Catching Up

I'm all out of books for the moment, since I'm saving what I have for the trip. I really liked Finding Oz, about how L. Frank Baum came to write The Wizard of ... It's got a lot of historical and philosophical background, and was set in a time period I like, the late 1800s.

I did not like the next one I brought home from the summer reading list, Me Times Three, and I gave it up early on. I seriously don't understand how some of these books are chosen for kids to read. This was another Sex in the City-type thing. Why are we giving this to kids to read? What are we going to teach them using this crap?

I have another book coming from B & N tomorrow, which I hope I'll like. I'll let you know.

Pictures. I promised you a picture of the map the girls gave us for our anniversary:


I know it's hard to see what this is. The map is from the 1880s, when New Jersey was made up of several large townships, each divided into school districts. About ten years later, legislation was passed so that school districts could incorporate as boroughs, each one a distinct municipality in control of its own schools; the borough movement went on for about 30 years. This map shows the township and its school districts that was later broken up into many boroughs, including Bizarro Town, which incorporated in 1924. We were then part of Saddle River Township, but we are nowhere near the town now known as Saddle River (a very, very upscale community; Richard Nixon lived there in retirement.) We are also not close to Passaic, a city, although the map shows something called East Passaic, which no longer exists. Anyway. We like maps.

I haven't heard from the doctor yet -- I'm expecting her call this afternoon or tomorrow -- but I know that the scan showed "lots" of fibroids. Swell. I hope I can live and die with them and not have to do anything about it. We shall see.

Lacking a book to read today, I thought I'd do a little *shudder* work. I have a procedures manual that I wrote in the spring of 2008, pretty much a guide for anyone who came after I retired. Well, I'm not going anywhere, but I need to update it anyway, a little time-consuming, but not difficult. And then, CRISIS: I could not find the file anywhere. Not on my home computer, not on my flash drive, and not on the school computer, which I logged into remotely. At last, I found it tucked into the wrong folder on the flash drive, but CRISIS: the file is corrupted. I tried a lot of tricks to get it to open, but it just ain't happenin'.

So now I have to type it all over again. It's about 27 pages long; it'll be longer once I put in the revisions. Oy. And then make an abbreviated edition for the teachers who'll be on library duty; they won't need all of it, but they'll sure need some of it. And then save it in a million places. And put the printed out versions in binders, which I guess I'll need to go buy.

So now, it seems, I do have something to keep me busy. Funny how that works out.




watching L/O :: ENTRY #2092
READING: --- by ---

Pretty Day

It was actually a beautiful day today, no humidity, lovely breezes, not terribly hot. K and I went for a walk in one of the county parks nearby. We didn't walk for very long, given my stamina limitations, but if I want to build myself up, I have to do it in increments. Anyway, I wanted to show her a particular part of the park that she's seen from the road but never close up, and it was closed for renovations anyway. So we'll catch it another time.

Other than that, we made some returns at the mall and stuff like that, but then we watched a movie that we rented last week but had forgotten to watch. Stranger Than Fiction. Anyone seen it? It was really a most unusual movie, and very much worth seeing. K said she thinks it's the best movie she's seen this year. I recommend it highly.

And in other news -- no other news. Before I start my next book, which is The Founding Brothers, I decided I needed a little background. Wait. This is what made me feel the need for a little background:

GOP Bigotry Rears Its Ugly Head

I was particularly irritated by Congressman Sali's statement that

[Those] ... changes ... are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

and that

Sali says America was built on Christian principles that were derived from scripture.

I do not believe this to be true, but I'm working my way through Common Sense by Thomas Paine and The Federalist Papers to see. The fact is that the guiding principal of our founding fathers was primarily capitalism. As for religious principles, Thomas Paine was the philosopher of the Revolution and Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, and neither of these men considered himself a Christian. They both declared themselves to be Deists, which means they acknowledged belief in God and went no further. I think this was not uncommon among the learned men of the time, which includes, of course, those known as our "founding fathers." Benjamin Franklin could not have been a Christian unless he was the greatest hypocrite in the world. The one I need to find out about is James Madison, since he was the primary author of the Constitution. (And of The Federalist Papers, which is why I'm starting there.)

Most of the early settlers of this country were adventurers or capitalists, pure and simple, and came here to make money. The Puritans who settled Massachusetts only wanted religious freedom for themselves, not for anyone else. However, religious tolerance was indeed a founding principle in the states of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and were always common in New York and New Jersey, although those states weren't particularly founded for that reason, although the Dutch who settled these areas were generally tolerant of all religions, even at home. They just discovered early that letting everyone take part meant good business.

History lesson over. I'm boring tonight, but that article got me very angry. There's a lot going on in our so-called government now that makes me angry, but I'm trying to keep it in check. I'll just sign off for tonight with this from School House Rock's "Fireworks":

Like Thomas Paine once wrote:
It's only common sense (only common sense)
That if a government won't give you your basic rights
You'd better get another government.

WATCHING A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN :: ENTRY #1550