Please don't return your scrolls to the Book Drop

When I was a small child, our local library was in the dark
basement of the County Courthouse. Cold,
bleak, uninviting, yet its volumes still held magic that I have never
forgotten.
The years have passed and today’s library has morphed into
an organization scarcely recognizable—yet the magic continues.
I’ve thought a lot about this--change, and how things do not
stay the same.
Will books in their present form cease to exist?
Will this technologically advanced world of e books, tablets
and other technology eat us alive?

I will admit that I love the feel of a book in my hands.
Yet, I own a “smart” device and have downloaded books and
other media to it.
“All great changes are preceded by chaos.” ~ Deepak Chopra
We don’t have to be afraid.
Your Public Library is a great place to stay in touch with
your ever changing world.

In the distant past, people wrote on scrolls.
I don’t see any scrolls lying around today, and we have made
it just fine.

I'll waste my time if I choose, thank you very much!

Man in the music
The creative life and work of Michael Jackson

“You’re taking THAT book?” someone asked me as I picked up a copy of Man in the Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson and was flipping through the pages.
“Well, I was thinking about it,” I replied.
“Well, you shouldn’t waste your time on things like that,” offered the self-appointed book police of my reading list.
That did it.
For SURE that book was going home with me now.
After all, it is MY TIME and I get to choose how I will or will not waste it.
But let me assure you, this was worth the check out.
This 2011 volume was much to my liking. Author Joseph Vogel is a New Yorker who tends to write about pop culture, music, and politics.
The book focused much more on Michael as a creative artist and less about all the drama in his personal life.
During my former stint studying genealogy, I had soon discovered we all have outlaws in our ancestral pages.
But we DON’T all have creative geniuses lurking in our family branches.
I loved the photos, and I will even forgive him for being (page 185) more beautiful that I will ever be and being able to pull off wearing that much glitz (page 78.)
There was the prerequisite background info about how the songs were written. Fascinating.
But mainly, the book focuses on Michael and “the magic.”
And to me, it was.

Save me the piece with the most Icing!

First, I want to say that I think what you read is no one’s business but yours, meaning, no one should judge you if you choose to read only westerns, or only graphic novels, or only Harlequin romances. We read for different reasons. I might read a text book to pass an exam, a book on carpentry to complete a project, or a mystery for entertainment. Or perhaps I’ll read something that’s pretty much totally fluff. It’s like frosting on the cake, or gravy on the mashed potatoes. You don’t have to have it, but every once in a while, it’s good to treat yourself.
And with that disclaimer I confess to reading Susan Phillips’ Natural Born Charmer. Pure chick-lit. Some shocking (well at least to me) language, and some sex thrown in for good measure. The book has some fun characters, my two favorites being Blue, the feisty, unlikely heroine of the tale, and Riley, a young 12 year old who has recently lost her Mom. The author also throws in a dash of small town shenanigans, just to keep things interesting. This book will never be on any English teacher’s required reading list.

Chasing the starry Cetus

“The sad and solemn night
Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light
Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires . . . .
And thou dost see them rise,
Star of the Pole! And thou dost see them set.
Alone, in they cold skies,
Thou keep’st thy old unmoving station yet.
--William Cullen Brant
“Hymn to the North Star”

If you challenge me to a game of astronomy trivia, you might win, but I would have the most fun, hands down. I love trivia AND stars, constellations, black holes, dazzling doubles and glittering globulars. If you are similarly afflicted, or simply in the mood for something different—you should pick up Deep-Sky Wonders: A tour of the Universe with Sky and Telescope’s Sue French. Stunning pictures, purportedly by the hundreds, although I confess I did not count them, entrance the reader. An education in star maps, sky-hopping, deep sky objects, and planetary nebulae await. With chapters titled “Scuttling around the Scorpion,” and “A Toehold in the Virgo Cluster,” how can you resist?

That 4 Letter Word

You would have to be living on the dark side of the moon to have not heard of the book The Help.
With all the reviews that have been published what on earth would I have to add to what has already been said about Kathryn Stockett’s destined-to-become-a-classic?
Well, I did grow up in that era. As a child, I can tell you I harbored no feelings of superiority towards any race. A life of luxury would have been as foreign to me as it was to any African American. At 9 years old, I remember going to the home of a little girl in my school class and thinking it was a mansion. Years later, as an adult I had the opportunity to revisit that home and figured I’d realize it was only grandiose because I was young and unsophisticated. Wrong. The home really was the mansion I had remembered. Growing up in rural Arkansas, I was mostly ignorant of race relations.

The thought that has kept me captivated about this story was the time element. The polite “white” society spent their days in the pursuit of club meetings, fashion magazines, and other meaningless drivel. The hired help spent long, backbreaking hours—much longer than our 8 hour workday, slaving away and were not even allowed the courtesy of using the home toilet. All my life I have believed that shortcuts and taking the easy way are ultimately the hard path. This is one of those stories that won’t turn me loose, even though I have turned the last page. I’m still pondering…………

Lessons Learned

“Bank has started callingAnd the wolves are at my doorThree dollars and change at the pumpCost of livin's high and goin' up.”
--Ronnie Dunn from Cost of Livin’

One of my favorite feel good stories is the true life story of millionaire-gone-belly-up, Michael Gates, in How Starbucks Saved my Life. Its subtitle, A Son of Privilege learns to live like everyone else, attests to something I’ve tried to instill in my children for years: Having money does not equal happiness.
Please don’t misunderstand—I am not some Robin Hood persona gleefully enjoying the misfortune of the once rich and famous. What I do enjoy is when the underdog climbs off the porch with a huge, “WOOF!” This book had me rooting for the underdog, hoping that MG Gates would persevere in spite of bankruptcy, advancing age, a failed marriage, and a tumor.
I will admit that some would consider this selection primarily for those interested in training staff on good customer service, but it’s much more. It’s about how we should treat ourselves and others, and isn’t that the true secret for good relationships? Treating others well?
I have thought about the author’s not so subtle views on how adults still struggle with peer pressure. In a passage from the book, our main character muses, “ Be honest, Mike,” I thought, calling myself by my new Starbucks name. “You feel good about what you are doing. Just because you are wearing a green apron rather than a Brooks Brothers suit doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it!”
Sometimes the toughest job we face is being our authentic self.

I love self-help books, and Letting Go of Your Bananas: How to be Successful by letting go of everything Rotten in Your Life by Daniel T. Drubin was an easy choice. The book was not what I expected. Lured into taking this particular book by the cheery bright yellow banana on the cover, I was not prepared for the textbook-like presentation and stilted style of writing. So much for not judging a book by its cover........





But the content--- exceptional!


Based on the premise that monkeys are captured because they reach into a bottle and won't turn loose of their bananas, the focus of the book encourages us to turn loose of the habits, people, and beliefs that have us trapped.





I will admit that I laughed through some of it, not because it is particularly funny, but because the author seemed pretentious, and perhaps the letting go of some of my "bananas" of choice would not be deemed earth shattering. But the book is good enough I recommend taking notes, and more importantly putting those notes in action. Which brings me to a riddle which is apropos for this book: Two frogs are sitting on a log and one jumps off. How many frogs are left on the log? TWO of course! Just deciding to jump off a log and jumping off a log are two different things.