Fire Drill

 This afternoon I stopped by my library to return some materials and read several newspapers. I was just settling in to read an article by Larry Weber about black jelly fungus when this noise occurred. Intermittent bleeping noises sounded. Was this a fire alarm? Turns out it was a fire alarm and we all had to leave. The library empties out. The Great Clips store empties out. The pub empties out. Downstairs another restaurant empties out. And the liquor store empties out. The temperature is about 20 and the wind is blowing hard. We stand there in the cold for ten or more minutes. One elderly Asian man forgot his coat and he is shivering. Some people are doing calisthenics to keep warm. I am pacing back and forth and kicking up the snow. A man in charge of the building arrives and the alarm is turned off. I hear a beautician from Great Clips say a child in the library pulled the alarm. Then we hear the fire trucks coming down the street. A giant fire truck arrives and 3 fire fighters get out and enter the building. I look at that truck with the big wheels and wonder was kind of gas mileage it gets. After the five more minutes the fire fighters come out and we are allowed to enter the building again. I go back in and finish reading my newspapers. I realize that since I retired I have not been in a fire drill. I should have reacted more quickly. At work I was the one who scheduled the fire drill and wrote the fire drill reports.

The House We Grew Up In

Lisa Jewell wrote a very interesting  book called The House We Grew Up In. The story revolves around the Bird family. Lorelei is the matriarch of the family and she is beautiful and creative and always living in the moment.  Colin is the gangly father who teaches at a local college. Meg is the eldest child and she is pragmatic and organized. Next is Beth who is a little dreamy and quiet. Last come the twin boys, Rhys and Rory. Rhys is the youngest and the smallest. He doesn't have many friends. Rory is handsome and athletic and he has tons of friends. They live in the country, in the Cotswalds in England. They love to celebrate Easter. Lorelei will hide chocolate eggs wrapped in shiny foil in the yard and the kids go and find them. "Save the foil!" says Lorelei which is my first clue that she is a hoarder. One Easter a tragedy strikes the family and every one of them think it's their fault. As the kids grow up and move away the family grows distant. They don't speak to each other anymore. In the end the surviving members of the family do come back to the house that they grew up in. Now they are speaking to each other and loving each other. I thought the author did a nice job detailing the effect the hoarding has on the other members of the family. Meg, for example, keeps a super clean house and will take a tea cup to be washed before the person drinking the tea was finished. She wants to be the opposite of her mother. I enjoy a family drama and this was a great book.

Snow

As I was shoveling snow today I wondered how many pounds of snow I have shoveled in my lifetime. How many hours have I spent shoveling snow? How high would the pile of snow be that I have shoveled? How many driveways have I shoveled? I know I have shoveled snow in Roseville, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Fridley, Blaine, Anoka, Columbia, Coon Rapids, Ramsey, Urbank, Alexandria, White Bear Lake, St. Cloud, Duluth, Grand Marais, Elk River, Savage, Illinois, and Wisconsin. I don't always love shoveling snow. Sometimes I hate shoveling snow. This year shoveling snow isn't as wearisome because I know I will migrate south and not have to shovel snow at all which will be super awesome. Today I shoveled snow because it was snowing too hard for me to drive to the YMCA. Shoveling can be good exercise. There will be a day in the future where I will not be able to shovel snow any more. I am grateful I can still shovel snow.  

The Botanist's Guide to Parties And Poisons

 I like botany so I decided to read The Botanist's Guide To Parties and Poisons by Kate Khavari. This is a historical fiction set at London College in 1923. A brand new researcher named Saffron Everleigh is the protagonist. Saffron's father was a professor in botany at this college before he died in the war. Saffron works for Dr. Maxwell who treats her kindly and in a fatherly fashion. When she attends a party for the science department one Saturday evening she and everyone else is shocked when Mrs. Henry, the wife of another scientist, falls to the floor after drinking champagne. She is rushed to the hospital and everyone assumes she had an allergic reaction. Instead the doctor finds out that she has been poisoned. Everyone at the party is interviewed. Since Dr. Maxwell had a verbal altercation with Dr. Henry, Dr. Maxwell is put in jail. Saffron is very upset and she decides it is up to her to save Dr. Maxwell and get him out of jail. Saffron makes some good decisions and some really poor decisions. She almost gets herself killed 3 or 4 times. She is smart but impulsive. Sometimes she acts before she thinks. I liked Saffron and I liked this book.

The Personal Librarian

I just finished reading another historical fiction novel called The Personal Librarian. This story was written by two authors, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. The story is based on a real woman named Bella de Costa Greene. Originally her name was Bella Marion Greener. Her father was the first Black graduate of Harvard and his name was Richard Greener. Her father is the one who took her to art museums and got her interested in art history and the history of printing. Her father leaves the family. In the hopes of a better life for her children, her mother changes their last name from Greener to Greene, moves from Washington, D.C. to New York City. Now her mother is a single parent to five children. Her mother decides that she and her family will try to pass as white. This is a risky decision and also the reason the father left the family. Bella is the eldest and she helps support them with her salary. After high school Bella got a job at the library at Princeton. While at Princeton she meets Junius Morgan. He offers to introduce her to his uncle who is looking to hire a personal librarian. Although J.P. Morgan is known for his ferocious temper Bella does not show any fear during the interview. Her answers are sharp, entertaining, and more honest than most of the people speaking to J.P. Morgan. Bella gets the job of personal librarian to the J.P. Morgan library. She is to organize his art and books and to help him acquire more treasures. Bella does an outstanding job. Part of her duties including attending parties, the opera, and art gallery showings with the rich and famous of New York City. Eventually Bella is sent to England to acquire more treasures. She surprises everyone with her skills at negotiation. She is rewarded financially so she is able to move her family into better quarters. Bella's only worry is that someone will look into her background and discover that she is black. I loved this epic story about a truly intelligent and very brave woman.

We Were The Lucky Ones

 I just finished reading a great historical fiction novel called We Were The Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter. The book starts in 1939 is is about 3 generations or the Kurz family who live in Radom, Poland. The Kurz family are close and get together off to celebrate Jewish holidays and meals. What they went through does not make me think they were lucky but in truth they were one of the very few Polish Jews to survive the Nazi invasion. All of them were starved. Some were beaten, arrested, and jailed. Some went to work camps. Some made it to Italy to join the Polish Army and join combat to take over a hill in northern Italy. Some had to pretend to be Catholic. One member of the family, when harassed by a lady landlord about his heritage, taped a Band-Aid to his penis and pulled his pants down for her to look at. He and his wife laughed pretty hard at the look on the landlady's face. One of the younger members of the family, a girl about 6 years, had to leave her mother to live in a Catholic orphanage for a while. Her mother came to check on her and found the orphanage had been bombed. The girl's mother and another man who came to check on his son heard voices. They spent 8 hours digging through the rubble where they found two nuns, some live children, and several dead children. The 6 year old girl had come down with an infectious disease, had a high fever, and nearly died. Several members of the family had children during the war. The author based her story on members of her own family. Her grandmother was one of the middle generations of the Kurz family. None of the family lives in Radom, Poland now. Some are in Brazil, some in the United States, and several in Europe. I thought this was an incredibly interesting story.

How Can I Help?

 Today a situation arose in which I was of no help. I wanted to help. I didn't know how to help. The situation happened on my noon time walk with Offspring #2 and two hound dogs. We were walking toward UMD because the sidewalks there are not icy. Ironically we have to walk a mile of icy sidewalks to get to the clear sidewalks. As we were headed up a steep hill Offspring #2 was distracted by a dude using a kitchen broom to sweep off his car that had no snow on it. I was distracted by the sight of a wild rabbit who appeared to have one paralyzed hind leg. The two hound dogs were also distracted by this injured rabbit. The hound dogs leapt toward the rabbit which was down a hill and about to hide under a house. Offspring #2 braced their body and squatted  low because this position has worked before in Minneapolis. But Duluth is not Minneapolis. Duluth has hills.  The hounds were using the hill to their advantage. There was a tree between Offspring #2 and me. Soon enough Offspring #2 is off the feet and is being pulled through the snow the one dog had just turned yellow. The hound dogs have lost their minds and are howling like hound dogs. In the process a bird bath gets turned over and breaks. I grab one dog by the neck so Offspring #2 can get on their feet. We pull the loudly barking dogs back off private property to the sidewalk. I set the bird bath back up and try to fix it. I look at the house where the bunny lives to see a sign that reads, "Smile, you are on camera." Oh great, this will be swell to see on TicTok. Offspring #2 will mail the owner of the bird bath an explanation, an apology, and money to buy a new bird bath. Later we laughed at how useless I was in this situation.