Dubuque

Today I was driving northwest from Clinton, Illinois. I got to Dubuque in the early afternoon. I thought I would pull over and explore this beautiful town on the Mississippi. I parked and started walking around when I saw the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium. I decided to pay a visit. Lucky me, I got a ten dollar discount on admission because I am a Mom. I visited the aquarium with fresh water and salt water animals. They had an outdoor area with a kestrel, red tailed hawk, bald eagle and a barn owl. They had a history section about the river and the people who lived on the river.

My ticket is good for two days so I could go back but I don't think I will as I am staying an hour north of Dubuque.

 

The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid

 Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors. The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid is a story of his life growing up in Des Moines, Iowa. He was born in 1951. He had an active imagination and thought of himself as a super-hero who could fry people with his thunderbolt looks. He had friends who were good influences and other friends who were bad influences. Dropping items on diners at at the shopping mall was done by Bryson and one of his friends who was a bad influence. He writes a hilarious book.

Then We Came To The End

 Joshua Ferris is the author of Then We Came To The End. The novel is about working at an advertising agency or rather the characters who worked there. Like all offices there are characters, romances, and office pranks. Reading this book reminded me of watching the TV series, The Office. One guy is sure he will  be fired for taking the chair of a coworker soon after they left. The chair haunts him. In truth no one knew he took the chair and no one cares but he doesn't know that. People always gather in the cubicle of the office story teller (gossiper). One of the employees dies of a heart attack. He leaves something in his will to one of his coworkers who wasn't expecting it. He has no idea why the guy left him a totem pole. He visits the totem pole at the guy's house until it is sold. Then he puts the totem pole in a storage facility. This was a very entertaining book to read. The head honcho at the agency appears to have it all together but behind the scenes she is the most conflicted person unable to act in her own best interests.

Wright

This afternoon I drove to Dayton, Ohio to visit the Wright Aviation Center. I got a tour of Orville and Wilbur's bicycle store. This was their fourth of their five bike stores. They always rented their stores. The height of the biking craze peaked in 1902 and the Wright Brothers made good money. At the time their safety bicycles cost $100. Translated into to the economy of today, that bike would cost $1400.

The Wright brothers also had a printing press. They published several newspapers but none of them stayed solvent very long. Orville went to school with Paul Laurence Dunbar. Together the Wright Brothers and Dunbar published a newspaper focused on the black neighborhood in Dayton. That newspaper only lasted 3 editions. Dunbar went on to become a prominent poet, short story writer and novelist. On the second floor they had a parachute museum.

This is one of the $100 bicycle.

 

Hopewell

Yesterday I left Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania and drove west. I went through Maryland and stayed for the night in West Virginia, right next to the border of Ohio. This morning I drove two hours to Chillicothe to visit the the Hopewell Culture National Historic Site. Here is one of a grouping of burial grounds in Ohio. Inside these burial grounds they have found shells from the Gulf of Mexico, grizzly bear teeth from Montana, copper from Michigan, silver from Canada, shark teeth from Maine and mica from North Carolina. I walked around the grounds imagining the people who were buried here. This felt like a very spiritual place.

 

Beyond The Door Of No Return

David Diop is the author of Beyond The Door Of No Return. The translator is Sam Taylor. The historical fiction novel starts out in Paris in 1806. A botanist, Michael Adanson, lies on his deathbed trying to figure out a way to let his daughter, Aglae, know of his life in Senegal. He once pursued the daughter of a Senegalese leader after she returned from three years of slavery in the United States. He found the daughter, the beautiful woman, and he writes to his daughter about her. The story is told by the Europeans, not the Africans and it reads like an adventure story. I have never read a book anything like this before. I enjoyed the scenery and the botany and the adventure.

Tom Lake

 Ann Patchett wrote Tom Lake in 2023. This is a family novel. Three daughters want to know about their mother's life prior to her marriage to her father. In her earlier years, before she had three daughters. Lara was an actress in a summer theater group in northern Michigan called Tom Lake. She starred in the play, Our Town. The person who played her father in the play went on to become a famous movie star. Their father was the director of the play so he knew both Lara and the famous movie star. The daughters are begging for details as they pick cherries on their farm in Michigan. Patchett is a talented writer and I totally enjoyed this family drama.