books

[cineater]

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. 

[cineater]

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.

[cineater]

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. 

[cineater]

Maybe that lady did see a kangaroo in that book.   
https://www.aol.com/news/runaway-kangaroo-punches-police-officer-105045307.html

[cineater]

Finished off Terry Brooks, Sister of the Starlit Seas.  Big Terry Brooks fan.  Okay story, not one I'll read again but it ends with a restless soul off on another adventure.  "Someday, I may find the place where I belong, or the cause that gives my life purpose.  Or maybe that sort of resolution is not for me.  Either way, I know I need to make the journey."  Right book, right time?  Called and nudged.

[cineater]

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.   

[cineater]

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.     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. 

[cineater]

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.

[cineater]

Charlotte's Crossing is the reason I didn't get up until 11:30.     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.

[cineater]

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.

[cineater]

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.

[cineater]

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.

[cineater]

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.

[cineater]

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. 

[cineater]

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

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.     And if you try to quit, they just keep calling you back.

[cineater]

I'm really getting an appreciation for Barbra.  So willing to be friendly, cooperative and into her art.  Doing her thing and has to deal with those damaged individuals who come into her life and take it out on her.  Wondering why they take jabs at her when she's not taking them at them.  Agreed they wanted to play but didn't.  I think we all wonder why that happens and carry those bruises long after the swings. 

[cineater]

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.

[cineater]

Finished Barbra's book.  It's worth the read.  She's genuine, insecure, passionate about what she does and a lot of other things but I would say mostly just looking for acceptance.  Brave woman.

[Six Strings]

Dystopian style all the way for me. Besides the all time classics the latest ones I liked are Memory of Water and Tender is the Flesh