Apple For The First Meal of The New Year

Swedish tradition says have an apple for the first meal of the new year. It will promote good health all through the year.

Public Transportation and car-pool lanes

The HOT lanes mentioned in the paper today allow cars driven by a person alone to pay to use the car-pool and public transportation lanes. This is a quote from an article in the Tacoma News Tribune. "We've already confirmed that the SR 167 HOT lanes are doing what they were designed to do: reduce congestion and improve travel times for everyone traveling on this corridor," state toll director Craig Stone said in a WSDOT news release issued this month.

The speaker means car by car congestion, and uses the term everybody, which refers to individual people. I think it must be true that the speaker is not discussing per capita congestion, but car by car congestion. The ecological purpose of the car-pool lanes is ruined by this use. Instead of this offense against public transportation, there should be special lines at busy post offices for people who have used a public transportation card that day. That would serve as an incentive to people to use public transportation.

Books At Twelve Ten and The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

1.

Three people met to discuss The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. First, a) to continue into the spring at the main library meeting room on the second Tuesday of every month we have to reserve the room... b) Also we discussed letting people forward absentee thoughts if unable to attend because of illness. Althought we are supposed to show up, be there and share, and also help choose the books, we might try out allowing a limited amount of contribution from absentee members. c) Next we made our choice for January - from limited library holdings, a new book by Sarah R. Shaber, Louise's War. The limited availability is the opposite of the Book Kits choices Books At Twelve Ten has experimented with in autumn.

2.

Fifteen minutes into our discussion, we began to discuss The Corrections: according to one participant - "A big, complicated and tedious book." It was a long novel with rather few scenes and a great deal of flashbacks.

We had questions from the internet and discussed three or four - Consider the atmosphere of suburban St. Jude. and What is the significance of the title, The Corrections? and and What is the significance of "one last Christmas?"

One participant pointed out that the work is to be on HBO - (Home Box Office) I had not heard of it, according to the internet this will happen in 2013. As we made our way through questions the participant who chose the book explained they understood the title to mean the book was about the criminal justice system.

But the story only mentioned the criminal justice system distantly - one definition of corrections was a name, Correct-All, for a pill that would make criminals honest citizens. The words of the title are re-worked throughout the novel.

Here at the end of the year as I read I had dimly related to the final section of the book "One Last Christmas"as timely - and the idea of a holiday at home for the people in the story was not so unlike other unstable families.