Category: books
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self control
After lunch at Cronies Cafe yesterday my mom asked me, as we stepped out into the street, “Did you want to visit the book store?” “Oh, heck yes!” I answered, because, you know, books! She was referring to Book Cellar, a book store on main street. I stop by every time I visit because it… Read.
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Hypothermic
I froze my ass off today. Really. I have no ass. I sat in line with My Darling B – stood, for a while, but mostly sat, so I’m defaulting to that – for five hours this morning to buy tickets for the Great Taste of the Midwest. The skies were clear, the day was… Read.
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Engulfed
David Sedaris’s laundry list of the worst ways to die, from When You Are Engulfed In Flames: My list of don’ts covered three pages and included such reminders as: never fall asleep in a Dumpster, never underestimate a bee, never drive a convertible behind a flatbed truck, never get old, never get drunk near a… Read.
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Coop once again
I realize I posted a quote from Michael Perry’s Coop just yesterday, but I can’t help bringing this one to your attention today. Consider this a forewarning. I have a feeling this book’s going to be pregnant with quotable material. Sometimes during the day when the cows were settled we kids went to the barn… Read.
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Coop
From Michael Perry’s Coop: A Family, a Farm, and the Pursuit of One Good Egg: I am open to the idea of home birth because I love my wife and this is what she wants, but I am also bucky about the idea of delivering babies old-style if it is simply in service of some… Read.
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BLAM!
The ordinarily even-tempered academic Henry Adams goes all Chuck Norris on De Witt Clinton: With a violence that startled uninitiated bystanders, Cheetham in his American Citizen [newspaper] flung one charge after another at [Aaron] Burr; first his judiciary vote; then his birthday toast; then the suppression of a worthless history of the last Administration written… Read.
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Genius
When it sucks to be a Genius: John Fitch, a mechanic, without education or wealth, but with the energy of genius, invented engine and paddles of his own, with so much success that during a whole summer Philadelphians watched his ferryboat plying daily against the river current. No one denied that his boat was rapidly,… Read.
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The Ladies
Saith the Duc de Liancourt, writing in 1797: … it must be acknowledged that the beauty of the American ladies has the advantage in the comparison [to European ladies]. The young women of Philadelphia are accomplished in different degrees, but beauty is general with them. They want the ease and fashion of French women, but… Read.
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Dynamite Ed
Politics was a lot more fun back in the day: … delegation-selection proceedings were under way in several states that had not yet adopted the primary system. On 23 January, Oklahoma’s Fourth District Republican convention grotesquely dramatized the factionalism of a party splitting three ways. The local committee chairman, Edward Perry, was a Roosevelt man… Read.
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The End
Recently finished books: Millenium, by John Varley – based on the short story Air Raid, and I’m not sure I can say making it into a book improved it. The short story wowed me so much that it resurfaced in my memory just last week and and sent me searching the internet for it. When… Read.
