Funniest News Comment of the Day (to me anyway!)
By patti | October 3, 2008
Seton on Fox News said: “I don’t think there should be diving in “The View” thought pool.”
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
The Big Read via Renee
By patti | September 30, 2008
I’ve seen this challenge before, but Renee just happened to post it when I felt that I could spare a few minutes.
Renee says:
“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”
Wow, I’ve read 47! Almost half.
The Rules:
1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE.
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post.
**1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
*2 The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
*3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
*4 Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling (I’ve read a couple of them.)
**5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (Can I give this one more stars?)
**6 The Bible
*7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
*8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
*10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
*11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
*12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (some)
*15 Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
**16 The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
**20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
*21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
*23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
%24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
%25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
%26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - saw the film; it was great!
%27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
*28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
*29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
**30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
**31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (started, but not finished)
**33 Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis
*34 Emma - Jane Austen (Does the movie count?)
*35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
**36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis - this shouldn’t be here - it’s a duplicate from 33
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernières -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
**40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
*41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
*45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
*46 Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
*52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
**54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
**57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
*58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
*65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
*71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
*73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
*76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
*77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Émile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A.S. Byatt
**81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
*83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
**87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
*89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
*92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - in French
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
*94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - also in French
*98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
*99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Topics: Books | 4 Comments »
Emily Stauffer
By patti | September 28, 2008
Please pray for this long-time homeschooling family who lost their daughter Emily.
Topics: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Ben at Work
By patti | September 24, 2008
This was such a fabulous picture that Ben posted on his Facebook, I had to steal it so that others can enjoy it. This is Ben “working” in Switzerland.
Topics: Family, Travel | 2 Comments »
Miles Standish
By patti | September 23, 2008
I just finished reading Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick. It was excellent: a very readable account of the years from the founding of Plymouth to the end of King Philip’s War (1676). There are lots of interesting parts to the book. I found myself wanting to learn more about Benjamin Church who figures greatly in the ending of the war. I thought the following about Miles Standish was interesting:
In 1891, the body of Miles Standish was exhumed by a group that included the Duxbury Episcopal minister, a medical doctor, and several Standish descendants. It was perhaps appropriate that the man who had overseen the pilfering of Native graves during the winter of 1620 [the author by no means attributes all the evils of the times to the wicked white men] was subjected to a similar indignity 271 years later. His skull and bones were carefully measured, and the doctor claimed that “the bones indicated a man of tremendous physique and strength.” The skull was surprisingly large and “of a peculiar formation,” and the minister tactfully pointed out that several of the Standish descendants standing beside the grave that day had similarly shaped heads. There was only one tooth left in Standish’s lower jaw, and what hair remained on the skull was reddish brown and mixed with gray. But what surprised all of them was the length of the skeleton — five feet seven inches, an average height for a man in the seventeenth century. Had Standish been taller than was previously thought?
Topics: Books, History | 2 Comments »
Clarion County, Pennsylvania Research
By patti | August 25, 2008
After having a wonderful day with the Marsches yesterday, I left their house this morning and headed for Clarion, Pennsylvania. My Lee ancestors: father Addison, and children including my great-grandfather Ira Lee moved from Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, sometime after 1876 (record of a deed in Huntingdon) and before 1880 (census in Clarion County). I know that my great-grandfather Ira Lee is buried in Kane, McKean County, PA, where my dad was born, but I didn’t know what had happened to Addison. Today I found out. I was in the courthouse reading orphans’ court records and found guardianship papers where guardians were requested for the children because Addison had been killed in a boiler explosion in the previous month of December 1880, and there was insurance money to be managed. Because I had that information, I knew when to look for possible newspaper accounts and went over to the library where old newspapers on microfilm are available. A transcription of the newspaper article follows. The newspaper is dated 16 December 1880 and is the Clarion Democrat. The left margin of this particular edition appears to have been damaged prior to microfilming so the first few letters of each line may not be correct if I guessed wrong.
(warning– the contents may be too graphic for young children)
[Hor or Ter]rible Boiler Explosion at Curllsville — One Man Instantly Killed.[O]n Friday morning, the 10th inst., about 7 1/2 [A]M., the boiler in Turney’s flour mill, at Curllsville, exploded with terrific force, instantly [kill]ing Mr. Ad. H. Lee, the miller. He was [cru]shed against the stone wall in front of the ???ler, literally crushing him to a jelly. His [he]ad was split open, his brains dashed out, and [hi]s face scalded and driven so full of ashes and [??]uler, as to be almost beyond recognition. The entire south side, or nearly one-half of the mill, [is a] complete wreck, except the roof. The stone [wa]lls are blown out and shattered, timbers two ??? square broken and splintered, floors torn up, ?? So far as is known the accident was caused [by] the water being too low in the boiler. The [re]mains of Mr. Lee were taken charge of by [Cur]llville Lodge, I.O.O.F., of which he was a [m]ember, and were consigned to the tomb in the [M]ethodist cemetery at Curllsville, on Sunday, ?th inst. They were escorted by Millville [Lo]dge, I.O.O.F., 30 members present; A.O. ?, W., No 176 of Rimmersburg, of which he was [al]so a member, 35 members; and Sligo Lodge, [N]o. 387, I.O.O.F., 20 members, followed by ? loaded vehicles, besides horsemen and a large [n]umber on foot. He was aged 44 years, and [le]aves a wife and 4 children to mourn their loss. ???? be with him. It is said that a highly in-[te]lligent christian gentleman, upon viewing the ???ling, blackened, mangled remains of Ad. [Lee] before they were scarcely cold, said, “There is no use making any fuss with him. Sew him [up] in a sack and bury him,” thus denying the ??? mangled wreck of humanity the privilege ???ing prepared by tender hands and loving [h]earts christian burial. When the shadow [of] the dark angel’s wing shadows this gentle[m]an in eternal night, may God in his mercy not [de]ny to him tender hands and loving hearts to [pr]epare him for the tomb.
Topics: Family, Genealogy, History | 7 Comments »
Abbie Wins a Ribbon or Two
By patti | August 11, 2008
Abbie entered a “blouse” she made for the Ozark Empire Fair. It’s really the top half of costume (Civil War era dress). She won first place in that division and also a sponsor’s choice award.
Topics: Family | 4 Comments »
George Washington
By patti | July 2, 2008
Archeologists have long tried to find George Washington’s boyhood home at Ferry Farm. They believe they have finally been successful.
Topics: History | 2 Comments »
Sam’s Summer
By patti | June 26, 2008
For those of you who aren’t a friend of Sam on Facebook or didn’t follow his enigmatic clue as to following his summer exploits, you can read here. So far he’s posted his itinerary and we hope he continues to update it throughout the summer.
Topics: Family | 3 Comments »
Muliti-tasking
By patti | June 21, 2008
The Deputy Headmistress has a post on multi-tasking that is worthwhile reading. I’m afraid that I’ve been proud of multi-tasking myself, but there is a huge demand for it from mothers since we wouldn’t get anything done at all if we didn’t multi-task. Since it is something inherent in being a mother. I’m not sure I agree with the one quote the DHM used that said we were designed to focus and not multi-task. I actually have given this some thought, because I can see that after years of being constantly interrupted, it is harder for me to focus and concentrate. That’s a scary thing. It is something I’m fighting against. But then there is some mental work that goes into being able to attempt to retrieve thoughts interrupted when other things demanded attention. I’m not talking about the internet here or multi-tasking on web pages or email. Even though my kids are older, I have found that there are still a lot of demands on my time that are not huge things, but small things that have to be taken care of and tend to fracture my time. So it seems to me that it is a woman’s lot to have to multi-task, but maybe we ought to guard against an inability to focus and to concentrate.
Topics: Home | 3 Comments »
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