I love a foggy morning. After last night’s intense thunderstorm, we woke up to this view. Perfect: not so much that it’s dangerous to drive, but just enough for ‘atmosphere.’
We tag-team mowed the front lawn yesterday and it was so humid that we were dripping! It was one of those days where the temperature was not all that high, but the humidity was. So, we went outside thinking it would be cool and quickly realized it was unbelievably uncomfortable. But we did it. We also took a morning walk right before we mowed.
Couldn’t wait to get in the shower and turn on the air conditioning.
All of that left me feeling tired, so I didn’t do any work on deductions. But today is another story and I have to tackle that chore while Don is taking photos at the Farmers Market. Tomorrow, I have to take the car in for a yearly inspection. And on Wednesday, I fly off to Las Vegas. Don is working on Friday on a new show called Starling that will be on Apple’s new network.
Suddenly, we’re busy. Feast or famine. But it will all get back to normal next weekend.
Thanks for the great discussion about children’s literature. I loved all sorts of books – many of the titles elude me because we didn’t have many books that we actually owned, but instead, checked books out of the library/bookmobile. Since I had to return them within a week or so, I didn’t often have the option of reading them over and over. All I know is that I read a lot of books and the authors I most remember are Beverly Cleary and Laura Ingalls Wilder. My grandmother had a book of fairy tales that I would thumb through on visits to her house. My mom’s childhood books sat on a shelf in our bedroom; Jack and Jill, Anne of Green Gables and Anne of the Island, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Little Women. Later, when I could buy Scholastic Books through my school, I saved up my pennies (or Mom and Dad gave me the money) and all of a sudden, I had books of my very own! I still remember when those boxes of books arrived in our classroom and my teacher would make a big deal of the unboxing. Sometimes, I was lucky enough to be the student who got to pass out the books.
My dad wasn’t much of a reader, he tended to read the newspaper and magazines. But my mom was a voracious reader and she made sure I had a lot of books to read via weekly visits to the Bookmobile. (I wrote a post about the Bookmobile long ago on this blog – it was everything.) When I had my book blog, I dedicated it to her. I am enormously grateful that she passed on her love of reading to me.
There’s nothing better.
Happy Sunday.
I see leaves on your grass! Ugh, too soon for Fall, though it’s my favorite season. The fog is beautiful but hope it doesn’t last too long.
We have a bookmobile that comes out from our community library every Tuesday night. We can order our books online and the bookmobile brings them out. Love this service!
Favorite books as a kid were the Anne series and the Little Houses series (hence, the name of my blog!). I also loved reading autobiographies ~ seeing how prominent people were raised and overcame many obstacles to get to their place in society has always fascinated me.
Have a wonderful Sunday! I’m off to see what our weather is like today. I can hear raindrops on the roof …. sigh!
X Chy
Yes, too soon for fall! It’s really neat that you have a Bookmobile. I wish we did, too!
I always feel left out in the discussions about a Bookmobile. We never had one. I would have loved it!
I thought they were magical. The librarian would drive it to the site, turn her seat around, pull down a table/counter and that would be the check-out desk.
Oh Claudia so true there is nothing like reading! I guess that is why I have so many books now as I am so afraid of not having something to read. My husband would say there is no chance of that. 😊 Our daughter, who teaches 3rd grade, orders scholastic books for her class each year. To make sure everyone would get a book each order she asked for sponsors to help with the children who couldn’t afford to order one and got an overwhelming positive response. Some of her students had never owned a book before and wanted to hold them all day long. I’m proud she has found a way to encourage a love of books and reading for her students. My mother always said you are never lonely if you have a book to read.
Good for your daughter! That is a priceless gift for those students. Bravo!
I received books for Christmas and birthdays, and throughout the year I’d accompany my mother to a great bookshop on the first floor of a Colonial house; the owners, two sisters, lived upstairs. While my mother chatted with them I’d examine the wonderful dollhouse furniture they also sold before curling up with a book from the children’s section; I’d get so far into it that it had to come home with me. The Christmas I was in eighth grade my grandparents gave me a $25 gift certificate to another small bookshop: $25 bought a lot of books in 1958 – best present I’ve ever had.
A perfect present, Margaret! What wonderful memories.
I loved yesterday’s discussion about childhood books! Both my parents were keen readers and as a child I would go to the library at least once a week. At primary school we were read to a couple of times a week at the end of the day and the teacher always managed to end on a cliffhanger! Lots of classics like Kipling’s Jungle Book, Grimm’s Fairy Tales or a newly published book which has become a modern British classic -Stig of the Dump.
Janet mentioned Seventeen magazine and that evoked memories! When we around ten years old my class were assigned American penfriends. I had a girl called Martha from Detroit who only wrote a couple of times before she said she was moving to Des Moines but didn’t leave a forwarding address! Meanwhile my cousin Janice received a wonderful girl called Susan from Massachusetts, they carried on corresponding until their late teens. Susan very kindly sent Janice a subscription for her 14th birthday to Seventeen magazine and in the summer of 1972, Janice lent me dozens of copies. I don’t think I moved from my bedroom! I thought they were marvellous with articles on the Partridge Family and David Cassidy, I even devoured the adverts! They were so more sophisticated than British teenage magazines.
Happy Sunday
Not very often come across a book that would have my name in it. I was 7 years and my mom was pregnant. I came across a book at the library with the title “Trina finds a Brother”. Yep. My mom had a baby boy. I don’t remember reading the book though. I looked forward to the scholastic books.That was how I ended up with a copy of 101 Dalmatians. My all time favorite book when I was little.
What are the odds of finding a book with the title “Trina Finds a Brother?” Wonderful!
I loved Seventeen. I read it every month, Dee Dee!
I was in Heaven with hand-me-down Seventeen mags from my older-teen neighbor. I didn’t care that they were months old, back issues. Every page was a keeper to a young girl budding into young womanhood.
Add me to the list of HOW MUCH WE ENJOYED YOUR POST yesterday, Claudia. It is SO fun to reminisce about our childhood/teen reading and how lucky we all were to be blessed with reading in general, and gifts of books at our disposal in however-which way they came to us. I was glad for your reader comments yesterday because it introduced me to books I now want to look into, that I’d never heard of or read back in the day.
I am grateful more and more for my boomer childhood/youth. Golden times to remember.
Now, a question, Claudia: Did you play much with puzzles as a kid? Board games? Card games? Arts & crafts? Sewing projects like embroidery? Certain play on the school yard or in the back yard or even in the front yard like hopscotch or jump rope or statue-maker or croquet; baseball on the corner or Slip ‘n Slide (1961) in summer; Twister on the living room floor? (It’s a whole ‘nuther post!!!)
Also, the first things we cooked with Mother, like standing on a stool and stirring the batter for cookies? Foods we remember like a Dairy Queen cone or those tequila-sunrise-colored popsicles; stuffing peanuts down a bottle of Coke (crazy kid things); favorite candy at the movie theater (when the price of admittance was only fifty cents).
There’s a lot to remember and smile over, for sure!
“This is the time to remember, ’cause it will not last forever; these are the days to hold onto…” (Billy Joel [different meaning for that particular song, but the lyric could be applied to a lot of things!)
Played card games and did puzzles. Card games were big in our family. Played Four-square with my neighbors in the middle of the street, jumped rope. The usual. But mostly, my head was buried in a book.
I don’t remember helping my mom, mostly because she insisted on doing things for herself – so we didn’t learn about cooking until we were older.
We had a bookmobile when I was in elementary school. It would come around once a week and park in front of the school. We did not have a library near our home. My sisters and I have a large collection of books now.
Marilyn
Same where I grew up. Once a week in the parking lot of my elementary school – which was across the street.
Oh, my! I haven’t thought of The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew for years!!!!! And Scholastic books was the best! I remember I chose The Story of Clara Barton one time. Have no idea why I chose that. I never wanted to be a nurse, but I read it 100x or more because it was mine. And The Boxcar Children. Oh, the stories and the make-up play that gave us for an entire summer, setting up our own little versions of that boxcar!
I have been to Vegas twice. Both in the summer. HOT! Dry heat didn’t make it any better. Glad you will be able to stay inside. I remember I read a lot while my family member did the casino viewing during the day. Went out a bit when the sun was setting, but it wasn’t my kind of place. I’m sure you will barely know where you are if you are working. I found it kind of depressing when I thought of the $$$ being spent every minute of every day on really nothing. Is it a Casino hosting Anastasia? Safe travels!!
I noticed a sort of thread yesterday about some of us liking the stories of children on their own in the absence of parent/authority figures, thriving against odds. Orphans, etc. I’d mentioned a Borden Deal book and it was about kids who were separated from their parents in Florida while on vacay due to a car accident such that the kids got wind of maybe being temporarily placed in some kind of county services while their parents were in the hospital, got scared of being separated, so decided to make their way home (where they felt they’d be ‘safe’) by WALKING (‘a long way to go’), wherever it was (I can’t remember all the details) and how they were helped along the way by this & that ‘thing’ or situation or person. Boxcar Children, too; of kids being resourceful and finding ways to make it on their own. Maybe these books were empowering to the kids reading the stories (us!), that we could have adventures and also be survivors; to not be scared and to instead have faith in our abilities. I think it’s why I liked Disney’s version of Swiss Family Robinson (1960 – – I had the book they put out, as well as watching the movie of course; and it was one of my most fave things to do at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif; that amazing/tremendous tree house, which I understand is no longer there; such a shame); because the Robinson family had to get very creative with using every bit of that sinking sailing ship for trying to make a ‘camp’ on land, and then what their island presented for them as well, like a big beach shell for a sink/basin, fruit from the trees … what the reader in the last post said about a kid reading a book which was educational (even if fantastical I suppose; is still fiction!) in terms of getting stuff done, figuring things out, learning how to do something valuable like a new skill. Even as an adult, it’s why I’d escape into the novels of the American author LaVyrle Spencer because she’d be so descriptive in her historical fiction about how people did things and made a living in a former century, like Swedish settlers in Minnesota who learned to farm a harsh land and make it yield a crop, how they made candles, utilized a clean stream of fresh water as a natural refrigerator to keep foods cooled, harvesting honey; just a host of interesting things to learn. Hopefully we learn all our lives but of course as a kid, our fresh brains are just taking in SO much!
I read about Clara Barton, too, though I think I checked the book out from my elementary school library.
I have to walk to the theater from the hotel, but that’s about it. That, I fear, will be more than enough!
No, the show is playing in a performing arts center.
Dear Claudia, If you are a Laura Ingalls Wilder fan, as I have been my entire adult life, I recommend “Prairie Fires” by Caroline Fraser, a thoroughly researched biography of her and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. It won a 2017 Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, NY Times 10 Best Books. It brings her life and historical times to life vividly, and fleshes out the real people we know so well as characters in the pioneer saga. Great reading!
Claudia, can I just jump in and say I’m glad to hear of this book, Leslie (since I never had)! I got to reading more about Laura Ingalls Wilder yesterday, after all the discussion here on the blog, and I didn’t realize there was some controversy about the LIW estate after daughter, Rose, died; that her friend/agent/everything, according to some, went a little too far with the commercialization of the name/books, which of course even lead to the series on TV (but the more I thought about it, what’s the harm, as it’s all beloved!). I guess ‘purists’ feel that the commercialization messed with the integrity of the written history/memoir. Whatever. It was all an interesting life and I’m just glad Laura and Rose got it all down on paper for the rest of us! I’d love to visit the farmhouse Laura and Almanzo lived in for a long time in Missouri; my husband thought he remembered that it was partially destroyed by a tornado, so I need to read up on it! The home looks so tranquil in photos (like you can almost ‘hear’ the breeze in the trees), and I guess they really improved their farmland in its heyday with good orchards, etc. They just seemed to have everything they needed there. I remember my mother reading the books before I did; she was always one ahead of me; she loved “These Happy Golden Years”. (Like you, Claudia, I’m hankering to read the books all over again right now!)
Yes, I’ve heard of that book, Leslie. Thanks for reminding me about it. I’ll make sure to put it on my library list.
In our small town we were lucky to have a very nice library. And on our small cul de sac, we had not one, but TWO librarians! How lucky were we! It was so much fun to see familiar faces when we went in to return or check out books. Mrs. Fryar was right next door and Mrs. Johnstone’s house was on the big corner where the other street started up the hill. My mom and her two sisters were big readers. My aunt Mamie could knit and read at the same time! LOL. She introduced me to scifi and fantasy thru Edgar Rice Burroughs. All four of my mom’s kids loved to read and even now in our 50s and 60s we are avid readers. My middle sister read a wide variety of genres and introduced me to stuff I wouldn’t have picked on my own. She was adventurous. It was a great gift that my mom gave us, buying a set of classics that were sold like the Encyclopedia Brittanica, a new volume every month or so with collected works of Twin, Dickens, Bret Harte, and so on. Wish I still had them. They were read to tatters over the years. As I am now 66, there are a few things from childhood that were authentic treasures which I didn’t recognize as such, nothing valuable, just deserving of being preserved to speak of the special and formative influences and events. I have no kids to pass them down to, but it would give me great pleasure now to occasionally remind myself of who I was before I got all “grown up”. Your posts always give me something to think about. Thank you Claudia.
I love that – ‘before I got all grown up.’ Books from our childhood help us to remember our younger selves, Nora.