly catch. After all, who else would write the line "...her too, too solid kitchen fell into pieces under the blows of their disorder as if it had been, all the time, and ingenious prop, and the purple Petersburg night inserted jagged wedges into the walls around the table on which these comedians cavorted with such little pleasure, in a dance which could have invoked the end of the world." Which starts out echoing Hamlet's "too, too solid flesh..." soliloquy.

Ooh, love the newly-improved cuteness factor!

>184 AMQS: Thanks Anne! It needed a little 4-footed presence.

So, I wasn't imagining it. Last night, I found the 1968 production of Midsummer Night's Dream, and there's quite a bit of Dame Judi in it. When I initially saw it, I swear the color values were better than what I can find now. The youtube copy I found almost looked like a black & white production, but you can still tell she took the time to paint herself green head to toe using that same greasy makeup they sell at Halloween for kids who want to paint their faces to be witches.

>177 cammykitty: & >178 cammykitty: Yay for the pictures, brights my day :-)
And happy to read you have found someone for Bertie, enjoy your time wit him!

Cute pups hanging out in your part of the world, Katie!

>183 cammykitty: Loving the puppy photos! I am clearly too tired to catch all the subtle references of Miss Carter today. Good thing I have you to point them out!! I am just past the 100 page mark. : )

Thanks Anita and Rosalita! And I just found my camera again today. Now to hunt Wanda down being cute. Wanda and Bertie went to Petco today to choose a new collar for Sage, and then we went and hung out in a local park and ate meaty stuff right by the playground. One of the kids gave treats to them, and they met lots of people so it was a good day even though Bertie still hates the car! And she also learned that it's best to greet terriers nicely instead of "Hi Hi Hi" in your face. She got snarked at a little, but then made friends.

Berly, I just finished Petersburg. I was reading quickly to try to catch up with you. I got to admit, I feel like I'm letting the novel wash over my head. I don't think it has a plot. I thought there might be a romance plot submerged under all that, but I really don't think Fevvers is going to get together with Walser. She seems complete in herself, as long as she has Lizzie. If there's something going on between Fevvers and Lizzie, I don't know. There are several critiques available of it, so I think it's like Lolita in that you can "get it" without understanding all the allusions, but there are allusions working all over the place. Have you gotten to the clown scenes? Those are disturbing!

Cute dogs!

I am planning to do a one-day a week news fast. So far it hasn't completely worked (I sneaked and read the news anyway) but I am also not allowed to talk about politics that day, and that helps.

I haven't done well with my news fast either. I've cut back significantly. I'm also trying not to talk politics either, but sometimes it's just too funny. For example, a friend of mine works at petsmart and he was showing a woman a Syrian hamster. She said "What are you doing,selling a trump hamster?" I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I said now we know the real reason for the travel ban. He doesn't want any of his peeps coming into the country and blowing the news that he's the descendant of a hamster.

Oh, that hamster is too cute to be a Trump relation!

I'm reading a kind and just parent and I got to say, it isn't a light sunshiny book. It's making me think of a few of my more behaviourly disturbed EBD kids and imagining them in jail in a few years. For some of them, that isn't that difficult. One is a very angry young girl, who we know (but haven't been able to convince administration) has been sneaking to the bathroom to smoke pot, and will tell me weird stories about some punks coming to her uncle's house while she's there and trying to steal his car so she goes to rough them up but they and jump her instead... Never sure if she is telling me tales to get a reaction or telling the truth. But obviously, in her world, most of it is unfair and out to get her, and getting respect is a matter of physical fighting. She's got a good heart and lots of talent that she doesn't let most people see. Other kids I can see getting in trouble with the law just by being followers and following the wrong people because they are tough and cool. Others because when they get stressed, the lash out and make threats because that's how their brain physically works now. If you keep them from getting stressed, they are fine and the hope is that we can teach them other ways to deal with stress and they'll be able to take control of themselves some day. So Just and Kind Parent brings up some real issues, that probably need case by case answers. How can you tell when a child can be steered to a better path, and when are they so bad that they need to be removed from society because they aren't going to get any better? I've met some of my kids as 18, 19 and 20 year olds and they say "remember me? I bet you hated me. I was bad." Which makes me laugh because although I can get annoyed, it's hard to get me to hate one of them. I've heard a couple rumours of not so good outcomes though, both with kids that were moved from our school to a more restrictive environment.

The school Ayers is talking about in A Kind and Just parent would be a more restrictive environment, and so far he's introduced the staff which are there as a labor of love. I wonder, when you're teaching at a school where all the kids are waiting for their day in court, what is your goals for them? My goals for my kids is that they grow up to live as independent and successful a life as possible. Emphasis on the independent - a lot of my kids aren't EBD but have other disabilities. For someone at Audy? Is it that the kid will make the best of incarceration and come out of jail with some skills? I don't know yet.

Hi Katie, I hear and sympathize with you about the news. Even though I am a Canadian, what America thinks and does has such a huge impact on the world that we have to watch and I find myself either cringing or shouting back at the TV far too often!

Book 12 Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter - I didn't dislike this book as much as Berly did, but I have to agree. It was on the meh side and deserved to be Pearl ruled. The reason I read all of it though was 1. It was by an author I enjoy and respect. 2. It has made it's way into many a feminist literature college course. 3. I was over halfway through when I realized that not only did it have no plot, it probably had no pay-off either.

Crude, lush, funny - yes, it is all these things. It is the story of Fevvers, a circus performer, who is being interviewed by a young man with no personality. Carter herself describes him as having no personality, and this is part of the problem with the book. The characters don't come off as people but as symbols. She is playing with literature, literary criticism, stereotypes (Cockney woman raised in a whorehouse who argues existentially), and the role and images of women. Yup - witch, orphan, virgin, whore, mother, victim, lover - all the roles are represented here with the backdrop of the circus.

As for the circus, there are several vignettes or scenes that are almost stand alone pieces, many of them savage, but the one thing that unites them is animals are always portrayed as more intelligent and more noble than men, and I do mean men. The women aren't part of the comparison. As for a clear message on the role of women, I don't get it. And I mean, I don't get it. Obviously, this book has been loved by many intelligent people. They obviously are seeing something and getting a message from it that I'm not.

And alas, this image was with me all the time I was reading:


Courtesy of Kids in the Hall - and to be honest, not my fav skit. This one was often gross - tummy wrenching gross - and I also felt it was making funny of the girls who aren't popular in junior high because they are a bit different.

Book 13: Finished reading New Boy by Julian Houston last night about a first black student in a New England prep school. This is one of the more nuanced books on prejudice that I've seen because it hits it at all angles, including white vs white ethnic group prejudice. Matter of fact, the plot takes a backseat while the book finds several different situations to put our hero, Rob, in to showcase what it was to be an African-American living in the late 50s. Still, the characterization is strong enough to keep the reader interested even though the plot question, is Rob going to be able to stick it out at this prep school, isn't that action packed compared to today's tightly plotted YA novels. The kids I am reading it seem to like it, even though it really is a bit above their reading level. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say about it once they are finished reading it.

Judy, thanks for stopping by! And thanks for being our neighbor. Every major election year, we joke that we are moving to Canada. Sadly, this year it looks like some people were serious about that so if you do feel the need to throw something at your TV, I'm with ya, but I hope your TV can survive. ;)

>196 cammykitty: It is becoming quite a little collective of dislikers of Nights at the Circus. I wanted to like it so much that I have always thought it was my fault that I didn't.

Have a lovely weekend, Katie.

>199 PaulCranswick: Don't think it was your fault! I think it's "feminist" in a way that has become dated, or that doesn't even make sense to someone in this century. And the overall feel of the book is trapped and cynical, but the end seems like it wants to be something different but can't quite pull it off.

And for personal news, I'm just Bertie's guardian. She will be moving on to a new home, hopefully one that will get a title on her. I just spoke for an hour or so to a perspective owner in Indiana. Indiana is the first thing that freaks me out! I want Bertie to stay closer to home so I can visit her. Next, the woman has several small dogs (two of which won't be playmates) and the reason I'm not keeping her is we didn't want her to be one of a pack. Also, I don't really believe the woman will get a title on her once she realizes how much work that is. She's never competed with a dog or has gotten a title on a dog, but did compete a lot with horses as a youth. I know there are a lot of dog sports closed to people who have mixed breed dogs, but UKC rally, some agility and UKC obedience are not. So... does she just not have the right dogs to do it, or does she like the idea of it more than the doing of it? And am I feeling ick about this because I'm attached to Bertie and don't want to let her go to anyone, or are these real reasons?

More on Bertie - I owe you some puppy pics soon, don't I. Anyway, I talked with one of the breeders about my concerns and she totally backed me up. She said that if this particular woman really wants an Irish Water Spaniel, she should start with a younger puppy because her dogs are so small. Bertie is big enough and puppy clumsy enough that she could hurt one of them severely without even meaning too. The breeder had a horror story about a big puppy and a little dachsie where the dachsie suffered a severe back injury from playing. I think that's good advice to start younger. Otherwise, I'm tempted to suggest the American Water Spaniel for this person. They are significantly smaller than the Irish, but very similar in other ways. Reputed to be more food driven, although an IWS is plenty food driven, and I personally think on the whole they've got more desire to work and are a little less tricksy than an Irish. I'm relieved, but this also means I may have Bertie for quite a bit longer and I'm worried about having three big dogs in this little house and also worried about the dynamic changing once Bertie is old enough to go into heat. I know how Wanda acts when she thinks her reign is being challenged, and I don't want to deal with it in my own home.

Book 14 for the Obama read: A Kind and Just Parent. I really enjoyed this look at the teachers and students of a Chicago reform school during the 90s. The students were definitely in more trouble than the students I usually work with, yet they seemed very familiar. I found myself vindicated to see that things fell apart there for experienced subs of experienced teachers before the sub even has a chance to respond. The kids would walk in the door already pissed off and acting up, just like the EBD kids do in our school. They've had so many subs before, they aren't going to give this one a chance, even though they already know the sub.

So as for my question of the month, how do people support others in these potentially extreme situations, the easy yet difficult answer to this is they address poverty. Most of the kids at Audy home were black and 100% of them were poor. So, an out-of-the-box way to address crime is to address the communities economies and the causes/effects of poverty within the family.

As for Luis's case, I'm not so sure this would have helped. As far as I know, his family was doing okay financially. Not rich by any stretch, but able to meet their basic needs with a little left over for fun. Money, though, could've been a factor in causing the parents' divorce. Money is the number one thing couples fight about. So in other words, revitalizing our communities would help but I don't think it would solve everything.

As for my next question, what are the teachers' goals for the students, Ayers addresses that directly. I wish I'd marked it when I was reading because this is all I can find now:
Mr. B needs to talk with each one, to begin to know him, to touch him in order to teach him. Tobs looks to the spiritual, the specific living soul inside each boy.
Which I'm taking to mean two things. 1. They are trying to break past the reactive, bad boy side of their students in order to give them a sense of worth. 2. They are trying to give the students tools to make prison a constructive experience rather than a destructive one.

That's a tall order. I'm glad I read this book, and saddened that it doesn't feel more out-of-date. I would like to say we had some answers by now, but I don't think things have radically changed.