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Take a little trip and never leave town. I kind of try any book that comes my way. I'm in a group where we pass books around so I never know what I'm getting.

Just discovered Nelson DeMille. Old books, The Gold Coast and The Gate House. Books about the mafia, guy in midlife crisis and totally changing his life he was bored with. What's kind of cool is he gives a history of what happen with all those big money makers, their mansions and the wealth through the generations. The funny thing is, you get to a few generations beyond the money makers, they think they are American nobility, looking down their nose at the types who made that money. And they are pretty much worthless individuals, just living off the money, never trying to do anything real.

His books are kind of not getting your interest in the first few chapters so you skip and read the last chapter. Then you have to read the whole book to find out how the story got there. :hihi:

I guess whoever put these books in rotation was into Long Island wealth. I read another book by Anderson Cooper about the Vanderbilt's. He's Gloria's son. I'm assuming he's where the money ran out. Said his mother spent one fortune, made another and spent that too. :hihi: I'm assuming from the not so nice things he said about that side of the family, he's a little pissy about the generations before spending all that money. :hihi:

Anyway, more information about the mansions. These were all built before income taxes and the stock market crash of 29. They went over to Europe and took archeology pieces and put them in these houses. It's not just the huge size of the places but they spent tons of money on the décor. When the money starts to run out or they don't want to pay the property taxes some get donated and are preserved. Some are just leveled, decor included, for development and some are just left sitting there to fall down.

Got Terry Brook's new fantasy novel, Daughter of Darkness. Similar story line as another book I'm waiting on to come out in November, part human finding their way to the land of the Fey, their other part. The land of the Fey is always fighting for survival against the bad guy. Generally takes them 3 novels to win. This is the second in the trilogy.

I liked Jar-Jar and Hook. They tried to put another trilogy of his into a weekly series but even he didn't like how they did it. His earlier works are better but he's still good. Now the long wait for book 3.

I'm reading a book about the history of the area I live in. It's writings from the people during that time. I did not know that free black people owned slaves. Never occured to me.

So much of history is told from the perspective of events, mostly wars, you don't get to hear about daily life. We think of those times as kind of undeveloped,if that's the right word, but they had fully functioning lives and society. Got me thinking, if there is other life out there, if they look at our planet, call us the war planet, there's always a few some where, and think we aren't evolved enough to be involved with us.

Picture from 1900 of a farmer in overalls holding a piece for farm equipment to cut wheat. The caption below the picture reads:

"The uniform of the man shown does not depict the style of 1870 which would have been a broad brimmed hickory hat, flannel shirt, red handkerchief around neck, jeans pants, whiskers and clay pipe."

I did not know the farmers in 1870 had any fashion sense. :hihi: They certainly lost it by 1900 from the pic. The whiskers is what got a chuckle out of me. Became fashionable again in the 80's. And that clay pipe reminded me of Father Knows Best. Nothing new in fashion accessories for men.

"a United States sloth". Apparently this is the person who arrests you for drinking during prohibition. They refer to the the time before prohibition as "the wet days".

Interesting book. They are building the first railroad bridge out of cast iron. Tried a hanging span where the cables broke and had to redesign the bridge. Two "cyclones" in one year whipping out sections of town. Flooding and a major ice storm. Talk about sledding as a big activity yet these days we don't get that much snow. A beautiful spot everybody went to that was torn down by constructing the first subdivision that didn't sell. The automated trucks replacing horse drawn wagons. They don't really mention cars but I can see them in the pictures. Hughes crowds "sending the boys" off to war.

On to another history book about the area I live in.

Before the American continents were discovered, just rumor, speculation, ancient history, they were called Mundus Novus, New World. A lone German guy came up with the name America after an explorer Amerigo, Vespucci. America being the female version of Amerigo because all continents were female names, don't know why, male fascination of the female body? Don't know why one German guy got to name it. The Germans weren't even in the exploration business. Some people wanted Columbia after Columbus but America stuck. And then when they found it was really big, north and south.

By the way, it was the Spanish who brought black slavery to the Americas to conquer to natives. Actually they were pretty bloodthirsty in domineering the peaceful, welcoming Indian populations. The name Indian came from a mistake by the explorer because he thought he was in India. His comment was "they would make fine servants".

Not caring too much for the new book that goes along with the other book. Covers the 1600's to the 1800's. Mostly just names and places they explored. The French and the Spanish doing all the work and then the Brits come along and take it all away from them. I like the French way of doing things. They come along, claim the area and work to make peace with the native people and bring them into society. Of course, get them to help fight the Brits. The Brits and Spanish come in and conquer, make slaves of everybody or run them off. The native people keep getting displaced and moving further west fighting each other for a homeland. Everybody's goal is the Northwest Passage. A waterway from one coast to the other which isn't there. A lot of the names of places are modified names the natives had for them.

You learn a lot from the dead. I always wondered how wrestling became a thing and why it was so overacted. Apparently this guy, Lou Albano, and Cyndi Lauper got the ball rolling. He was around in the WWF playing a thug type. Got to managing other wrestlers and had them develop personas. He met Cyndi on a flight, became friends and appeared in some of her videos. They were lifelong friends. Got her into wrestling, I remember that, and developed Rock n Wrestling. It took off from there. He got pushed to the side as it grew by people with better personas. That's the guy to blame for that. :hihi:

I'm almost out of the famous sports figures. I'm not really into sports. Can't decide if the golden age of baseball and boxing is over or if they are still going strong and those famous people haven't died yet. Not many mentions of football players, some basketball folks. I think that's because their golden age was ushered in later and those folks aren't dead. :hihi: There is one cemetery out east that gets mentioned several times, mostly with dead Yankee players. The baseball cemetery, Yankees rule.

Next section is movie and TV stars. Probably is going to be half the book. There's many of them, all dead, very big golden age. There is a famous cemetery on the west coast for all the Hollywood people. I'm expecting them to be there. They should have some interesting tombstones. The one baseball pitcher, Jim "Catfish" Hunter has a pretty cool tombstone with a big baseball. They even named the street in the cemetery after him. Don't know who he is but his tombstone is cool. Is that weird I'm interested in what the tombstones look like? :hihi:

The guy who did the Warner Brother's voices, Mel Blanc, has the Porky the Pig, "That's all folks"
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Mel_Blanc_4-15-05.JPG/220px-Mel_Blanc_4-15-05.JPG)

Still on the Hollywood people. Some really important people I never heard of, died in the 50's and 60's. You have to wonder how long that star shines. Everybody knew them then but they have been lost in history.

I'm beginning to see why it took mom so long to read this book. It's a little depressing to read about so many deaths. People's lives reduced to a page in a book.

Done with Hollywood and onto Original Women. The first one is Maya Angelou. I assume a black woman. She was sexually abused at age 7. The guy convicted but only sentenced to one day in jail. When he got out he was beaten to death presumably by her uncles. She was so traumatized by the beating she didn't speak for 6 years. She wrote, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Went on to have an amazing life. Might have to check out a book on her.

Back to the death book.

Most of the book is dead musicians. Most dying before their time due to their lifestyle. Nobody dying on stage. There's a lesson there, never leave the stage. :hihi:

Nobody knows where Freddie Mercury's ashes are.

Tom Petty wanted to be a musician after meeting Elvis. His name in the book is followed by Elvis' name. Contrary to the rumor that Elvis fell off the toilet and hit his head is not what happen.

Seriously, do you really believe nobody saw Jim Morrison's dead body but his wife and his doctor? Who took him out of the tub and put him in the coffin? Or you think he made his own coffin and had it delivered to the graveyard to fake his death? Conspiracy theories, either way, the guy still made the book.

Thought this was interesting on Bo Diddley. As he lay dying his family sang "Walk Around Heaven". He gave a thumbs up and died after his last words, barely audible, "Wow, I'm going to heaven". I read his bio, I don't see any reason he shouldn't but I guess he was surprised. :hihi: That one tech guy said something along those lines with his last words. He was looking at something and excitedly said wow, WOW! And died. Lets hope there is a wow at the end for the rest of us. :D

So there you go. The thing you say upon entering heaven is wow. Whether it be, hey "I'm surprised you're letting me in" or "I'm damn impressed", better leave off the damn. :hihi:

Beka gave me a bag of Amish stories and various other Christian writers. I'm okay with the books. The stories are good and not to preachy.

So the woman is struggling with why she has so much shit when others have so little and why she keeps upgrading her shit and she's still not happy. She's met some of society's outcasts, is afraid of them but wants to help by upgrading their stuff with her old stuff that is really closer to brand new. She crashes her car one night when a kangaroo runs out in front of her in California, wtf? Meets these two old women. They are trying to teach her it's not about the stuff, it's about accepting the people as they are. I'm hung up on where the fuck did the kangaroo come from? Was it real? Is she seeing things? Her teenage son seems to know what it means, clue us in.

Sorry, they are in Maryland not California. She asks if there are any kangaroos in the area. The answer is no and then everybody drops it. Really, everybody is going to go with the kangaroo is real and it's not strange and bizzare? Claim it's a sign from god she should hop out of this life style? Tell her she's losing her shit and needs to see a shrink? At least have a concern for the poor kangaroo hopping around in the woods? Okay fine, lets just go on with the story.

The author never explains the kangaroo. In the end the head drug dealer visits the homeless shelter, a car drives through the front of the building, the guys get out, pointing a gun at him and the woman's 15 year old kid. They are yelling at the drug dealer in a foreign language, the drug dealer dives in front of the kid and they both get shot but not killed, the guys run away. Okay, what the hell was that? The drug dealer has no security so why can't they just shot him on the street, no need to drive into the homeless shelter where a dozen people saw you. Are they high, part of another drug dealing group, mad that a relative ODed on some drugs he sold them so they are going to threaten him with a kid he has nothing to do with? Who knows, they speak a foreign language and apparently don't have enough bullets because they only shot twice. I think everybody knows if you're doing a hit, you make sure the guy dies.

But everybody is happy in the end. They plan to sell all their shit and downsize, donating the money to the homeless shelter they volunteer at. Nobody seems to realize that a car went through the front of the old building and the homeless people are probably out of the street now.

I was sitting with Beka's 90+ year old grandma at the garden. She thanked me for the Amish books. "They are so kind to each other." Yeah, I like them for that reason too. Mentioned something about they follow scripture. Yeah I wouldn't know about that but if it gives you peace, I'm happy to have helped. We don't know each other very well. She always visits the gardens when she's in town. Would love to be doing what Beka and I do. I remind her she's doing it through Beka, the gene pool. Makes her smile at Beka.

Always in December. Cute little Christmas romance story from the picture on the front of the book. No, her parents died on Christmas Eve and then the potenial love of her life years later on Christmas Eve. The book doesn't even prepare you for it, totally out of the blue. She goes to look for him and the docotor tells her he dropped dead from a brain aneurysm. Probably should have watched a Hallmark Christmas movie if I wanted a happy ending. :hihi:

I'm done with the Amish books for a while. Somebody always dies in these books, horses too. I wasn't aware buggy accidents were that common in the Amish communities. I'm back to my Missouri history books for a while.

I'm waiting on the library to approve/purchase a book I requested. Charollet's Crossing. It's a story about a gardener taking care of someone's native plants. I'd buy it except I prefer to have my books stored at the library instead of my house. And it's good for their funding if I'm checking books out. New writer. Has the approval of all the native plant gurus but the library may not know that although they do support native plantings.

Yes, I need a book on how to open the back door and call a cat in without another one escaping and preventing me from going to bed. :hihi:

The library turned me down on Charlotte's Crossing. I amazoned it. Have a feeling it's a story I'll want to read again. In the meantime, I'll lend it out to a few people. No point in a book sitting on a shelf collecting dust.

The rebels just won the war. We are Americans now on the east side of the Mississippi and pushing into Spanish territory on the other side. They are trying to keep us out but there's too many of us and we're headed west! My question is, how did these European countries have so many people they could inhabit all these new lands they were exploring. The answer is sex, they were having lots of sex. You can tell by the number of children they were having. :hihi: People were pushing west just to have a little space of their own. And if you're wondering which European country has the most sex, my money is on Spain. :smoking:

Different take on the Louisiana purchase then what I was taught. This is basically all the US from the Mississippi to the rockies, up to Canada and down to Mexico. Maybe to the coast depending on who you were talking to. The Spanish sold it back to the French so they could by their prince a kingdom in Tuscany. It was conditional that it not be sold to any English. Shortly there after Napoleon needed money for his wars and sold it to the Americans and pissed off Spain. Everytime the land is sold off, the inhabitances get citizenship, except for the indians. People keep moving in to the land where the indians have been using. Using the paths they have made to make roads, cutting off fresh water springs and farming their hunting grounds.

The area I live in was the start of a main path leading to the west. Everything is starting here if you're taking the northern route to the coast. They are more interested in the north because they think one of the many rivers connects to the coast. The rivers at this time are the highways. This is the early 1800's.

Charlotte's Crossing is the reason I didn't get up until 11:30. :hihi: She's been commissioned to restore a small island to native plants in Michigan. You get to the island by raft, pull yourself over by rope. The island is owned by Fig who has restored the cabin on it. He's your Sheldon Cooper type along with her niece. A boyfriend who hasn't grown up. And our main character Char who's trying to establish a landscaping business. Plus a stray dog that everybody has named and wants to take home yet, the dog wants to remain a stray, furiously independent.

Each chapter starts with some interesting fact about nature. I'm going to put a couple of them on signs in the garden.

I sent my nephew a copy for his birthday. It's not his kind of book but I'm nudging him into nature. He's kind of lost and directionless in life. I hope it takes. He likes being outdoors, smart kid.

Total spoiler alert. I've finished the book. It was good but sad. Not sure if I will read it again but it's worth keeping the book, Life A. F. The story needs to settle with me but here we go.

Fig dies. You know he's sick but he's terminal. If you're going to stick around and watch me die, support me with radical, bad-ass joy. All he wants. And he finds it on his garden island and in his relationship with Char based on protecting native plants. So much I can relate to. I look for those moments of "radical, bad-ass joy". I even write them down although I don't have any on the list this year. And I have a garden that's it's own little island. He relates with books he's read, I relate with lines from songs, same connection. He dies from damaged lungs, my smoking. Lots of connections for me. Right book, right time. Life After Fig, the magical power of radical, bad-ass joy, they had it.

I finally got my turn at the Barbra Streisand book. I always think of her as a singer foremost but she wanted to be an actress. Singing got the bills paid. A lot of stuff happens to her before she ever gets to play in Funny Girl on Broadway. Charlie Chaplin's son played Nick. Had no idea she was married to Elliott Gould. She got the long nails from her favorite aunt. Hates on her mother throughout the whole book for always being critical of her and not supporting her desire to be an actress.

Why do we do it to ourselves? Barbra's manager had the foresight to put creative control in her contracts. She's insecure about what she's trying to do, people are putting in their two cents. She gives a little knowing it's not what she would have done but hey they are the experts. And where she gives in, it's less. Left alone to work with people she likes, they create some great shit. She's surprised when people think so much of her while she is a scared little rabbit. I think we all do that. I'm just me, not this great person you're making me out to be.

She felt close to Marlon Brando. She didn't like Hello Dolly. Didn't think the story amounted to much and Walter Matthau was a dick to her. She loved the costumes, very much into fashion but not current fashion.

I like the book but it's depressing. It's all about things in her past and you can tell she is missing it or mourning the lost of the people she's talking about. She was big in the business in her early 20's and was so good she got to work with the pros who were older. Her father died when she was an infant so she saw a lot of these older men as father figures, now gone. It's kind of a sad book.

As Axl says, I've seen things I can't explain. Page 514, also a significant number for me but we'll leave that alone, Barbra has an encounter with a medium. She wants to do Yentl but she's not getting a lot of support for it and wondering if she should sing in it even though she doesn't want to. Her dead father gives her that support through the medium by spelling things out by making a table leg jump and bang on the floor. (Couldn't use an ouija board?) Freaks her out and she says she never did it again. And she gets some other signs through that encounter that leads to Yentl.

She quotes somebody throughout the book, "at the moment of commitment, the entire universe conspires to assist you". She has a lot of those moments in the book. In the case of Yentl she just needed some support. It's an interesting quote and I think it's more true that not. Along the lines of "what you think about, comes about". For those of you who think you do it all by yourself. I can't confirm for you how anything works but you have to admit you've done some shit you never thought possible. And according to that first quote the entire universe helped out. :hihi:

Page 626 if you want more of that "the universe works in mysterious ways". Things that make you go hmm. :D

She talks a lot about having a vision for something and other people not supporting it, trying to interfere with it or cutting it down when it's done. She gets stronger as she goes along, not backing off what she wants. She's called obsessed, controlling, all those words people call you when they want to fuck with your vision. And even though she does it her way, sometimes taking years, and it works, sometimes really big, years later she is still hurt by those people who didn't support her. Even when the things she did paid off big.

She talks about being true to yourself and even if what you did isn't perfect, people pick up on the truth of that and the performance is better than if you fake it.

"Don't waste your breath to save your face
When you have done your best
And even more is asked of you
Fate will decide the rest"

Took me a while to learn that. If it's my project, we're doing it my way. My energy makes it work. And god damn those fate faeries, they find somebody who wants to play, they want to do more. :hihi: And if you try to quit, they just keep calling you back.

Barbra's mother is a real treat. Barbra had donated some money for a building at a university to be named after her father. At the event to honor her, her mother was throwing a fit in the bathroom for all to hear wanting to know why they were honoring Barbra and not her as she was the mother. Not the first time the mother had done something like that. Her mother use to send her poor reviews, skip her performances and told her she was too attention seeking for wanting praise and hugs as a child. Barbra instead adopted Bill Clinton's mother as her adult mother.

Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Off Topic => The Jungle => Topic started by: cineater on August 02, 2022, 06:25:03 PM