The Library

[FlaJean]

The Library Our library cafe is open 24/7, the welcome mat is always out. Do come in from daily chores and spend some time with us. We look forward to hearing from you, about you and the books you are enjoying (or not). Let the book talk begin here!

*Suggestion Box for Future Discussions
*SeniorLearn's Archives 
 

MaryPage, Enjoyed that YouTube song.  It's better to laugh than cry.

[CallieOK]

Roshanarose, "our" blizzard will leave a long path on its way to Chicago.  The shortest route between Oklahoma City and Chicago is 800 miles. 
We have brilliant sunshine this morning but the temperature is 4º (F) and the predicted High is 11º.  That means the 22" snow drift in front of my garage door isn't going anywhere - and neither am I.

I hadn't realized that an Australian cyclone was the same as an American hurricane, either.  In this part of the country, tornadoes are sometimes called cyclones.  Whatever it's called - those circular winds are devastating.

I hope it's a Great Day wherever you are - and you have a nice stack of books TBR. 

[BarbStAubrey]

Callie winter with revenge - wow I did not realize  you had so much snow - we may get some here on Thursday and if so the whole town closes - no one knows how to drive in it and the few who have moved into the area and think they can typically find themselves at the body repair as some few who know they cannot try it anyhow only to cause disaster.

Well it still has not broken 20 and I am supposed to be attending a big meeting this afternoon - I need a few things from the store in order to be prepared for the next few days so I better just guts up and brave it.

Isn't Somerset Maugham who wrote about a cyclone in I think Razors Edge - he wrote so many stories that take place in the South Seas that vaguely I am remembering it was while reading his books that I came across something about a cyclone - .and I too thought it was more like a tornado.

 Hmmm I haven't read Somerset Maugham in years - seems to me I remember reading someplace that he wrote a  mystery that is supposed to be the best mystery ever written - like the noble prize of mysteries - I am not a mystery buff but that sounds like a book I would want to know about.

[CallieOK]

Barb,  the drifts are a result of the fierce winds creating a Ground Blizzard yesterday - not particularly the amount of snow.
As you probably know, the biggest problem in our region is Black Ice.  The roads are deceptively slick and one has absolutely no control over the vehicle.

I suppose I had also read about cyclones but the reality probably didn't register - which isn't unusual for me. 

[ginny]

I do hope somehow that cyclone, 500 km  wide and winds of 300 km will somehow fizzle out before it hits at midnight, what a horror, I can't contemplate such a thing. Good luck, Australia!

[MaryPage]

The Weather Channel has been giving constant and complete updates on it all day.  Right from correspondents Down Under and in it all.  LOVE those accents!

The worst seems to have passed, and now comes the damage assessment.  I tell you what, that channel has more to offer these days than any other.  I mean that in the sense that it is all real and it is from all over the globe and it is happening NOW, complete with amazing pictures.  Wow!  That storm in Chicago was not for sissies!  Did you SEE those lines of traffic completely stopped AND completely snowed under?!?!

[nlhome]

We had nothing like Chicago, but 10-12 inches of snow on top of a lot of other snow from the last months, with high winds. Sideroads are not plowed out yet. We live in town, so we are able to get around - but parking is a problem as roads are not cleared to their full width and snowbankd are very high. Now we have forecasts of -25 windchills - although Montant yesterday had -37 F temperatures, so any wind made those really dangerous wind chill temperatures.

[Steph]

I have always lived near water and the haze you are speaking of is a lovely and familiar thing. I dont want to drive in it, but I love waking to it.. So quiet and gentle..Our lake in front of me does this in the winter. We have been having a lot of dramatic temperature changes in mid Florida and so we get a fog type morning .
The cyclone sounds horrible. Very large, very violent. Anyone in the path, get to the shelters.. I know hurricanes, but this sounds much larger .
We have been having some really stupid weather all over the world.

[Babi]

 I would really like to hear from some reliable scientific types explaining
just why all these horrific weather is taking place.  I can't help thinking
there are things we need to be doing and things we need to stop doing
...like RIGHT NOW!!

[bellemere]

No, nobody reads Somerset Maugham these days, but he sure had a big fan in Bette Davis!  She talked her studio into some great Maugham stories.  One, "The Letter" , was included in my bargain DVD purchase: The Bette Davis Film Festival. In " The Letter" she is bad Bette; kills her lover when he tries to leave her, makes up hokey story for police and husband about how he broke in and "tried to make love to me"  My favorite line from duped husband Herbert Marshall: "My darling, you only did what any decent woman would have done" and the look on Bad Bette's face.  My actress daughter in law loves the films as "camp".

[Gumtree]

The Queensland cyclone Yasi missed the major centres - the eye passed over small towns on the coast which are now pretty much decimated. It cut a wide swathe across the country. Luckily there are no reports of loss of life or serious injuries although one man is still missing - but he may have sought shelter elsewhere. Lots of houses are wrecked or badly damaged, great trees unrooted, banana and sugar cane plantations ruined, there is some flooding from storm surges and the torrential rain. One of the saddest sights was to see a hillside of what was superb rainforest reduced to bare stalks and sticks with all the vegetation blown to smithereens. The oddest was to see a wrecked senior citizens' centre with its wooden honour board (gold leaf lettering and all) still proudly displayed on the only wall left standing. Alongside it was their clock which had stopped at 12.25am.

Yasi has been downgraded to a category 1 and what is left of it is  now heading inland toward central Australia - it's expected to bring strong winds and heavy rain as it moves through the country. I heard tonight that it may even get as far as the south-eastern parts of Western Australia. Although the severe danger has now passed it is still a force to be reckoned with.

Time for the rebuilding.

[MaryPage]

If you did not read the book and/or see the film of "An Inconvenient Truth", you really should.  People have tried to make us think it is political, but it is not.  Remember Rachel Carson's beautiful book A SILENT SPRING back in 1962?  She was our early warning.  Al Gore is making his attempt to get us to notice his whole life work now.

There are many, many books by scientists about global warming and what the human species is doing to our planet.  They predict huge storms all around the planet, and say they will just become more frequent and fiercer.

One easy to understand is by Elizabeth Kolbert:  "Field Notes from a Catastrophe:  Man, Nature, and Climate Change".  Kolbert writes for the New Yorker and has traveled the world and interviewed every one of the climatologists at the world's climate-study centers.  I believe I remember that there are 13 of these, run by the U.S., Japan, and several other nations.  My number memory is not all that great these days.  Bottom line:  these scientists were all in agreement as to what is happening.  They project different timelines, but in the long run, their conclusions are the same.  Being they are of every race, religion, culture and background and speak many different languages and attended different universities in different countries, I hardly think one can honestly conclude they are part of a political conspiracy.

When I was a little girl, I loved to play around the water.  There were always zillions of fiddler crabs, minnows, polliwogs, fish, dragon flies, and all manner of water life.  The rivers, lakes, streams and bays were teeming with life.  Now I go around here in our coves  and inlets and go down to the water's edge and all is dead.  All year around, all is dead.  I weep for what once was.  Like the famous frog in the pot example, we have simply been too busy to notice or have not wanted to listen or believe.  Did you know that 70% of our largest bay, the Chesapeake, is now dead?  Seriously.  Look it up.

[MaryPage]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021601150_pf.html

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/dead-zone.htm/printable

http://print.news.mongabay.com/2009/0122-climate.html

[rosemarykaye]

My husband, who is an engineer working in renewable energy (waves), says that he recently read that, despite what we all tend to think, it is not the pollution emanating from the developing countries and their unregulated factories, etc, but all the stuff coming from the west - largely from our cars - that is causing all of this.

I think until/unless people are willing to stop driving everywhere we are not going to see much improvement.  It is now the norm for people, at least in this area, to see it as a goal to move out of the city and live in the remote-ish countryside, but spend half their lives in the car going to work, taking children to school, driving to the supermarket, etc.  Personally, I really do prefer living centrally and not driving, but that is at least as much because I am such a wimp of a driver as for any ethical reasons.  When we had all that snow, I just walked everywhere and I actually found it quite liberating.  I could get everything we needed that way apart from cat litter!  And I really do think it's true that if you use the local shops you spend less - their prices may of necessity be higher but you just don't buy nearly as much, especially if you've got to carry it.

Rosemary

[kiwilady]

Rosemary because of their huge population China probably has more cars than we do in NZ by far. They also have dirty industrial fuel sources (coal) I don't think the worry about the emerging nations is in vain.

I walk a lot but its too far to carry even a small lot of groceries from my supermarket to my home. There is no corner grocery here.  I do use my car wisely however and never use it for recreational drives. Its purely for necessity. I might drive 15 mins to one of my parks (not every often) but I never spend all afternoon Sunday driving up the coast just for a jaunt.

Public transport in Auckland is abyssmal. I think its because of our torrential winter rain. The bus stops are some distance from most of the side roads and by the time you get to the bus stop from home you are drenched despite raincoats etc. Its windy in winter too. So we cling to the car because of this.  To get on the train you need to drive to the train station. Parking is difficult so the trains are not patronised as well as they might be.  No underground system here except for the last few kilometres of the main tracks.

We are the authors of our own misfortune and that of the propaganda against climate change funded by the Oil companies.

[roshanarose]

As for we Queenslanders, we are wondering "What next?"

[kiwilady]

Yes its been an awful time for Queensland. Weather predictions are a bit dire too with more cyclones predicted before the season ends. Lets hope they take a different direction from now on.

Carolyn

[rosemarykaye]

Kiwilady, I do so agree - public transport could be so much better here if the government would just invest more in it - it is very much the poor relation.  In the city the buses are OK-ish, but out in the shire they are few and far between and very expensive.  We also have this issue with parking at train stations, and it is a real problem because if you don't know if you will be able to park, how can you be sure you can catch your train?  Some other countries seem to have their public transport so much better organised - the trains in Italy, for example, seem to be excellent (though I agree they do all still seem to drive like maniacs!)

However, there are a lot of people here who, unlike you, don't think twice about driving everywhere.  We only live about 5 minutes walk from the centre of town, and there are only a few of us in our street who always walk in - and the walkers are almost exclusively people of my age+!

My mother never learned to drive, and is fortunately still able to walk everywhere at the age of 82; I think it keeps her going, but I fully appreciate that not everyone is blessed with her good health.  She is also fortunate in that Waitrose deliver her "big" shopping - unlike the other supermarkets, who require you to order it all on-line, they allow you to go into the shop, choose it all, then give it to them to deliver - she loves it.  You cannot, however, get any of these delivery services out in the country.

The people I was thinking of are the many families who move from the city here out into the shire because they like the idea of a "country" lifestyle, as pushed in many glossy magazines - big house, Aga, etc - but spend their entire time driving in and out of town in their enormous 4x4 Range Rovers, etc.  They do not support the rural infrastructure (such as it is) because they do not send their children to local schools or shop locally - all that is done in town - and of course that's why there are now so few village shops.  It is very hard for the older people who still live in the villages they grew up in, where there would have been at least one shop and other facilities, that have all gradually been closed down.  However, as my Irish friend says, "horses for courses"!

Rosemary

[kiwilady]

I am irked with the soccer mums who drive enormous 4 wheel drives round town. They are a menace. When they park beside you they are so big you cannot see when you are trying to drive out in large busy parking lots. These mums do not work and they generally have only one or two kids.  Grrrrrrr! These vehicles absolutely guzzle the gas too.

My car is a tiny Toyota Hatch and truly it runs on the smell of an oily rag. I only use about 2 gallons a week which is just as well as our gas is enormously expensive. This wee car is roomy inside and can take two adults and three kids.

Carolyn

[rosemarykaye]

Yes, we have many mothers like that here - a few at Madeleine's school, but more at the other private school, which is a far more ostentatious set-up.  They park all over the place - as you say in their ridiculous 4x4s - and seem to think they have Arrived because they can flaunt all this conspicuous consumption.  They also all frequent the Oil Wives Club - what a thought!  I used to be an oil wife, I suppose, but, to paraphrase what Rachel Griffiths so memorably said in Muriel's Wedding, I would rather eat glass than hob nob with that lot.

Rosemary

[Steph]

 P ublic transportation is always the problem. The US does not have good ways to get anywhere except by car. Large cities have good ways, but most of the US lives in smaller areas. We subsidize the public buses , so they are vulnerable to cuts all of the time. We have few train options ( I love trains and will take them anywhere) But the parking to catch the train is a problem. I am having to hire a limo service ( not really a limo, more like a van) to get me to the train station to go to NYC.The nearest station is 25 miles and when you get there, there is no safe long term parking.. So cant do that.
I love walking and would do almost anything to find a place to live here in the south where I could walk to everything.. No such animal.

[BarbStAubrey]

EVERYTHING IS WHITE - yes, snow - oh my I could hear the children at 4: this morning the first to be sliding down the steep hill across from my house - I am on the edge of a mesa that is a steep incline - nothing gradual about it - across from me is a large 7 acre school grounds for both a Middle School at the bottom of the mesa and an elementary school at the top of the mesa - the incline is layers of limestone and over the years grass has been coaxed to grow unless we have too many 100 plus days and then it is dry stubble till the fall rains.  

Well anytime it does snow kids come for all over with cardboard boxes, laundry baskets, garbage can lids, plastic storage tubs, even sheets of galvanized metal roofing and the younger kids who live close by get on the  hill before the older college age kids come with their fancy dancy skies having a different fun then the pure glee of the younger children with the youngest of them seeing and playing in snow for the first time. The  youngsters this morning looked to be in about the 5th and 6th grades and so they would have seen snow a few years ago. I get such a kick listening to the young ones calling out to each other with such joy while all is so quiet with no activity on the streets and sleeping houses as they go sliding with enough moonlight bouncing off the snow.

The sky looks dark like there may be more snow up there - my only hope now is that the ice that fell last evening and is under the snow is not so heavy that we have trees split and wires down - The Laurel in the back look precarious and the Live Oaks are bending low with leaves just loaded with ice - however, the oaks are sturdy and we did have rain this fall so they are not dried out from the nearly 2 years of drought before October.

I am taking a risk being on the computer - I think we are OK now - we had two days of on and off electricity and I did not want to risk the surge when the electricity comes back on that would damage the hard-drive in my computer so I turned it completely off. I thought I would get so much reading in but the phone just rang off the hook and folks I had not heard from in months called

Alf I did finish The Language of Trees - wow - and whew that was a tangle of whose who at the end - She tied up all the loose ends but somehow I thought the last was rushing by so quickly - I guess once the cat was out of the bag on some of the relationships there was no more to that thread of the story and so just hustle up and get on with it. I thought she reached inside the soul of the men as well if not better than her ability to flesh out the women. I don't know that I will ever read it again but it is a book I will not be able to part with for awhile.

Well I need to set myself up in my 'Viewing Box' my front living room - the windows look out onto the hill and the day should bring many a smile, cry, and the pure fun of seeing the creativity of kids wanting to slide down a hill where no one owns a sled.

[Gumtree]

Keep warm and safe everyone!

[Babi]

 I would think the price of gas has pretty much put a stop to the
Sunday 'jaunts'. I can't walk very far, but in our small town every
place we want to go is close by. Except, that is, for the trips to
the other side of Houston...long drive...for my daughter to visit
her ailing Dad. There does seem to be a strong push toward hybrid and electriccars. It's a necessary change and I think it's time has arrived.

 CAROLYN, my old, beat up Chevrolet still runs fine, and I'm hoping
it will last forever. If it does fail, I'm going to look for one
of those Toyota's that runs on 'the smell of an oily rag'.

  STEPH, our family solution to that problem is to commandeer a
family member to deliver traveler and baggage to the airport or
station. Pickup on return, of course. It's worth it not to leave
a car sitting, running up bills.

[ALF43]

 I felt the same as you did Barb re. the hurried ending.  However, it is one of the better books I've read in a while.  I've had some doozies lately!
Stay warm and cozy everyone.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GINNY!

[MaryPage]

If this is Ginny's birthday, I wish her a HAPPY one!

[CallieOK]

Happy Birthday, Ginny

[mabel1015j]

Since you've mention the problem of air pollution........ In my HistoryNetwork Newsletter today they mentioned that a study has been done that indicates that Ghengis Khan was the "greenest" of all conquerors...??....? It said -altho i never heard this number and can hardly believe it - that bcs 40 million people died bcs of his invasions, many peopled/farm lands were abandoned and returned to vegetation/treed land and therefore took millions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the earth's atmosphere. If true, imagine where we wld be today w/out GK?!?    ......Jean

[MaryPage]

When I stare at satellite photos of the planet Earth, it looks as though mankind with its cities and towns is a blight of scabs on the planet.  Scabs of an illness the planet is trying to rid itself of?  Blowing up great storms to wash it all away?  At night, you can see where the worst of the disease coats this once brilliant blue planet because of the bright lights.  The east coast of the U.S. appears to be the very worst!

Not scientific, but my fanciful musings.  No doubt about it though, overpopulation is the number one problem.  If we survive long enough, the Chinese solution may well become mandatory for all:  1 child per couple.

[MaryPage]

Real Science now, not fantasy:  because we are doing stuff to emit too much CO2 (imagine that 2 is tiny and just down from the O), among other things happening, the sea ice up at the top and down at the bottom of this planet is melting.  Fast.  You can see it.  They take film and photos every single day.

This sea ice caused high pressure bands which held in and kept the terrible Arctic and Antarctic winds up there and down there.  Now the loss of that ice has sapped the strength of those bands and those storms are let out of their pens and are causing all hell to break loose on us.  This will continue to increase and ocean levels will continue to rise.

[Frybabe]

Ah now, MaryPage, I have a different perspective. I think of the lights as spider webs and the lights strung out along the roadways as dew drops on the webs. Beautiful. It's the smog that isn't.

[ginny]

Thank you for the kind birthday wishes!
They've added the  perfect touch to a great day. 

[roshanarose]

Some concerned soul asked on one of these boards what the effect of Cyclone Yasi on the Barrier Reef might be.  I found a small article, written in lay terms for me to understand, that gives quite a good summary.  

www.underwater.com.au and the article is "Cyclone Yasi and the Great Barrier Reef".  You will need to do a search of the site.  As I was reading the article I thought about how many misadventures the Reef has had since Queensland's population has expanded.  The Crown of Thorns star fish would have to be the worst.  One can't help but think that this beautiful natural creation would flourish without tourists, pollution, over fishing etc.  I have seen it twice (as a tourist .  Once in 1990, and last year.  From what little I saw, parts of the Reef are perishing.  Maybe it would be a good idea to get rid of big tourist boats that go out to the reef.  I couldn't believe the state of the coral I saw.  It was grey and lifeless, like a city that had been atomic bombed.  The next time I want to see coral, I will snorkel.

You may have to look further afield for a more technical description of what has happened/is happening to the Reef.  

[Persian]

GINNY - I just had a slice of chocolate cake in honor of your birthday.  Hope it was a great day for you!  I send you best wishes for many more.

Mahlia

[MaryPage]

Not fair!  I didn't have a piece of chocolate cake!

http://www.brighthub.com/environment/science-environmental/articles/50617.aspx

[Gumtree]

Mahlia:  Good to see you again. Hope you're feeling on top of the world again. -  the current turmoil in Egypt must be so painful for you and your husband - what a blessing that he is still in US at present.

Keep well.

[nolvikarn]

Hello Little Bee readers!

I am so sorry to have missed the final discussion about Little B. But I do have an excuse. I have been suffering from a strong flue. Not much reading during those weeks, but I finished LB before I fell ill.
I am glad that I joined your discussion, because it forced me to look into history of the white men, whom we look at as heroes. All those explorers who served European kings and emperors, and made theirs countries mightier and richer. But never we thought about the victims, who lost control over their own countries.
Once in the Tower of London we were watching the diamonds, the swords decorated with pearls and beads, just to mention a few of the valuables. An upset man beside me said: What a terrible robbery nation England once was. UK was not alone, mind you.
I think that that episode and those eras in India, Africa, North and South of America and Asia - though long ago, have made me less impressed about the colonial countries.
I am afraid the pay back has started. And I wonder if they would have acted differently if not been suppressed by us.
Thank you for listening to an old fool. 

[Steph]

Babi, my only family members live two and three hours from me, so there is no way that they can do the delivery detail. They all work, sons and wives, so that doesnt work for me.
Joyce Carol Oates is sometimes absolutely wonderful, but oh me, she loves to play dither and dather in her books..
I did finish What I eat and have it safely in my bookcase.That is one of those books, you drag out periodically and relook at and read and marvel at what people eat and why..
Family here this weekend.. Nice to see them..
Happy day after your birthday Ginny. Hope the snow is not a problem in that part of South Carolina.
Tomorrow my brother would have been 65.. He has been gone now for 9 years.. hard to believe sometimes.

[Babi]

Thanks for the scientific explanation, MARYPAGE. That's what I
was looking for. This is an aspect of planet warming I knew nothing
about. Grim and grimmer.
  Ah, I thought your sons were closer, STEPH.  Well, thankfully, you are
at least still healthy enough to travel at will.

  A belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY from me as well, GINNY.  I'll toast you with my next Dr. Pepper.  

[roshanarose]

nolvikarn - we have not met before but it distresses me that you consider yourself an :"old fool".  Perhaps you need to leave that judgement to others, and if they agree they are most likely wrong. Wilkommen!