Attended Kenneth C. Davis Skype Event at Library

In the past I have not been onscreen during a Skype event, this time the screen showed the meeting room of the Wheelock Library, which had been part of the McCormick Library before the Wheelock Regional Library was built. The room is special and lovely but free of books, except when there is an event there.

Several people attended and several asked questions about the Civil War and about his books, "Don't Know Much About The Civil War", among them. Davis said he had been familiar with the song "What a Wonderful Word" for a long time and especially the Sam Cooke version. (The song was from 1960 and written by Sam Cooke, according to the internet.) Davis makes an emphasis on the important special stories about people during historic times.

Skype. I worked at McCormick Branch Library from 1965 to 1967, during high school.

October Books At Twelve-Ten - Breakfast At Sally's by Richard Le Mieux

Three people met on Tuesday, October 11, 2011 for Books At Twelve-Ten. Our book was Breakfast at Sally's by Richard Le Mieux. We agreed that imagery invoked a place successfully, at one point Richard's second-hand typewriter is accidentlly left out in the rain on a picnic table. More rain scenes portrayed Puget Sound.

We discussed many characters included in Breakfast at Sally's and the serious message conveyed regarding poverty in our present time. "Sally's" was the Bremerton Salvation Army, where Richard drove his van most mornings for breakfast. His dog, Willow, was along during all his experiences.

The reading group is using Tacoma Public Library Book Kits for our choices at this time. The kits include ten or a dozen copies of a title, a reading and discussion guide in a folder, and a plastic carry box with a plastic lid. The ten or a dozen copies circulate within the reading group from the personal library card of one member. All the books must return to the member who checked out the box before the kit can be returned.

On Tuesday, November 8th, 2011, the Books At Twelve-Ten group will read Desert in Bohemia by Jill Paton Walsh. From the internet: "a novel of the effects of communism on the lives of ordinary people in the aftermath of World War II chronicals fifty years in a small European town."

Swedish Song - Now We Have Summer Now We Have Sun

Years back a cousin and I enjoyed the sunny chairs not far from the Ted Brown Music Store. I showed her a Scandinvian Song Book from Ted Brown Music. She told me Nu är det sommar nu är det sol had been our grandmother's favorite song.

This is a different version of the song about dancing in the woods in the moonlight. The tune of the song was among those performed by my mother and uncles in their family dance band, the Gord Family Orchestra.

Nu är det sommar nu är det sol / nu är det koskit i hagen / och kärringskrallet sitter på en stol / med fullt av kakor i magen. / Kom ska jag kaska koskit på dig / så att du tappar andan.

Now we have summer now we have sun / now we have cowshit in the meadow / and the old woman rattling sits in a chair / but full of cake in the stomach. / I am going to cast cow shit at you / so that you draw a breath.

During one discussion of The Crucible, a panel about the McCarthy Hearings, during Tacoma Reads Together in 2006, I brought up a book I had been reading - a treatise about the word bullshit. One topic of the book was that the term bullshit refers to language that obscures meaning. The term also is used the punctuate sentences for shock emphasis, and when the term is used this way, it is usually used over and over.

I tried to find Nu är det sommar nu är det sol on the internet. The song with "nu är det koskit i hagen" was the only thing I could find. Where my grandmother was a child in Finland was out in the country and perhaps she knew this alternative version, too, from her childhood. Perhaps this version is very far from meaningless, but is a jewel from the great treasure of children's rhymes.

Perhaps this jewel from the great treasure of children's rhymes is here, being passed on to another generation of children.

The dancer/singer who performs this song for children At Den flygande mattan wears a rather traditional sailor costume and uses lots of leg and arm gestures and energy. The children in the audience are just beginning upper elementary school grades. I think this is an outreach to the children to take on healthy eating and exercise behavior.

There are problems. In our time a dancer can be perceived to use a private car. With this luxury there is a baggage of car-dependent guilt, blame, and road rage. How does the singer and the filmed program make sure they are not taking all this out on the helpless, innocent little ones?

It is terrible to think of the committee that arrives at a school in their several cars to "Carrie Nation" the school hallway snack machine.

Drawings From Puyalllup Fairs of the Past

Draft Horse Demo, Pioneer Farm with Wringer Washstand, Topiary Chicken, and Jiggle Foot.

Books At Twelve Ten Plans For October

Four people were present to discuss Then We Came To The End on Tuesday at noon. This time the plan included making up our own Autumn book list. We explored the idea of Tacoma Public Library's Book Kits and will begin with Richard Le Mieux's Breakfast At Sally's.

Volunteers To Continue Books At Twelve Ten

During library funding gaps, volunteers are organizing to continue Books At Twelve Ten - Tuesday, September 13th, 2011, group member will meet to discuss "Then We Came To The End", a book we enjoyed last September - If we look back on books read by Books at Twelve-Ten, there are things happening for the books and for the authors – According to the internet, if everything goes as planned, Fox 2000 hopes to start shooting The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in the spring. Author of The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch's Border Songs won the 2010 Washington State Book Award. I Don't Know How She Does It – will soon be released, Sarah Jessica Parker stars in film version. We read The Pact– the Three Doctors are on Facebook. A Sherman Alexie poem – "The Lost Colony of Roanoke", is in the on-line magazine Guernica, August 2011.

The Story of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour - Labor Day Weekend

The Nelson Bentley Medallion for Best Inter-Woven-Vision-of-Richard-Hugo, a lovely round award decorated with the image of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, would be awarded to the speaker ahead of Ginni during Bumbershoot. Ginni met the winner while they visited the theater where they would speak. (This is a work of fiction. Bumbershoot in The Story of Ginni and the "I Am An American" Speaking Tour, carries no resemblance to any other Bumbershoot Event in the Pacific Northwest.)

Ginni was requisitioned a t-shirt to wear if she wished to during the speech.