Author Topic: Non-Fiction  (Read 439726 times)

JeanneP

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  • Sept 2013
Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2480 on: May 25, 2013, 06:12:13 PM »
 

TO NONFICTION BOOK TALK

What are you reading?  Autobiographies, biographies, history, politics?

Tell us about the book; the good and the bad of it. 

Let's talk books!


Discussion Leader: HaroldArnold



Just starting to read "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks". Can't believe that it was in the 1950s and still things are being done.  I always thought that Johns Hopkins was one of the finest Hospitals in the World.  Maybe it was for the research that was being done but yet it was so segregated . Treated the coloured people that way..  I had my girls in the 50s and such good care was given when one gave birth.

I suppose we still are not aware of what medical science is doing even now.  Suppose it is helping in many things Would not do to let the public know how it was doing them.

JoanK

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2481 on: May 25, 2013, 07:08:18 PM »
Unfortunately, I remember that Johns Hopkins always had the reputation of treating people of color terribly, even without knowing about Henrietta Lacks. When my daughter was applying to medical school, I advised her strongly not to apply there! I hope that that has changed!

JudeS

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2482 on: May 26, 2013, 12:49:02 AM »
David Sedaris's new book "Exploring Diabetes with Owls" is a hoot and a half. (pun intended)

Either you are a fan of Sedaris or you're not. I am.

He is considered the greatest American Humorist of our time and has been translated into many languages.

The other great humorist, Nora Ephron, has died  recently but her books are also very  funny and poignant.

Give both of them a try if you need a pick me up.

Jonathan

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2483 on: May 26, 2013, 02:24:26 PM »
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing --after they've tried everything else." (Winston Churchill quoted in Those Angry Days)

You're right, Ella, there could be a lot of opinions about that. One of mine woudl be that Churchill could have said that about himself. He loved action. A part of leadership, I suppose. Or was it the American in him? A part of him was coming home, he felt, with every visit to the U.S. After all, his mother was American.

I'm delighted that you and Harold both see the potential in the book for a good read and discussion. I'm sure there would be others. Why not give it a try.

There certainly are a lot of rave reviews about German Boy. I must read it.


Jonathan

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2484 on: May 26, 2013, 02:31:53 PM »
LOL. Chicks and Roosters! Yeah! Come on girls, stop cackling and start crowing. You've got the stuff.

HaroldArnold

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2485 on: May 27, 2013, 10:40:40 AM »
Regarding "Those Angry Days", I first heard about this book this past January and read it after ordering it on my Nook Reader.  I judged it a  prime candidate for a Seniorlearn  nonfiction discussion.  Thank you Jonathon for your comments here.  Hopefully a formal discussiion of this title  can be had this summer.

PatH

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2486 on: May 31, 2013, 03:34:57 PM »

ThePresident's Club was very good, about the present and ex-presidents back to Harry Truman and how they really are a club and interact with each other. I think it would make for a good discussion since we've all lived thru those years.
You're quite right, Jean.  We discussed it last year, ably led by Ella and Harold, and it was terrific. :)

mabel1015j

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2487 on: June 01, 2013, 11:45:11 AM »
Oops. I forgot.

HaroldArnold

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2488 on: June 02, 2013, 11:38:15 AM »
The "Presidents Club" discussion last year made a particularly good discussion platform because it proviede a particularlly good review of each Presidential administration from Truman through Obama.  Since many of the participants had lived through most or all of these administrations we all had our own remumberance of each administration and were eager to discuss our indivigual opinions on each.

Rgarding our coming "Those Angry Years" discussion too some of us will remember our individual experience including myself who recalls sitting in the Senate visitors gallery in August 1940  listening to the Senators debat the draft bill.






Jonathan

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2489 on: June 03, 2013, 02:45:09 PM »
Harold, I'm looking forward to hearing your memories of that senate debate. Was it stormy? What a conflicted world it was in the thirties, with so many around the world with divided loyalties and aspirations and fears. My memories are both vague and vivid. I remember the German Kulturabend in the late thirties and the singing of Deutschland Uber Alles. In the public school we often sang the rousing Rule Britania, Britannia rules the Waves. It must have been '37 or '38, while helping a neighbor with her berrypicking that she returned from the house with a cool drink and the news that Hitler was broadcasting one of his speeches to the world. Then, in June '39, the king and queen came to Canada and drove slowly past us school kids waving our flags. Then it was off to Washington where they were put up at the White House. A year and a half later Churchill dropped in, was offered the Lincoln bedroom, refused it, and chose the bedroom the royal couple had occupied. Lots of high level talks over the entire holiday season.  Christmas, 1941. It seems to me it all left Eleanor R with a grudge against Churcill for spoiling Christmas for the family. Besides taking the president's mind off New Deal measures.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2490 on: June 03, 2013, 04:01:08 PM »
Yes, I too remember how around the table there was a lot of emotion talking about Germany - we still spoke in German in our home - My great grandparents were from Germany and around 1937 or 38 my grandmother received a letter from Hitler - probably not Hitler doing the writing and sending but signed by him which invited her to return to Germany and be given back the Estate that was lost in earlier Pre-WWI times - the family was referring to it as a castle but that was the German word they used and I was trying as a little kid to understand. I remember clearly the evening we STOPPED speaking German.

It was the summer of 1939 when my Grandmother who was a widow stopped in as she always did late Friday afternoon after spending the day at the German Club where she played bunco and after a nice lunch there was a dance with a live orchestra. She was very upset. She and my mother with voices raised talking about something to do with Nazi's - I knew a Nazi from the hole in the wall - I was six - but what ever it was it was something they did that the people at the German Club also did and Grandma did not like it and was debating ever going back and yet, it was her only social outlet and what to do ganashing with more and more coffee and more and more aufgebracht over whatever they did that day - In walks my father unusually early and hears the story calms the scene and decides right then that rather than waiting for Saturday night which was our usual routine we were going the Beer Garden - it was the end of summer because the grass along the way was high and dry - the Beer Garden was a good mile or so away and the chatter was easy till we got within 100 yards or so of the Beer Garden and all over the side wall of the Restaurant in front of the Garden was painted in black and with whitewash swastikas and sayings and the large glass window in front was smashed.

We stopped in our tracks and stared, then silently my father picked up my younger sister and put her on his shoulders and we turned around and silently walked back. Half way back my Mother says to my Grandmother "No more German Mom, No more" that was all that was said as we silently walked home after we saw Grandma to her home - from then on Grandma would slip into German if she was excited or upset and Mom would break in and remind her to not speak German.
“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

mabel1015j

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2491 on: June 03, 2013, 09:42:00 PM »
I must research some more about those attitudes in '39. That anger in the U.S. at the Nazis surprises me. I'd like to know more about that. I wonder what most American's knew about the Nazis at the time. Can any of you talk to that?

I can see how unthinking people who thought of the Nazis as "bad people" would stereotype all German-Americans. I wonder what American Nazi activity was going on. I've never read anything about that.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2492 on: June 04, 2013, 02:28:56 AM »
I can only speak from my memory but there must have been more than is written about in popular chronicles today because my very best friend Nancy Kluge (OH I was so proud to have a best friend and photos of us show us both standing tall with our chest out so we were both proud of having this relationship) anyhow her uncle, unmarried, living with them, she was an only child anyhow, the FBI came one day and took him away because he had only arrived from Germany a few years earlier and they said he was or could be a spy - never made clear - and he never came back. As a kid I do not know what happened - My mother said he was put in jail but the Kluge's like most German families that I knew went silent, no longer being friendly to each other and we lived a very low profile. I am sure it was so they would not be pointed out as German or slip into speaking German to each other. However, that is my adult talking - I just know what happened not why. Back to the Uncle never heard from or about him again even after the war was over. My aunt said he was not a spy but she had no truck for any authority figure especially the police who she made jokes about - so who knows - it was over 70 years ago.
“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

mabel1015j

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2493 on: June 04, 2013, 12:30:26 PM »
That's really interesting Barbara. My birth name is Laidig, definitely German, but they were in Pennsylvania by at least the late 1700's, so maybe noone thought of them as German. I never heard any stories of problems. I'll have to ask my oldest sister, she's 86 and has more family memory than i do.

JeanneP

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  • Sept 2013
Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2494 on: June 04, 2013, 12:32:08 PM »
Must have been a little strange in the USA during the first an second wars as so many families had both German and Italian backgrounds.  I knew on my inlaws great grands with some grandparents coming from Germany years prior. Most of the immigrants came from both countries .
Now in UK I remember I had friends whose families had come in from both those countries .  If not a born citizen they where sent back home .  I could never understand why the
US interned the Japanese after war started . Some were even US citizens. Did not seem right.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2495 on: June 04, 2013, 01:21:43 PM »
Here is an article about German Internment during both WWI and WWII - it appears the only reason the German population was not interred during WWII as the Japanese is because there were so many However there were Germans interred

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-American_internment
“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

JeanneP

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  • Sept 2013
Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2496 on: June 04, 2013, 11:24:23 PM »
It seems that not to many people are aware of that because I had not heard of it.

Much was said and written about the Japanese internment.

HaroldArnold

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2497 on: June 05, 2013, 12:03:45 PM »
Regarding Mabel’s post #2491 above concerning American’s attitude toward the US Neutrality policy  at the beginning of WWII, I will offer  the following comment.  I know from memory that initially there was strong nationwide feeling favoring strict US neutrality.   The depth of this general American policy and how events led the US into the war just 2 and 1/4 years later will be the subject of our August discussion book, “Those Angry Years.”    Ella and I hope all of you nonfiction regulars will join the discussion August 1st.  We will certainly probe deep into the US mind set regarding the War at that time.

CallieOK

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2498 on: June 05, 2013, 12:10:24 PM »
Harold,  is the book you're mentioning "Those Angry Days" by Lynne Olson - described in my library catalog as " Those angry days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's fight over World War II, 1939-1941" ?

HaroldArnold

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2499 on: June 05, 2013, 07:27:16 PM »
Yes I think that's the book.

HaroldArnold

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2500 on: June 05, 2013, 07:34:22 PM »
My current book study in progress is “A Land So Strange“ by Andre Resendez.  Cabeza  de Vaca was an officer in the ill-fated Narvaez Expedition in 1527 Florida.  Expecting to find a native culture like the Aztec Empire in Mexico rich in gold and silver the Spanish landing in the vicinity of today’s Tampa Bay found only malaria and warlike natives.  After the death of Governor Narvaez, under Cabeza de Vaca with other principal officer they built 5 raft like boats.   On these they departed Florida in September1528, drifting with the wind and current north along the Florida coast, then westward along the coast of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.   In late November 1528 they drank fresh water from the sea as they passed the Mississippi discharge.  Reaching the Texas coast their course veered southward to Galveston Island where a November winter storm beached the boats scattering some 40 surviving Spanish along a 30 miles stretch of beach.  

Luckier than most of the Spanish castaways a naked Cabeza de Vaca on a 30 degree November day was befriended by a local Native American group beginning a six year residence as one of the first European residents of what is now Texas and the United States.  During this period de Vaca’s status was switched from slavery to that of a near independent trader living with several different tribes on Galveston and the adjoining Texas mainland.  The number of other Spanish survivors was quickly reduced to about dozen and a half attached to several different tribes.  These were quickly further reduced to less than a dozen survivors  living with different tribes who rarely saw one another.  

It was September 1534 when de Vaca and three others were able to break free beginning a long trek that took them south crossing the Rio Grande, up the Rio Grande on the Mexican side, back across the river on the Texas side to near El Paso , to continue into New Mexico ,and back in Mexico.  Finally in January 1536 in Northwest Mexico the four survivors encountered a Spanish military party out to capture Indian slaves for the Mexican mines.  The long circuitous route was made necessary to avoid many warlike natives who most certainly would have ended the journey.  It is the de Vaca account of the many  interesting Indian cultures that give us the earliest account of native cultures as they were then in what is now Florida, Texas, New Mexico and northwest Mexico.   Many of these Tribes were interesting trade orientated cultures each a part of a vast trade directed culture connecting  lower Mississippi river tribes, to East Texas Tribes, to Rio Grand tribes (on both sides) to the New Mexico Pueblos and northwest Mexico.

 I hope I will be able to set up a discussion of this book this winter.   The book is available in digital form on the internet in the $10 to $15 range.

mabel1015j

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2501 on: June 06, 2013, 03:46:14 PM »
Well, i gave up on Uncommon Grounds, a hstory of coffee. It started out to be interesting and well written, but he just kept repeating the same kinds of information as he moved through the various guys who developed the different coffee companies in the U.S. and it got drier and drier. I don't have time for that.

HaroldArnold

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2502 on: June 07, 2013, 12:01:43 PM »
Interestingly I remember years ago a discussion thread on this board on the history of Coffee.  It might have been the "Uncommon Ground" title Mabel mentioned above.   What was the publication date on this book?  I am sure many of us have begun reading initially interesting books only to find they sort of fizzle before the end is reached.   

JoanK

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2503 on: June 08, 2013, 03:34:36 PM »
I started "A drink of Water" about the history of drinking water. An interesting idea, but same fault as "Uncommon ground." The author seemed to have misunderstood the common advice to "say what you're going to say about six times, say it in two sentance, then say what you said four times." gave it its 86 pages and quit.

Frybabe

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2504 on: June 18, 2013, 07:33:11 AM »
Yesterday I almost bought a biography about E.M. Forster. Since the cover intro seemed to indicate the book focused on his homosexuality and how it shaped his writing, I decided to pass - at least temporarily. I'm not sure how well rounded or if it captured the whole man, not just those aspects of it. Oh good heavens! The author is living just up the road from me in Carlisle, PA and teaches English at Dickinson College.

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Unrecorded-History-Life-Forster/dp/B007SRXGTK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371554246&sr=1-1&keywords=e.m.+forster\\

http://users.dickinson.edu/~moffat/

On doing some checking, evidently his sexual orientation was a big part of his life but most earlier authors preferred to skirt around it.

mabel1015j

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2505 on: June 18, 2013, 11:28:13 AM »
Wow! I didn't know Forster was at Dickinson! In fact i didn't know he was still alive. I spent some good times at Dickinson football games, both in my young years as a date and in the 90's when my son played football at Gettysburg abd Dickinson was a rival. Also when i was 14 i spent a week at Dickinson at a "Methodist camp".

I'm reading Lauren Bacall's autobiography "By Myself." it's quite good, very well written. If she wrote it herself she could have had a career as a writer. It's very detailed, including what are supposedly actual conversations. I am always impressed by people's memory of details, altho i'm also often skeptical of how accurate they are, unless, like first ladies, they've kept detailed diaries.

I'm also reading a new book "The King's Mistresses." a book about two sisters who were mistresses of Louis the 14th. The author apparently found sources that indicated how the sisters took more control of their lives then the way they've been portrayed in the past. It's an interesting look at how wives of the aristocracy were treated, having arranged marriages, having inheritences spent by those husbands, being isolated so the husbands had more control over them, often, and sometimes the best choice,  being put in convents. Altho, i have been impressed that women did have, in France, some legal actions that they could take, apparently more then in other European countries and more then in the American colomies and states for centuries to come.
Jean

PatH

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2506 on: June 18, 2013, 11:35:01 AM »
It's not Forster (or his ghost) who's at Dickinson, it's Wendy Moffat, the author of the new life of Forster.

mabel1015j

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2507 on: June 18, 2013, 11:46:21 AM »
Oh, thanks Pat, i read too quickly!  ;D ;D

Frybabe

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2508 on: June 26, 2013, 03:02:06 PM »
I am taking a break from reading SciFi and am now reading a history of Australia, The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes.

rosemarykaye

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2509 on: June 27, 2013, 03:54:25 AM »
Oh my gosh, Frybabe, your idea of a 'break' is my idea of a major undertaking!

mabel1015j

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2510 on: June 27, 2013, 11:54:06 AM »
I'm almost finished with Lauren Bacall's By Myself. It has continued to be terrific. It appears that the book concludes with her adjusting to Bogie's death, there are not enough pages left for her to cover her marriage to Jason Robards. :) It is so well written. She does gush a bit too much for my taste about Bogie. Even though she frequently mentions his getting drunk and nasty, she doesn't say much about how it effects her except to say it confuses her not to know when it's coming or how to deal with it. I guess drinking, and getting drunk, by that crowd and in that day was just the way it was and perfectly acceptable.

Anyway, i recommend it.

rosemarykaye

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2511 on: June 27, 2013, 12:32:57 PM »
Thanks for that recommendation Jean.

Re drinking - daughter and I have just watched 'Julie & Julia' and it's amazing how much Julia, Paul and all their friends knocked back on a regular basis.  My husband also remembers that his parents - who now only really drink if we are visiting - thought nothing of having a few drinks and then driving in those days, they are very law-abiding indeed, but the culture was just so different then.  My parents came from a completely different world, where alcohol was only ever seen at Christmas, funerals and weddings.

by the way, I enjoyed 'Julie and Julia' much more than I expected to.  Has anyone read any of the books about Julia Child?   I think they may have been discussed here a while ago, but I hadn't seen the film then and didn't really know anything about Julia - am now interested in reading about her.

Rosemary

JeanneP

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  • Sept 2013
Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2512 on: June 27, 2013, 12:34:23 PM »
Wasn't she divorced from Robards for years?

PatH

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2513 on: June 27, 2013, 04:25:10 PM »
I've read My Life in France, written with Alex Prud'homme, Paul Child's great-nephew.  This was used as a major source of the Julia side of Julie and Julia.  Prud'homme wrote it by sitting down with Julia and bunches of her old photos; she would start reminiscing: "oh, that picture was when we..." and off she'd go.  Prud'homme wrote everything down, and arranged and cut and pasted to get a coherent story.  It's very good, catches her flavor, and full of interesting stuff.  I, too, enjoyed the movie more than I expected.

Other people here have read some of the other books.

Heavy drinking back then: the first time I went to France was in 1957, nine years after Julia got there.  The French government was conducting a sobriety campaign (santé, sobriété) with many posters.  One of their slogans was "never more than a liter of wine a day"!!!!

rosemarykaye

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2514 on: June 28, 2013, 03:25:20 AM »
Thanks Pat, I will have a look for 'My Life in France' - predictably, our library doesn't have it, so I'll see what Amazon can offer.

Rosemary

FlaJean

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2515 on: June 28, 2013, 09:41:04 AM »
I saw the DVD of Julie and Julia at my daughter's insistence and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  My life in France sounds interesting.

mabel1015j

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Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2516 on: June 28, 2013, 01:30:20 PM »
I just read about 10 pgs of Bacall's book last night which talked about her relationship w/ Frank Sinatra shortlyy after Bogie died. She was really looking for a "Bogie substitute" and Frank probably had a crush on her before Bogart died, but as she said "Frank was a sh--." it seems Ava Gardner was the only woman he ever really loved and she had dumped him, so he was petrified of intimacy. He would be in the relationship for a couple weeks and then he would disappear. At one point he asked her to marry him, but then was infuriated when Louella Parsons wrote about it in her column and he never called Bacall again, even though HE had started telling LB HIS plans for the wedding as though she was to just go along - and she DID! Obviously from her comments, as she is writing the book 20yrs later, she has become a more independent, self-confident woman.

He was another man who got ugly when he drank, and yet all these people just accepted it, never - apparently - commenting on it or suggesting he should do something about it. And they all just kept making drinking a huge part if their social lives. I'm so glad it has at least become unacceptable to be a public drunk these days.

JeanneP

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  • Sept 2013
Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2517 on: June 28, 2013, 09:31:32 PM »
One still see lots of drunks around. The AA have more members than eve. Our paper will have at least 3a day in for for DUI.  Now there are as many women as men they say who are  ( I can't spell the word) alcoholics .

JeanneP

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  • Sept 2013
Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2518 on: July 01, 2013, 12:51:12 PM »
Just was in our local paper today. So far this year we have had 478 cases of DUIs . We are just a pop.of 185 in 2twin cities.  Plus a few in the outer counties.I wonder how many did not get caught.

JeanneP

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  • Sept 2013
Re: Non-Fiction
« Reply #2519 on: July 01, 2013, 12:56:17 PM »
They are going to put our rule down to .7 instead of .8 thinking it will help.  That is about 2 beer in a hour I believe.  Bars complaining. Mostly on campus.  Should do like in UK . Has to be one no drinker driving. One looses their license for a year over there. 3 years if caught again.