Little Monsters

 On the book jacket of Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur it says the book is inspired by the tail of Cain and Abel. I don't understand. Cain and Abel were two brothers. Cain murdered Abel because of jealousy. In this book the siblings are Abigail and Ken. Yes, there are jealous feelings. Ken is jealous of Abigail but he doesn't murder her. Ken and Abby were close growing up. Their mother died shortly after Abby was born. Their father, a famous oceanologist, is busy at work. The father, Adam, has bipolar disorder. He was a high functioning bipolar person but sometimes he went off of his medicine and his behavior would spiral out of control. Now it is 2016 and Adam's 70th birthday is approaching. Adam has secretly quit taking his meds again. Abby spots it first. Ken doesn't believe her. He thinks she is over-dramatic. Everything comes crashing to a head at the 70th birthday party. I enjoyed reading about the family dynamics. The story is located on Cape Cod and the land/seascapes are beautifully described.

  

Earth's The Right Place For Love

 Elizabeth Berg is the author of Earth's The Right Place For Love. This is a love story set in the 1950's in Moline, Missouri. Frank and Arthur are brothers living with their parents. Their father has a milk route and uses Grimy, their horse, to pull the milk cart. Their father is a war veteran and sometimes, when drunk, becomes violent. Frank is three years older than Arthur and in his final year of high school. Frank works after school at the grocery store. Arthur works for neighbors, yard work, cleaning, for neighbors on weekends. Arthur looks up to Frank and asks for advice in math, with friends, and with girls. Arthur has a crush on a girl named Nola. Unfortunately, Nola has a crush on his brother Frank. This was a sweet story about life in a small town, love, and friendship that turns into love.

Harvesting The Heart

 I have always enjoyed a novel by Jodi Picoult. Harvesting The Heart is different because it does not include a description of a jury trial. Paige is the main character. After graduating from high school in Chicago she leaves her father in Chicago without informing him and takes the train to Cambridge. She gets a job at a local diner and starts to support herself. Paige always wondered why her mother deserted the family when she was 5 years old. Years later, after Paige has given birth to a baby boy three months earlier, she temporarily deserts her family too. Like mother, like daughter? The story of Paige is complicated and full or joy and sorrow. I loved reading this book about family relationships.

Hiking A New TrailT

Today the temperature got up to 58 degrees so I drove four miles to the west to the trailhead parking lot. That green stuff in the water is watercress. I thought about collecting some to eat but I didn't want to get wet feet.

I found a cemetery miles away from any road. Most of the markers were from the 1800's. The latest person buried here died in 1962.

I saw 3 other people hiking today. One was a through hiker. This I knew because he had a bedroll on his backpack. I saw a bald eagle, Northern Cardinals, Carolina wrens, a golden crowned kinglet, a brown creeper and several red bellied woodpeckers.

This is a recent trail fix. The sawdust is still there.

This part of the Appalachian trail is easier to hike than the Superior Hiking Trail. 

I stepped over fewer roots, fewer rocks, and traversed fewer hills. Unfortunately the traffic on the Pennsylvania turnpike was evident all the time.

 

The People's Hospital

Doctor Ricardo Nuila is the author of the non-fiction book The People's Hospital: Hope And Peril In American Medicine. The author is a doctor at the Ben Tuab, a county hospital in Houston, Texas. He writes about five patients. Hi writes very well about his patients and, by the way, they all gave him permission to write their stories. In between these very personable stories about real people, he includes lectures on insurance companies, politicians, Obamacare, and the pharmaceutical companies. Those lectures were pretty boring but the patient stories were great.

The Younger Wife

Sally Hepworth is the author of The Younger Wife, a contemporary mystery novel set in Melbourne, Australia. A pair of sisters, Tully and Rachel, in their early 30's, are dealing with their mom's placement in a memory care unit. Then their father introduces his desire to marry a woman younger than them once he divorces their mother. As the sisters get to know their father's bride to be, family secrets are coming out. Family dysfunction is gradually revealed which in the end makes them all healthier. The book was interesting to read and the characters were well developed except for the father of the family.

Wishin' And Hopin'

 Wally Lamb is the author of the fiction novel Wishin' And Hopin.' Dusty Springfield sang a song with the same title. The story is about ten year old Felix Funicello. Felix is in the fifth grade at the local Catholic School near Groton, Connecticut in the 1960's. When his teacher has a nervous breakdown she is replaced by a young woman from Montreal who wants the class to learn French. When Felix's father gives him the facts of life speech he tells Felix to never let his lips touch the water fountain because it is germy. Felix is quite innocent and does not pick up on the dirty jokes and innuendoes. The author shares funny tales about Felix and the people in his neighborhood culminating with a Christmas pageant at the school.

Roller Rink

 Tonight we went to a roller rink for skating. The entire school was there and families dropped off boxes of tissue for the school supplies. I imagine it would not be good to run short of tissue at a school full of germy children. I didn't skate but I helped one granddaughter around and around the roller rink that was loud with music and flashing disco lights. The experience was overloading my senses. I was glad when the event was over and we could be in a quieter, calmer space without people falling all around me.

What Happened To The Bennetts

 Lisa Scottoline is the author of What Happened To The Bennetts, a fiction novel about a family of four living in Pennsylvania. Jason Bennett is driving his wife, his daughter, and his son home from his daughter's lacrosse match when their car is tailgated by a pick up truck. The two men in the pick up truck pull guns on the family and steal their car. This encounter turns violent and changes life forever. Later that evening the FBI visits the family and informs them that the car jackers are part of a drug cartel and that their lives are in danger. The family is moved into the witness protection program and moved to a house on the beach in Delaware. This book is a crime novel and a mystery which are not my favorites. The father in the story, Jason, is definitely an over-achiever who is determined that justice will be served.

The Girls Who Stepped Out Of Line

Mari K. Eder is the author of The Girls Who Stepped Out Of Line. The book is about outstanding women during World War Two. Fifteen heroic women stories are detailed. The author is a retired U. S. Army Major General. She wrote about women pilots, women decoders, women spies and women nurses and women scientists. These are women who stepped up when the world needed them The stories were very interesting.

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Wish You Well

 David Baldacci is a well-known and prominent writer and Wish You Well is the first book of his that I read. They story is about a 12 year old girl named Lou and her younger brother Oz. Living in New York City her family has a car accident. Her father is killed and her mother is in a coma. Lou, Oz, and her invalid mother are sent to Virginia to live with their grandmother on a farm. Lou and Oz adjust to rural Virginia and to living without electricity nor running water. Farm work is hard and Lou and Oz grow strong. Both children wish their mother could return to health. The book ends with a dramatic courtroom scene. I thought the character development and scenery descriptions were very good. This author also has a foundation with the same name as the book that promotes literacy in Virginia.

Philly Continued

On our second day in Philadelphia we walked to Independence Hall. In this room the constitution of the United States was written and edited. Philadelphia was the nation's capital for the first ten years. After ten years they decided to move the capital to a neutral location.

We signed up for the 9:20 a.m. tour which lasted a half hour. Here is the clock tower from where I was waiting outside for our tour to begin.

This is the courtroom in Independence Hall. After Independence Hall we walked to the Benjamin Franklin museum. Since getting a bank shaped like the bust of Benjamin Franklin as a child, I have always been interested in him. He started the first library, the first fire department and the first university. He owned slaves and advertised slaves in his newspapers. In his older years he became an abolitionist. He was a statesperson and an ambassador. He was a scientist and a philosopher. He was a writer and a postmaster. 

After lunch we drove a little out of our way to the north where George Washington crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night in 1776. The British army had hired some German soldiers called Hessians and they were guarding Trenton, New Jersey. Because there was a winter storm the Hessians thought they could relax. Washington begam transferring 100's of men, 50 horses, and 20 cannons over the icy Delaware River during a storm. They arrived in Trenton at 8 a.m. and won that battle. This meant the American forces could be successful and the tide of the Revolutionary war had changed in our favor.

We drove a few miles into New Jersey to the Washington Crossing State Park. According to a sign I read there, more of the revolutionary war battles happened in New Jersey.

In a barn on the property we found several of the Durham boats that were used to carry the army, the horses, cannons, and supplies across the icy river.

 

Philly

On Saturday we drove a couple of hours east to Philadelphia. We were lucky to get a hotel room and a parking spot because the car show is going on at the Convention Center. Here is the tombstone of Benjamin Franklin and his common law wife, Deborah.

Edgar Allen Poe lived in 5 houses in Philadelphia but this one is the only one still standing. The girls earned their junior ranger badge here.

This is Betsy Ross' house across the street. We didn't have time to visit.

The liberty bell was much smaller than I expected.

Many statues adorn the area near Independence Hall.

Philadelphia is an interesting city.

 

On The Rooftop

 Margaret Wilkerson Sexton is the author of the historical fiction novel called On The Rooftop. The story is set in San Francisco in the 1950's. Vivian is a single mother of three girls. Besides working long hours at the local hospital, she rehearses her daughters in singing, sometimes they sing on the rooftop. Ruth is the oldest and the lead singer. Her younger sisters, Esther and Chloe, back her up. The group is known as The Salvations. They sing at church and at a local jazz club on weekend nights. Right when Vivian secures an agent for The Salvations, the group breaks up. Vivian's girls start to follow their own passions instead of their mother's passion. A side story in this novel is the city's way of gentrifying the black neighborhoods by right of eminent domain. The book brought me right back to the 1950's with the description of the hose and the girdles and the pencil skirts.

Suessical The Musical

 Tonight we attended a performance of Suessical The Musical put on by 4th and 5th graders from the Hampden Elementary School. The performance was at the Mountain View Middle School which had a nicer theater than my high school theater. The grand girls enjoyed seeing their school friends outside of school. The musical combines a number of Dr. Suess books. Now one of my granddaughters is inspired to take up acting which is nice to hear. The teacher that organizes the plays was her 2nd grade teacher and that might have something to do with her desire to get on stage.

They Called Us Exceptional

 Pricha Gupti is the author of the memoir They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us. The book starts out when Pricha is young. Pricha's mother came from India as part of an arranged marriage. Her father was born in the United States. He was a successful engineer who made great money but chose to go back to school to become a physician because physicians are esteemed more than engineers. Soon her little brother, Yush, is born. The family had one foot in the east Asian society and the other foot in mostly white suburbs of Pennsylvania. Pricha was raised to be successful and at first she was. In high school she rebelled and was not a good student anymore. I enjoyed reading about her youth and her friends and her adventures. Once she became a college graduate the book changed flavors. Now all her writing was about her unhealthy family dynamics, her father's mental illness, and her brother's mental illness. This part of the book is where the author is writing to her mother explaining how her action or inaction made things worse for her. To find personal success Pricha had to distance herself from her family. By the end of the book I hoped Pricha would stop focusing on the mistakes of the past and start living her life. Why waste five years rehashing old memories?

I never saw the movie Silver Linings Playbook but I did listen to the audiobook. The author is Matthew Quick. The story is narrated by Patrick Peoples. Pat is 34 years old and living with his mother and father in Pennsylvania. Pat was recently discharged from a mental health facility that he calls "the bad place." His mother monitors his meds, takes him to his court ordered weekly appointment with his psychiatrist, cooks his meals, and buys his clothes. His father is distant and reclusive. If the football team, the Eagles, don't win the weekly game his father will not speak to anyone in the household for an entire week. Pat tries to improve himself so he can get to the end of "apart time." Before he was in an institution, he was married and taught history at a high school. Pat thinks if he be kind instead of right and become physically fit, he will win his wife back. Pat does hundreds of sit ups and bench presses before going for a ten mile run. Pat is obviously mentally ill but his line of thinking was interesting to listen to. The plot is complicated and the ending was not what I expected. 

Summer Sisters

 Judy Blume is the author of Summer Sisters, a fiction novel about the friendship of Caitlin and Victoria (nicknamed Vix). Caitlin comes from a wealthy family whose parents have divorced. She lives with her mother in New Mexico. Her brother lives with her father on the east coast. Every summer Caitlin travels to Martha's Vineyard to spend the summer at the beach house with her father and brother. Caitlin invites Vix to accompany her for the summer. Vix comes from a working class family. She is the eldest of four. Her youngest brother, Nathan, has muscular dystrophy. Nathan and Vix are very close. The story starts out when the girls are about 12 years old in the 1970's. The story of their friendship continues through high school, college up until their mid 30's. I enjoyed reading about how this female friendship continued over many years.

Snow Sculptures

Today we made snow sculptures. This is a snow train. The caboose is on the lower left and the engine is on the upper right.

This is a snow chipmunk with an acorn sitting in front of it (use your imagination).

This is a snow daisy.

This is a snow puppy.

And this is a snow person!

 

State Museum Of Pennsylvania

Today I went to the State Museum of Pennsylvania which is next door to the state capital building which is pictured here.

My visit lasted four hours. On the first floor they had an exhibit about Benjamin Franklin and William Penn, a colonial village, and icons of Pennsylvania. On the second floor there was an exhibit on archeology, the Pennsylvania turnpike, civil rights and industry. On the third floor they had an exhibit on mammals, birds, reptiles and fish and a planetarium. Today show was on telescopes. I enjoyed the museum visit.

 

Tales From The Tail End

Emma Milne is the author of Tales From The Tail End. Her novel describes her job as a veterinarian in the United Kingdom. As a young girl she knew her vocation early. In veterinary college she and her fellow students are followed by a television crew filming a series about young veterinarians. She becomes somewhat famous. She and her husband adopt a pair of dogs and three cats. Over the years she changes jobs several times. Most of the stories are about the animals but some are about the pet owners. This was a delightful book about a woman who truly loved her job.

In Pieces

 I listened to Sally Field's autobiography called In Pieces. She read the book to me. She starts out as a child listening to her mother and her grandmother. She has an older brother and a younger half sister. Sally is lucky to be offered the job as Gidget just out of high school. I loved that television show. She is not as lucky in love. She knew her first husband through school and he was the father of her first two boys. But he was one of those "always a boy" type guys and she left him. She had an affair with Burt Reynolds but he did not bolster her career. In fact, Burt was a discouraging voice in her head. The biggest influence in Sally's life was her "Ba." Ba was her mother. The book ends with the passing of her mother. Although I loved Gidget and enjoyed the flying nun, I think her best acting was as Mary Todd Lincoln. She is a great actress and she wrote a great autobiography.

Happy New Year!