Adding A Blog Called Pony Book Chronicles to my List

Am adding a blog to my list, Pony Book Chronicles - this seems interesting.

Crosswalk Near Stadium Found From Years Gone

Not long ago I left the grocery to discover just past the door a crosswalk.  In the past, the late seventies and early eighties, this crosswalk was to find its way into the lost.  A clerk explained once, it was covered over when they paved and never replaced.  It is there again, has found its way into the found. 

A Review For the Summer Reading Club on Sweet & Natural by Janet Warrington

In the introduction to Janet Warrington’s Sweet & Natural: Desserts Without Sugar, Honey, Molasses or Artificial Sweeteners, Lenden H. Smith, M.D. writes, “The sugar is still there but she uses Mother Nature’s packaging so it doesn’t have the quick rush that the refined products do.” I found most of the sweetness is dates and raisins, with some pineapple.


Carbohydrates are a challenge, a reminder of how they are categorized always helps. Interesting to learn in the section about exchanges for diabetic diets that starchy vegetables are treated as Bread Exchanges – corn, peas, limas, potatoes, yams and winter squash.

And to find listed among dips (page 93) – “thin peanut butter with a little apple or orange juice..’ this is a children’s fruit or vegetable dip, nevertheless I would want to try this. I did try the recipes for Sweet Milk (I used Soy Milk), Raisin-Nut Muffins and Applesauce Raisin Cake. These both seemed as sweet as anyone would want cakes or muffins to be.

A Book Report on Motherland by Fern Schumer Chapman

For the Summer Reading Club I read Motherland by Fern Schumer Chapman




The book Motherland has a subtitle – Beyond the Holocaust: A Daughter’s Journey to Reclaim the Past. As this narrative unfolds, the story of Fern Schumer Chapman on a trip to Germany with her mother, the reader realizes the word daughter in the subtitle refers not to the narrator but to her mother. Chapman’s mother was a very young girl when her parents arranged for her to escape from Nazi Germany to Chicago, and only in 1990 did she return. In this book Chapman first sees a photo that shows her resemblance to her grandmother – it is also Chapman’s visit – but it is clearly her mother’s story.



In the prologue Chapman writes, “No one escapes the grip of a homeland, the first ground etched in childhood and memory.” The story begins as the pair fly to Germany, throughout the flight and throughout the story the mother’s long ago family in Germany are remembered. The closeness of the airliner is outlined with clear imagery, also the town in Germany where they meet classmates from Chapman’s mother’s school and find their way to a close friend.



The book has lines from a poem by Maxine Kumin at the front – about Russian Dolls inside one another:



…May we, borne onward by our daughters,

Ride in the Envelope of Almost-Infinity,

That chain letter good for the next twenty-five

Thousand days of their lives.

Book Report from Tacoma Public Library Summer Adult Reading Club

Earlier I read parts of Truth Like The Sun, a new novel by Jim Lynch which I liked very much and became interested in reading the Murray Morgan Book about the Seattle World’s Fair. According to the internet at Village Books Chuckanut Editions, Chuckanut will publish a new edition of Morgan and Wilson’s Century 21: The Story of the Seattle World’s Fair, 1962. It was first published in 1963, by Murray Morgan with a photo essay by Steven C. Wilson.




Both the Lynch and Morgan books present two clear points of view, the Lynch book alternates chapters between 1962 and 2001 and the Morgan book alternates with the photo essay. Interestingly, Morgan is the name of a Lynch protagonist. Both books begin as the fair starts, the Lynch books continues from there, and the Morgan book returns to the first thoughts of the fair to explain how it came to be.



Morgan develops the idea of the fair as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exhibition and the character of E. E. Carlson, who played a strong role in the fair and in the idea of the Space Needle. Among the photos are portraits of the many people, mostly males, who originated the fair along the way, which “materialized at a martini luncheon at the Washington Athletic Club in January of 1955. Since there was such a luncheon, that is as good a place as any to begin this improbably success story.”



Morgan explains that he was doubtful about the fair. The organizers faced trouble getting the money and official recognition in many ways, their long effort over seven years is Murray Morgan’s main topic. The photo essay is sensitively arranged by idea of place to reward the close study a reader would give. The photos are very good and interesting. I look forward to being able to look at a new edition.

Link to An Article, Prostitution In Old Oslo, about an exhibit at the Oslo Museum of Art

I want to link to an article, Prostitution in Old Oslo, about an exhibit at the Oslo Museum of Art.

Notifed The Library Desk that the Two Cars Were Towed

I watched tow trucks drive away a red lancer and gray sonata  from corner of South 11th and Tacoma Avenue, up 11th Street with a police car following.   There had been three fire department vehicles and an ambulance.  When I brought a book in for return at the library desk I mentioned this to them and I asked how long ago it had been, the library employee said they noticed it about ten minutes before. 

I think they only get notified about what happens at their corner if the library visitors bother to alert them. 

Sometimes there are emergency trucks in front of the county city building.  I hesitated and hesitated to make sure it was permitted  to keep walking ahead to the end of the block where the activity was.  As I passed a mom with three kids, two who stood and one in a little stroller, who was loading them into her car, a girl hurried in the opposite direction.  The mom said she was rude to pass them too quickly.  I could only think of saying,  We really try.