Author Topic: The Library  (Read 151630 times)

joangrimes

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #40 on: May 20, 2009, 09:54:19 AM »

The Library


Our library cafe is open 24/7, the welcome mat is  always out.
Do come in from the wind and rain and join us.

We look forward to hearing from you, about you and the books you are enjoying (or not).


Let the book talk begin here!

Everyone is welcome!

 Suggestion Box for Future Discussions



JoanG:
Welcome back Steph!

Sounds like you had a fabulous trip. Helps me to recall my trip last summer.  I visted much of that area.  I loved seeing Mt Ranier and Mt St Helens.  They are just fabulous.  I did not do the train trip though. That sounds like lots of fun.  I traveled from San Francisco up the coast and to Victoria.  Flew home from Seattle.

Ginny great to see you back.  Hope that you are healing well.

Joan Grimes
Roll Tide ~ Winners of  BCS 2010 National Championship

joyous

  • Posts: 69
Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #41 on: May 20, 2009, 10:32:29 AM »

Just reserving my place in the library :)
JOY

EvelynMC

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #42 on: May 20, 2009, 05:07:43 PM »
Steph,

Thanks for the info.  I have always wanted to take a train trip out West or up into Canada.  I have looked into it, and thought we would want a bedroom with an in-room bathroom, but wasn't sure.  I also wanted to hear someone's experience who has actually taken a train trip.  I don't know if we will ever do it, but it really appeals. ---  We took a cruise in 1984 and even with sea sick medicine, I was sick from the time we left port until we arrived back on land. They also lost my luggage, which didn't help my frame of mind.  It was returned to me one day before we docked. The bright note of this "cruise from hell" was that it was a snorkeling cruise and they gave everyone a T-shirt.  My bathing suit was packed in my husband's trunk, so I joined the snorkeling lessons and got off the ship everytime I could and wearing my bathing suit and new Tshirt I snorkeled and snorkeled.  Had a blast. But I vowed I'd never take another cruise. (For those of you who are wondering, the ships store only went up to size 14, and I am to delicately put it, queen size, so buying anything wasn't an option.)---- The idea of a train trip where you just get aboard and stay put for a few days appeals to me.  Just sit and watch the scenery go by.

It just sounds like a great trip. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Evelyn

mrssherlock

  • Posts: 2007
Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #43 on: May 20, 2009, 08:36:26 PM »
The train trip across Canada has always appealed to me.  Maybe now I will decide to go on and do it.  I'll start saving.
Jackie
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Edmund Burke

Babi

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #44 on: May 21, 2009, 08:30:47 AM »
  I well remember my first auto trip through mountains, STEPH, with my husband driving. The road was so narrow, I could look out my window and
see straight down!  I found it so unnerving I had to turn my head away and
studiously avoid 'sightseeing'.  My new husband, bless him, thought it was funny.
  The Canadian train trip through the Rockies is the one I have heard about and am interested in.  Not all the way across Canada, but just through that very scenic area of their Southwest.  Who knows, someday I may. My ex-DIL and two of my grandchildren (adults now, of course) live in Victoria, which makes
the idea doubly attractive.
 
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

ginny

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #45 on: May 21, 2009, 09:58:19 AM »
Stephanie, I am so glad to hear how you spent your vacation! When my chidren were small I took both of them separately from Chicago to Seattle in those bedrooms on....there were two trains from Chicago to Seattle, one was called the Empire Builder and one was called something else. (I thought it also had the word Empire but I can't find it now on the Amtrak site).

One went down thru Iowa and across Nebraska, barely skirting  Kansas which is the one we did so the kids could see the changing great country we have, they were mesmerized, to this day my oldest talks about seeing Nebraska and  "Kansas"  as if it were Europe.  You had to look fast tho, for the Kansas part,  and you barely got into it  as we entered it late in the day. And the black black soil of Illinois! Every little thing was amazing. TOO LATE we found they had included a wonderful little set of pamphlets, maps, which told exactly where we were, but we had fun guessing.

Then we were late, very very late getting in because of the great heat as we crossed Utah  and labored to climb the various mountains.  We went thru Denver too.  It was kind of exciting. The scenery alone was worth it. We disliked having to share the dinner table with others as my boys were not of an age where causal dinner conversation came easily, that was a minus. Food was good.

 It WAS a great way to see the country and I'm glad to hear it still is. Those trains must be dated by now.

The other train, can't remember its name, perhaps IT was the Empire Builder,  went across the upper US back to Chicago, thru Montana, etc., I have heard it's very scenic about wildlife. I am glad they are still doing these trains because here the Amtrak comes thru at something like 4 am. And they wonder why people don't take the train?

So glad to hear an update!




The "new" Newsweek is out: I love it. I even wrote the editor which is new for me. Long, long literate articles. When have we seen that in recent years?  Glossy pages. Love it. Of course they lost Anna Quindlen, which is a big loss, but the new format is fabulous. Have you seen it?


ginny

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #46 on: May 21, 2009, 10:04:50 AM »
Ok the  Empire Builder still goes up: http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/am2Route/Horizontal_Route_Page&c=am2Route&cid=1081256321887&ssid=133

What's the one called which goes down into Kansas etc? Anybody know?

maryz

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #47 on: May 21, 2009, 11:03:50 AM »
Ginny, we've gotten our "new" Newsweek, too.  It's okay, I guess, and we'll get used to it.  But, to both of us, the new printing is harder to read.  There's not enough contrast between the print and the background - maybe if the print were just a bit more bold.  Also, sometimes I was unsure if what was on a page was an article or an advertisement.
"When someone you love dies, you never quite get over it.  You just learn how to go on without them. But always keep them safely tucked in your heart."

ginny

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #48 on: May 21, 2009, 12:43:17 PM »
Absolutely right, Mary. .

I did comment on the new illustrations, also in the email (their letters to the editor of the in print magazine email is on newsweek.com)  and you are right:  they are hard to tell if they are ads or connected to the article, you actually tend to skip over them till you realize what they are.

I did not mention that the part  (I thought it was just me, I should have come here first, maybe) where they had the orange background (is it the old conventional wisdom thing?) with the white print was almost impossible to read. Since you saw it too maybe others will mention it from their reader base.

 But I do like the longer in depth  articles and the slick paper.

I also said the loss of Anna Quindlen was a minus. I think she got some bad advice there, make way for the new generation. Of what? Pulitzer Prize winners like she is? Faugh.

maryz

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #49 on: May 21, 2009, 01:23:13 PM »
Ginny, I never even attempt to read anything in white print on a colored or black background.  It's just too hard.  I sent a quick e-mail to Newsweek about the print, and got an automated response to having received it.  I didn't intend for it to be printed - just to be noticed (hopefully)  ::).

Sometimes I think - well, I'm having trouble because I have old eyes (I'm not old, of course  ;)).  But then I think - Hey!  who do they think is reading this magazine anyway.  The younger folks are reading all this stuff on their computers or blackberries or iPods.  It's ONLY us old folks who are still reading paper magazines, and they should be paying SOME attention to us.

Oops - did I get carried away there????
"When someone you love dies, you never quite get over it.  You just learn how to go on without them. But always keep them safely tucked in your heart."

Steph

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #50 on: May 21, 2009, 05:25:03 PM »
Ginny, the lower train now goes from Chicago to California ( not sure if it is Los Angeles or San Francisco( actually the city across the bay since the train does not go across). Ours went very north.. North Dakota which was still flooded in so many places. All sorts of little towns with wonderful names.. Glacier National Park.. The people in the next bedroom and Tim and I spent our time racing from our bedrooms to the corridor to figure out which view was the best..
We love trains and have done the Canadian one as well. It used to be called "Rockies by Daylight" and was great fun. You trained all day for two days and then stopped about 5pm and bused you to a hotel and dinner. We went as far as Bamff and then took a bus back in a different pattern. Loved train, hated bus..
Stephanie and assorted corgi

CallieOK

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #51 on: May 21, 2009, 05:52:40 PM »
I also have the new "Newsweek" and have yet to decide what I think about the new format.
The first thing I noticed is that the ads are mostly on pages facing articles - and, yes, it is hard to tell the difference.  

I hate that white print on a dark background!!!!!!

Anna Quindlen's "farewell" column made me think of Eskimo elders being sent out to sea on ice floes when they were no longer "useful".   Of course, with global warming, I s'pose that won't be possible for "us" - but that's the way I feel in more and more situations.  

Bah, Humbug!

Steph,  two friends and I did a "Railroading Through The Rockies" tour.  We left Vancouver on the train - stopped overnight at a motel in Kamloops (great dinner-show there - like a melodrama and lots of fun) and continued on to Banff.
Then we went by "coach" (not "bus" 'cause it had a bathroom  :)) up the Glacier Highway and over to Edmonton before flying home.
Super trip.

pedln

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #52 on: May 21, 2009, 10:08:41 PM »
All your travels bring back memories. I travelled by train from LA to Chicago about 45 years ago -- five months pregnant and with a two-year-old and a four-year-old.  My mother was in Wisconsin having fits over the whole thing, which turned out quite well.  The two-year-old had decided about three months earlier that he was terrified of large machinery and anything that made big noise, but once he was ON the train, everything was fine.  Now I'd like to do the Northern route.

While we were in LA, my mother and aunt came to visit us via the train trip of a lifetime, which a travel agent had arranged -- from Chicago.  They stopped and spent a few days at the Grand Canyon, then several days in LA, up the coast to visit THEIR AUNT and UNCLE in Seattle, and on to Banff and Lake Louise.  That's were they decided to go to a very posh restaurant and have a cocktail and oer'derves and celebrate their successful trip.  My mother was chewing on a fancy little orange sandwhich but found it rather tough.  Then the people at the next table told her she was chewing on her napkin.   :P

Babi

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #53 on: May 22, 2009, 08:19:01 AM »
GINNY, I never could get my kids interested in the scenery when we made our
car trips. A little, maybe, in the mountains. For the most part, it was just
grass and trees to them, and they would rather read their comic books.

 Actually, MARYZ, I think you made an excellent point and I hope the editors
paid some attention. I doubt very much if the youngsters are spending much time reading Newsweek, so they should be attentive to the needs of those who do read it.

PEDLN, I got a grin out of the story of your Mother and the tough 'orange sandwich'.  But considering some of the fancy stuff some restaurants put
in front of their customers, it was bound to happen sooner or later.
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

mrssherlock

  • Posts: 2007
Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #54 on: May 22, 2009, 09:18:28 AM »
We played endless games such as Ghost, car bingo, alphabet spotting on billboards, counting license plates (start at 000 and progress in order, 001, 002, etc.but only on your side of the car)  Those were some very happy times.
Jackie
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Edmund Burke

Steph

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #55 on: May 22, 2009, 09:58:53 AM »
Our kids loved 20 questions in the car trips.. That and secretly trying to do battle with whatever was on hand ( nothing like boys). Now our grands have a portable dvd player to watch movies on . How life changes.
We hope to do the other Chicago train next year to California. The rockies part of the trip through Denver looks good.
The most amazing thing about Amtrak?? The Florida to Wilmington , Del train roomette costs exactly twice what the bedroom for two did out west. No idea why..
I have been hearing about a really great train in Australia,, I just hate the idea of that long long plane ride. I have gotten really absurd about hating plane travel.
Stephanie and assorted corgi

marjifay

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #56 on: May 22, 2009, 01:41:47 PM »
Gosh, I can't imagine taking little children on train or car trips unless absolutely necessary.  When my husband and I traveled by car just for fun, we left the kids with their grandma.  The only way to travel!
"Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."  Barbara Tuchman

Babi

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #57 on: May 23, 2009, 08:53:18 AM »
 Marjifay, we made an auto trip with our infant daughter from Texas to New York, so her Dad's folks could meet her.  Not being a complete fool, I took my grandmother with us, so I would have some help with the baby. Daddy had a
tendency to disappear when a nasty diaper appeared.  :(
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

joangrimes

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #58 on: May 23, 2009, 09:08:54 AM »
WE made car trips all the time just to show our children the countryside.  I wish I had done some of the train trips with my kids too.  They sound just wonderful to let children experience what the country is like.

Joan Grimes
Roll Tide ~ Winners of  BCS 2010 National Championship

Steph

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #59 on: May 23, 2009, 09:42:05 AM »
I took our sons on several train trips. They loved them.. MDH traveled for years and opened stores , etc. So he would b e gone two weeks or more at time. In the summer, he would go and then if there was a train around, we would follow for at least one of the weeks. Stayed in some of those places, with a kitchen and living room.. We made Breakfast and lunch and ate dinner out.. They got to see most of the southeast that way. But they truly loved the train.
Stephanie and assorted corgi

ginny

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #60 on: May 23, 2009, 10:00:56 AM »
:) My children of course started out with comic books, books, stuff they had brought, but there wasn't anything to break up the trip, you didn't ride 2 or 3 hours and then get back in the car.

  It wasn't like a car. You didn't stop, ever, not for us, anyway,   to get off or eat or anything else: it stopped for others, but soon took right back off:  it just kept going day and night and with a somewhat wild eyed mother rushing in their room  screaming LOOK LOOK "amber fields of grain!"  LOOK! Wheat! Look at that soil color (ours is red clay), LOOK!  No towns, how do they go grocery shopping?   Look at that FARM! Look at those silos! The dirt roads! (It's actually a wonder they weren't shell shocked when we got there hahaha). I'm trying to remember how LONG that trip was, it was LONG, three days? I want to say three days and possibly two nights? Three nights? I'm thinking two nights and three days.  How long did it take you,  Stephanie?

We took an entire extra day due to the heat, we were very late;  the tracks or so the conductor informed us would...separate (this was many years ago) in the heat and that slowed down the train.

A little drama amongst our group, the mother of one of the train employees was on the train, they all treated her with great deference and kindness but the issue WAS would her son meet her or not? I never found out, I hope he did. It's amazing how caught up you get in things like that when traveling. There had been some estrangement. This is before cell phones, and we were a full day late. WOULD he be there or not?

Coming into Seattle we came thru that....oh dear, something about a river gorge, Washington?  Gorgeous. Do you know a train ride would be a fabulous trip for our Books! hahaha We have talked about it several times after reading Nothing Like it in the  World. A bit pricey tho, I think? For the bedrooms? Tho  as Stephanie says, less than across the eastern seaboard,  that Southern  Crescent is still running, and is a MESS. Unless you like getting off at a stop  at 4 am.

I loved riding the train. I loved waking up in some station (you have window shutters you can pull but I loved watching the land slide by) and guessing where I might be, loved it.

There USED to be a wonderful train from Paris to Rome, it went overnight and you woke up going down the Italian Riviera, that train has fallen into bad hands. Now goes thru Switzerland for some reason, probably terrorists who are ruining our lives,  and does not take the scenic coast route, so you no longer wake up hanging off a cliff on the Italian coast. I've still got some of those photos tho, amazing.

The last I heard of it the customers (Italian) stopped the train (this is about 2 years ago)  as it had bedbugs and almost did a riot. The last time I took it for nostalgia's sake, the septic/ sewer backed up, and the car was evacuated. Not exactly what you'd  expect in the way of happy adventure. But in its heyday,  it was a wonderful trip. They brought  you breakfast, carried your bags on and off,  and there was a lounge car with a bar on every sleeping car where the people would congregate and get acquainted. I didn't, but the people I was traveling with reported many from  Texas in our midst. :)

I love this conversation, nothing about books, but hey! Our meet and greet place here. You COULD really do a nice thing on it however connected WITH books, a marathon of books readings about what you were seeing!


marjifay

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #61 on: May 23, 2009, 10:19:16 AM »
Babi, I had to laugh at your story of your train trip and daddy's disappearance whenever a nasty diaper appeared.  My former husband, a police officer, could pick up a man's severed head from the freeway after an accident (true story), but called me to come home in the middle of my bowling league game to clean up after our young son who had messed himself and his crib, because it would have made daddy sick to do it!

As to traveling with young children, I figured they could see the countryside for themselves if they wanted to when they grew up. 
"Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."  Barbara Tuchman

mabel1015j

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #62 on: May 23, 2009, 01:58:53 PM »
Just marking my spot, we just got back from a week at "the shore" as we call it in New Jersey, so i haven't read all of your posts yet, but glad to see Ginny is back w/ us...........must have been those Peter Pan cream donuts  :D ;).................jean

JoanP

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #63 on: May 23, 2009, 02:13:04 PM »
Just a quick note to let you know that the PBS Masterpiece Mystery series has made 24 sets of THREE Detective Wallender novels available to our readers - just for cost of shipping.    Are you interested in a set?  Just email me and I'll get your set in the mail. (We have 7 sets left!)

Read what out readers are saying about the series - and some are enjoying the books even more! Masterpiece Mystery!
Quote
They are the best detective series I have ever read, bar none (and I love detective stories. Dana)

Babi

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #64 on: May 24, 2009, 09:12:22 AM »
 That was an auto trip we were on, Marjifay.  So Bill could pull over,
stop, and really disappear!  I can sympathize with your husband, though it
seems strange. It's a sensitivity to odor, I believe. My aunt Marie could
not be around soiled diapers, or people who were throwing up. She
was too 'suggestible',and would get sick herself.
   Gee, isn't this a genteel topic?  :P
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

Steph

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #65 on: May 24, 2009, 09:37:03 AM »
Ginny.. Our train was 46 hours.. two nights and close to two days..We were absolutely smack on time.. We ran about an hour late through North Dakota since we had to slow so much for the flooded areas, but made it up afterwards. Yes, there is a gorge as you go through Washington.. But Glacier Park was our favorite. So spectacular from the train.. Our neighbors in the car and MDH and I raced back and forth across the aisle to admire each side and take pictures.
Such a shame about the train through France. I would have taken it.. But I did love all of the trains we took years ago .. Two weeks trip called  " The Great Trains of Europe" It is now a bit longer, but fun.. You never sleep on the trains, always in a hotel..
I love novels about long distance trains. It also seems to me that Agatha Christie wrote a novel  ( not the Orient Express one) where everything depended on the train schedule for alibis.. Sort of neat as I recall. I dont like Mexico, but am told the Copper Canyon train ride is spectacular..
Stephanie and assorted corgi

maryz

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #66 on: May 24, 2009, 10:43:58 AM »
We took the Copper Canyon trip last September with Caravan tours.  The canyons really are spectacular.  Out of the week's trip, two days are on the train - one out and one returning.  We took a bus from El Paso, then spent the first night in the town where we boarded the train.  All day on the train to the near-Pacific-coast town of El Fuerte, where we stayed for a couple of nights.  Then the return train trip to a glorious posada stuck to the side of a canyon wall for (unfortunately) only one night.  Then bus back to Chihuahua for two nights, before returning to El Paso.  We'd recommend the trip, but there was more "bus time" than we prefer.
"When someone you love dies, you never quite get over it.  You just learn how to go on without them. But always keep them safely tucked in your heart."

mrssherlock

  • Posts: 2007
Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #67 on: May 24, 2009, 01:40:57 PM »
My daughter, on an overnight trip to Salt Lake City, found that she couldn't sleep; the matress, she said, was about 2" thick.  Has this detail been improved? 
Jackie
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Edmund Burke

BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #68 on: May 24, 2009, 05:13:34 PM »
Here ye, here ye - after two humorous short story discussions there is change.

It was easy to see that more than a week on a short story is overkill.

We also have serious reading going on here on Senior Learn and so we did not need an in-depth discussion on yet another story.

However; as the newspapers had a section we called the Funnies it seems appropriate for Senior Learn to also have our version of the Funnies in the form of Funny Short Story discussion.

And so NEW PLAN -

Every Sunday evening a new humorous short story will be added to the bottom of our heading along with just a couple of questions to help focus the start of a post.

I am working  harder this summer than I have in years and so I cannot promise to be here very often but the discussion really does not have to be managed - we are having fun - sharing what makes  us laugh - what was funny in the story - and adding a bit of learning as we try to identify the type of humor in each story we read - is it a witty story, a story of satire a slap stick comedy, a farce -

Labeling the kind of humor is the only thinking in the entire discussion - the rest is just letting  us know if you laughed, smiled or enjoyed the story and your thoughts about any part of the story that hits your fancy or reminds you of a real life experience along similar story lines.

And so please drop in and lighten up your day once a week with a short story from the funny side of life.
http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?topic=351.0
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Steph

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #69 on: May 25, 2009, 08:52:30 AM »
Our matresses were sort of thin, but the swaying of the train was like a cradle.. Put us both right out.. Silly but true.
We are still getting a bit too much rain in Florida. WE needed it, but not all at once.
Stephanie and assorted corgi

Steph

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #70 on: May 26, 2009, 08:47:54 AM »
I am not a good shopper except for books.. But yesterday MDH and I decided to go to a few outlet sales here. Went to a Van Heusen outlet store. 50% off everything in the shop and then an extra 10 to 40% on particular clothing.. Whew.. We figured that we spent what we normally would spend on two golf shirts for him and got three shirts for him and two blouse and overblouses for me.. I guess that clothing retail is really suffering.
Stephanie and assorted corgi

JoanP

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #71 on: May 27, 2009, 08:32:40 AM »
Don't  forget that you can register each day  - before August 11 -  six lucky members of our SeniorLearn Book Club could win an all expense paid trip to Guernsey this fall!

It's a really short simple form to fill out every day.





Also, we have FOUR more sets (three books) of Henning Markell's "Wallander "  mysteries to give away to any interested SeniorLearner.  Many of us are enjoying the books made available to us from PBS Masterpiece Mystery Theater.  If interested, just email me and I'll get them to you in today's mail.

pedln

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #72 on: May 27, 2009, 04:48:09 PM »
All this talk about trains.  I'm ready for a long train trip again.  It's been over twenty years since the last ones, which were in Europe.  I remember travelling from Oostende, Belgium to Spies, Switzerland, at night in a 2nd class compartment with 6 bunks -- three on each side.  Me and five strangers.  We slept in our clothes, but everything was just fine.  I had had some trepidations beforehand about what my travelling companions would be like, but they were lovely.  Then I spent the next ten days travelling all over Switzerland by train (and bus and boat.)  What a glorious way to travel.

One of my daughters, following her own path in Europe that summer, later told us about  waking up during the night on the train, finding someone reaching up her skirt, looking for her moneybelt.

When my son was stationed in Naples he and his wife would bunk on the night train to wherever they wanted to visit, arrive in the morning and save the cost of hotel.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #73 on: May 27, 2009, 08:48:12 PM »
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

PatH

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #74 on: May 27, 2009, 09:20:12 PM »
A friend of mine met his wife on the Orient Express.  They started talking, found more and more things in common, especially music, and ended up singing Mozart together.  They exchanged addresses (he was American, she European) and wrote letters back and forth.  I'm not sure if they even met again before agreeing to marry, but it was obviously the right decision, because it was an extraordinarily happy marriage, producing 2 great children and lasting until his death a few years ago.

maryz

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #75 on: May 27, 2009, 10:31:53 PM »

John's finishing up reading The Big Rich on the Kindle.  He's really been complaining about the errors in the text - general type errors, that should have been caught by an editor.  For instance, it comments about a champion steer that was a heifer.  Steers are always castrated male cattle; heifers are young females.  It mentions one of the oilmen drinking Wild Turkey bourbon in 1936.  We looked it up - the brand Wild Turkey was not named until 1940.  It refers to the "big inch pipeline" as being 24 inches in circumference, and he meant 24 inches in diameter.  The book also talked about "jet fuel" during World War Two. 

These are nit-picky things, to be sure.  But they are also inexcusable, and show insufficient research on the part of the author. Also they are the type of things that should be caught by a good editor and/or fact-checker.  Obviously, once a manuscript makes it through a spell-checker program, nobody else ever reads it.
"When someone you love dies, you never quite get over it.  You just learn how to go on without them. But always keep them safely tucked in your heart."

winsummm

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #76 on: May 27, 2009, 11:57:07 PM »
carol goodmans first novel,Think, is THE LAKE OF DEAD LANQUAGES an d her primary character is a Latin teacher. . ., so is the the one in the book we will be discussing NIGHT VILLA. it's very good. I now have at least five or is it six books going o my kindle and lots of samples.   twenty seven items in all actually twenty eight since I just added the Lake of dead languages today.

Mary Z do you and your husband share the same kindle? or do you each have one so you can read at the same time. just wondering. the beauty of having it is that any time you feel like it you can read any book you want to. it's like having more than one TV i the house I thinkThink. In the olden days when they first came out, we would watch TV during meals as a family and fight over the remote  . . THE POWER. . . :-*

I've been using the READ ALOUD feature a lot lately with ear phones to make it l;loud enough. I like the woman's voice best. it sounds real and may be except there are mistakes in pronunciation as read aloud.  Maybe it is real, a Chinese or an Indian, but there is no discernible accent otherwise.

as my daughter says "I LOVE my kindle".
thimk

maryz

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    • Z's World
Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #77 on: May 28, 2009, 12:16:10 AM »
Claire, we share MY Kindle.  :D  If I've read something that I'm sure he'll like, I let him have it for a while.  And I have to read a paper book. :'(  I overstate the case, of course.  That's probably the only thing I don't like about my Kindle, that I can't share my books easily.  I don't really like being read to, and don't have vision problems, so I haven't even tried the "reading" feature.  One of the folks on Seniors & Friends listens to hers all the time - as I gather you do. 
"When someone you love dies, you never quite get over it.  You just learn how to go on without them. But always keep them safely tucked in your heart."

Steph

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #78 on: May 28, 2009, 08:20:41 AM »
Pedlin, How brave. Dont think I could sleep with five strangers in the same room. I am not that good at relaxing, although perhaps when I was younger. We use a lot of trains in Europe, but have never slept in one over there. Its on our list however.
Next adventure set for next year is a transatlantic cruise.. Probably a repositioning one so it is not so formal.. My husband has had his heart set on this for years.. So probaly 2010 is the year. That is if we are both healthy..
Stephanie and assorted corgi

Babi

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Re: The Library ~ NEW
« Reply #79 on: May 28, 2009, 09:13:09 AM »
MARYZ, it does make one question the accuracy of the entire book, doesn't it? I'd be inclined to take everything he says with a grain of salt.

As best I remember, WINSUMM, when TV first came out, there was no remote.
It was 'get up and push the buttons'.  And the family definitely had to
huddle together, as the screen was wasn't even the size of a video tape.
But it was such a novelty!
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs